Samuel A. Rebelsky

Food-first computer science: starting the first course right with PB&J

We consider in some depth a common exercise for the first session of a typical introductory computer science course: The task of writing instructions to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The exercise, although simple, can engage students and motivate a variety of topics important throughout the semester. We discuss reasons to use such an exercise on the first day of class, present lessons students can learn from the exercise, and give practical advice for the instructor who wishes to make the most of this exercise.

Real-world program design in CS2: the roles of a large-scale, multi-group class project

Recent curricular recommendations (e.g., [7,9]) encourage the early and regular use of significant group projects in the introductory computer science sequence. In this paper, we report on a group project that we used in two courses during the second half of the semester. Rather than having each group work on the same project (or even individual projects), the groups build parts of a larger project: a distributed auction system to be used by art shows at conventions. Students reacted quite positively to the experience, in spite of reporting that they spent upwards of twenty hours on the project in many weeks. Students also learned important software design principles from experience.

Variations on a theme: role of media in motivating computing education

The SIGCSE community has been exploring the role of multimedia to enhance computing education since the earliest algorithm visualization systems and studies [1]. Media Computation is a shift in focus [2]. Where algorithm visualization presents information to the student to facilitate their understanding, media computation is about having students manipulate media as the data for their programming, i.e., as the focus of the course activities. Students in media computation produce new images, sounds, and video. We aim to show that computer science is about more than numbers and strings. Computer science is also about creative expression. The original media computation work focused on using media to motivate non-computing majors [2]. The role of media in motivating student learning for computing education has broadened. Inventive teachers are using media computation for lots of different kinds of students, at different kinds of institutions, with a range of languages and toolkits. This special session is a mixture of Five Minute Madness, science fair, and art gallery. Each participant will present how he or she is using media to motivate student learning, and some student work will be available for audience inspection

Designing interactive electronic conference proceedings

Electronic publishing promises wider, cheaper and easier access to documents; better facilities for organizing, accessing and presenting information; and greater roles for nontextual media. As authors, editors and compilers create electronic documents, they must identify necessary features and components, consider what past projects in computer science and publishing suggest, select publishing and development platforms, and add functionality to these platforms. Conference proceedings-collections of papers and related materials prepared as a record-provide an interesting domain for studying electronic publishing, particularly interaction and the interplay of nontextual and textual materials. Conferences include many materials, such as color graphics, animations and presentations, frequently left out of printed proceedings for reasons of space, cost or inability to present dynamic media. At the same time, too few multimedia systems acknowledge the significant role of text. In developing proceedings for the summer institutes of the Dartmouth Institute for Advanced Graduate Studies, the Dartmouth Experimental Visualization Laboratory addressed the challenges and possibilities of electronic proceedings design. >

Building knowledge and confidence with mediascripting: a successful interdisciplinary approach to CS1

As the Media Computing approach has shown, writing programs that make images excites a wide variety of students. In this paper, we report on five years of experience with a new approach to media computation, which we call media scripting. In our introductory class, students build images by interactively scripting an application, so they can experiment easily and mix work by hand and by code; we collaborate with studio art faculty, so students build works meeting design criteria; and we emphasize multiple paradigms, so students make images using functional, declarative, imperative, and object-oriented techniques. Our approach has proven quite successful--enrollments are up (at least 33% in CS1, 50% in CS2) and we attract more women (currently 40% of the students in the first course, 25% of those in the second course). Other outcomes are equally positive. For example, comparative data show that our students gain significantly more confidence in their abilities than students in other introductory science courses.

Whither scheme?: 21 st century approaches to scheme in CS1

Since the decline of Pascal as a “standard” introductory language in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, faculty members have adopted (and, often, discarded) a variety of languages for the introductory course: C, C++, Java, Modula-2, Ada, Python, Ruby, and more. Different approaches and different opinions have led to a number of “language wars” in the SIGCSE community, wars that we hope to avoid in this panel.

