Barbara Boucher Owens

The first programming course: ideas to end the enrollment decline

This panel will discuss ways to engage undergraduates in computing and then to keep them as majors. A special emphasis will be on attracting females to computing. The panelists will discuss the relative strengths and weaknesses of four environments especially designed for the teaching of the first programming course.

Building a sense of history: narratives and pathways of women computing educators

This working group laid the groundwork for the collection and analysis of oral histories of women computing educators. This endeavor will eventually create a body of narratives to serve as role models to attract students, in particular women, to computing; it will also serve to preserve the history of the female pioneers in computing education. Pre-conference work included administration of a survey to assess topical interest. The working group produced aids for conducting interviews, including an opening script, an outline of topics to be covered, guidelines for conducting interviews, and a set of probing questions to ensure consistency in the interviews. The group explored issues such as copyright and archival that confront the large-scale implementation of the project and suggested extensions to this research. This report includes an annotated bibliography of resources. The next steps will include training colleagues in how to conduct interviews and establishing guidelines for archival and use of the interviews.

ACM Turing centenary celebration

The ACM held its Turing Centenary Celebration on June 15 and 16 in San Francisco. Thirty-two recipients of the Turing Award, computer sciences equivalent of the Nobel Prize, attended the conference, and many of them spoke. To be surrounded by so many heroes and heroines of our discipline was amazing.

The new CSTA K--12 computer science standards

In this panel, we describe the new CSTA K-12 Computer Science Standards, their organization, and their hoped-for impact.

Computing educators oral history project: seeking the trends

This report expands upon the work started by an ITiCSE 2005 Working Group, which established the groundwork for collecting and analyzing the oral histories of computing educators and provided a foundation for the Computing Educators Oral History Project (CEOHP). The main charge for the Working Group during ITiCSE 2008 was to begin analyzing the interviews already included in CEOHP. As part of the process of exploring analysis approaches, we revisited the status of CEOHP and what had been learned since 2005. We report on analytical procedures for using the interviews as research data and as the basis for informational, motivational resources. We describe techniques and software tools we investigated for qualitative (thematic) analysis of this rich set of personal histories. The analysis allowed themes to emerge naturally from the interviews and suggested specific areas for further investigation. The report describes plans, including procedural updates, archival options, web portal needs, legal and ethical issues, target groups, and publication targets. We conclude with a discussion of future challenges for CEOHP.

The computing educators oral history project: planning for the future

This poster will showcase the planning stage of a project to develop a searchable repository of artifacts relating to the personal histories of computing educators. Artifacts will include digital audio interviews, interview transcripts, photographs, vitas, and other relevant items. Individuals included in the collection will be balanced across factors such as gender, geographic location, age, race/ethnicity, and institutional size. A key use of the project will be to support, recruit, and retain under-represented groups.

Proposed ABET Computer Science Criteria and the CS2013 Curriculum (Abstract Only)

The ACM/IEEE CS2013 Curriculum provides a somewhat rigid identification of topics to be covered by a model computer science curriculum. It was developed with significant input from industry, educators and other stakeholders and represents best practices in terms of Computer Science education. ABET is the accreditation body accrediting computer science programs in the US, and it also accredits a number of international programs. ABETs goal is to allow programs to identify their own outcomes and measure their success in delivering programs that achieve this, while also ensuring that all students receive a solid core education including key areas of the discipline without being excessively prescriptive. Both documents address excellence in computer science education. Changes to the Computer Science program criteria are being recommended which will more closely align the two documents in terms of identifying key areas to be covered by programs. This session provides participants with the opportunity to hear about the proposed changes and the rationale behind them and to offer feedback and input into the process.

CEOHP evaluation, evolution, and archival storage (abstract only)

This poster presents recent progress with the Computing Educators Oral History Project (CEOHP). To provide context, the poster includes a brief history of CEOHP and a summary of the interviews currently in the collection (a total of twenty-six completed interviews at the end of 2011). During Evaluation efforts in 2009 and 2010, a series of face-to-face and on-line qualitative interviews provided feedback about the CEOHP website, including its organization, content, and usability by target groups. The Evolution process incorporated ideas generated during Evaluation to improve both quality and consistency of the collection elements and the CEOHP website. In the Archival Storage process, all completed interviews in the CEOHP collection are being submitted to the prestigious Charles Babbage Institute for permanent indexing and archiving. These archival steps will become part of CEOHPs standard processing procedures, so each interview added to the CEOHP collection will be archived by the Charles Babbage Institute, guaranteeing that these materials will survive far into the future. This poster describes major steps, challenges, and achievements in the areas of Evaluation, Evolution, and Archival Storage, as well as the spiral nature of these activities as part of the on-going process of growing a collection such as CEOHP.

ACM Education Council meets

The ACM Education Council met June 18-19 after the ACM Turing Centenary Celebration (see next article) at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco.

Assessing the benefits of integrating social issues components in the computing curriculum

The inclusion of social issues, including ethical and professional topics, in computing curricula has become commonplace two decades after being incorporated into the ACM Computing Curricula. However, authors of academic papers and conference presentations often concentrate on integrating the broader issues of societal impact and best practices into computing curricula, while neglecting the assessment of their benefits. This panel explores how the institutions of the panelists include social issues in projects and the curriculum as a whole, and additionally how they assess the benefits of doing so. Special attention is given to an appreciation of the social good emanating from the use of community-based and non-profit organizations in student projects. Additionally, ways to assess the effectiveness of these approaches are presented in an effort to help meet model curriculum guidelines and accreditation requirements.