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This paper provides a detailed examination of pre-college computing activities as reported in three Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) venues (2012-2016). Ninety-two articles describing informal learning activities were reviewed for 24 program elements (i.e., activity components, and student/instructor demographics). These 24 program elements were defined and shaped by a virtual focus group study and the articles themselves. Results indicate that the majority of authors adequately report age/grade levels of participants, number of participants, the type of activity, when the activity was offered, the tools/languages used in the activity, and whether the activity was required or elective. However, there is a deficiency in reporting many other important and foundational program elements, including contact hours of activity participants, clear learning objectives, the prior experience of participants (students and instructors), and many more. In conjunction with previous work, this paper provides recommendations to reduce these deficiencies. The Recommendations for Reporting Pre-College Computing Activities (Version 1.0) are presented to help researchers improve the quality of papers, set a standard of necessary data needed to replicate studies, and provide a basis for comparing activities and activity outcomes across multiple studies and experiences. 

Over the last few years, a number of repositories of information relevant to the computing education community have come online, each with different content and purpose. In this special session, we present an overview of these repositories and the content that each provides. Demonstrations of the functionality of the repositories will be shown and attendees are encouraged to come with their questions and suggestions for improvement if they are currently users of the repositories. 

With the growth of computing education research in the last decade, we have found a call for a strengthening of empiricism within the computing education research community. Computer science education researchers are being asked to focus not only the innovation that the research creates or the question it answers, but also on validating the claims we made about the work. In this session, we will explore the relationship between evaluation and computing education research and why it is so vital to the success of the many computing education initiatives underway. It will also help computing faculty engaged in computer science education research understand why it is essential to integrate evaluation and validation from the very first conceptual stages of their intervention programs.