What We Say vs. What They Do: A Comparison of Middle-School Coding Camps in the CS Education Literature and Mainstream Coding Camps (Abstract Only)

In attempts to broaden participation in computing, the computer science education community has developed a wide variety of outreach activities to encourage students of different ages to learn computational thinking techniques and to develop an interest in computer science. In their recent surveys of the CSed literature, Decker, McGill, and Settle identify over eighty papers on K-12 outreach activities, of which approximately forty address middle-school coding camps. However, summer coding camps are offered by a much wider variety of organizations than computer science educators committed to diversifying the field. Some are offered by organizations committed to diversity, such as Black Girls Code and Girls Who Code. Others are offered by universities for recruitment, and necessarily to support diversification. Still others are offered by for-profit entities. What are the relationships between the two models of camp? Do the ideas that appear in the research literature filter out to the more mainstream camps, or do the more mainstream camps provide a very different model of computer science? In this project, we reviewed both the computer science education literature (52 sources representing 45 camps) and summer code camps identified on the World-Wide Web (480 different camps). In this poster, we report on common approaches and themes that others may choose to adapt or adopt. We also explore significant differences between the research-centered camps and the mainstream camps in approach, language, and apparent outreach goals.

Teaching tips we wish they'd told us before we started, small college class edition

Be an opener of doors for such as come after thee... - Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1844. At the SIGCSE Symposium in 2007, we presented a panel in which seasoned teaching faculty from four large, PhD-granting universities shared the teaching tips we wished wed known before starting our careers [1]. The difference from earlier Teaching Tips panels [6] was that our suggestions were meant to be hidden gems less often highlighted by our colleagues or by some of the best-known teaching resources [2, 3, 4, 8, 10, 11]. We clustered our tips into several categories: Lecturing, Office (hours), Staff (mentoring), Exams (authoring & administering), Labs (authoring & running), Section (TA-led discussion), Projects (and homework; authoring & supporting), and Meta (advice spanning categories). The session was received quite well, and the audience contributed many of their own teaching tips throughout the presentation. Since all of the presenters in 2007 regularly taught large, hundred-student classes, many of their suggestions (e.g., lecturing in a large venue or managing an army of teaching assistants) were not relevant to the experience of teaching small classes. Quite a few attendees suggested there be a follow-up session with presenters who could address the challenges specific to small college or university classes. To that end, we present the Small College Class edition, with seasoned educators who have expertise teaching smaller classes at their university or college. The position statements that follow offer a random sampling of two of these hidden pearls; presenters will share many more during the session, and time will be provided for audience participation. Well endeavor to capture all the tips for an online collection. Complementing the categories above, we have added two more that capture the intimate setting of small classes: - Classroom (organization, interactions, and incentives) - Personal (fostering relationships).

Arts Coding for Social Good: A Pilot Project for Middle-School Outreach

Computer science, particularly in the United States, continues to suffer from underrepresentation by women and students of color. Increasingly, evidence suggests that we need to approach student perceptions of computer science and self perceptions of who does computer science before college, at ages in which students have not yet formed difficult-to-change viewpoints. In an effort to address underrepresented groups in computing, as well as to change common, stereotypical perceptions of what a computer scientist is, we ran a pilot summer camp that drew students from our local community and sought to increase their self-efficacy and change the way they conceptualized Computer Science. In designing the course, we leveraged approaches that have shown success at the college level - particularly Computing for Social Good and Media Computation - to introduce students to important concepts. The camp was structured as a week-long, full-day camp in one of the Computer Science departments computer-equipped classrooms, We taught programming in Processing to 28 rising 5th-9th grade students, focusing on artistic aspects and real-world inspiration. In this paper, we report on the project (both successes and failures) and the effects the project had on students self-efficacy and attitudes towards computer science. We also provide some recommendations for others planning to offer similar camps.

Engaging CS Alumni from Afar

Alumni connect an institution to the world beyond its doors. Alumni can help students in many ways, from providing new perspectives on core computer science concepts to providing opportunities for work and experiential learning. Students can envision themselves following in alumni footsteps, and many alumni are eager to help students with whom they share an alma mater. Some computer science departments benefit from having their alumni nearby, while others—especially those far away from concentrations of computing and information technology businesses—must find ways to engage alumni from afar.