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When instructors want to design programming assignments to motivate their students, a common design choice is to have those students write code to make an artifact (e.g. apps, games, music, or images). The goal of this study is to understand the impacts of including artifact creation in a programming assignment on students’ motivation, time on task, and cognitive load. To do so, we conducted a controlled lab study with seventy-three students from an introductory engineering course. The experimental group created a simulation they could interact with – thus having the full experience of artifact creation – while the control group wrote the exact same code, but evaluated it only with test cases. We hypothesized that students who could interact with the simulation they were programming would be more motivated to complete the assignment and report higher intrinsic motivation. However, we found no significant difference in motivation or cognitive load between the groups. Additionally, the experimental group spent more time completing the assignment than the control group. Our results suggest that artifact creation may not be necessary for motivating students in all contexts, and that artifact creation may have other effects such as increased time on task. Additionally, instructors and researchers should consider when, and in what contexts, artifact creation is beneficial and when it may not be 

Background and Context. Research software in the Computing Education Research (CER) domain frequently encounters issues with scalability and sustained adoption, which limits its educational impact. Despite the development of numerous CER programming (CER-P) tools designed to enhance learning and instruction, many fail to see widespread use or remain relevant over time. Previous research has primarily examined the challenges educators face in adopting and reusing CER tools, with few focusing on understanding the barriers to scaling and adoption practices from the tool developers’ perspective. Objectives. To address this, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 16 tool developers within the computing education community, focusing on the challenges they encounter and the practices they employ in scaling their CER-P tools. Method. Our study employs thematic analysis of the semi-structured interviews conducted with developers of CER-P tools. Findings. Our analysis revealed several barriers to scaling highlighted by participants, including funding issues, maintenance burdens, and the challenge of ensuring tool interoperability for a broader user base. Despite these challenges, developers shared various practices and strategies that facilitated some degree of success in scaling their tools. These strategies include the development of teaching materials and units of curriculum, active marketing within the academic community, and the adoption of flexible design principles to facilitate easier adaptation and use by educators and students. Implications. Our findings lay the foundation for further discussion on potential community action initiatives, such as the repository of CS tools and the community of tool developers, to allow educators to discover and integrate tools more easily in their classrooms and support tool developers by exchanging design practices to build high-quality education tools. Furthermore, our study suggests the potential benefits of exploring alternative funding models. 

This working group aims to identify available datasets within the context of computing education research. One particular area of interest is programming education, and the data in question may include students' steps, progress, or submissions in the form of program code. To achieve this goal, the working group will review well-known data resources and repositories (e.g., DataShop, GitHub, NSF Public Access Repository, and IEEE DataPort) and recent papers published within the SIGCSE community. As a result of the review process, the working group will create an overview of available datasets and characterize them while reflecting on current data practices, challenges, and the consequences of limited access to research data. Additionally, the group intends to propose a path for the community to become more open and move toward open data practices. This proposal highlights the importance of sharing research data within the computing education research community to make it stronger and more productive. 

Abstract To dissect the antibiotic role of nanostructures from chemical moieties belligerent to both bacterial and mammalian cells, here we show the antimicrobial activity and cytotoxicity of nanoparticle-pinched polymer brushes (NPPBs) consisting of chemically inert silica nanospheres of systematically varied diameters covalently grafted with hydrophilic polymer brushes that are non-toxic and non-bactericidal. Assembly of the hydrophilic polymers into nanostructured NPPBs doesn’t alter their amicability with mammalian cells, but it incurs a transformation of their antimicrobial potential against bacteria, including clinical multidrug-resistant strains, that depends critically on the nanoparticle sizes. The acquired antimicrobial potency intensifies with small nanoparticles but subsides quickly with large ones. We identify a threshold size (d silica ~ 50 nm) only beneath which NPPBs remodel bacteria-mimicking membrane into 2D columnar phase, the epitome of membrane pore formation. This study illuminates nanoengineering as a viable approach to develop nanoantibiotics that kill bacteria upon contact yet remain nontoxic when engulfed by mammalian cells.