The paper
Adaptable Metrics to Inform Introductory CS has been submitted to CCSC-SW '25, at the University of San Diego, March 28-29, 2025.
This paper presents six metrics for evaluating short programs/software artifacts, as well as how those metrics' values have varied
over the past six years in our Introductory CS course, specifically for the student-submitted, open-ended final projects.
In some metrics - but not all - the rise of LLMs can be seen; others show incremental changes in introductory students', i.e.,
society's, approaches and attitudes toward computing.
Abstract:
Metrics have long been used to assess and guide successful software
projects. Traditionally these metrics have measured software’s profes-
sional rather than its educational suitability. This work proposes six
adaptable, reproducible pedagogical metrics. With these metrics, we
track an Introductory CS course’s capstone projects, 2018-2024.
The
results suggest both year-over-year evolution and a more sudden, LLM-
correlated impact on students’ relationship with their early computing
work. We have begun adapting our curriculum to these signals, and
we foresee future refinements and broader applications to metrics-based
reproducible curricular assessment.
Citation: Yuan Garcia, Jenny Ngo, Florence Rui Lin, and Zachary Dodds. 2025. Adaptable Metrics to Inform Introductory CS. Under review for CCSC-SW 2025, March 28-29, 2025, San Diego, CA.
The session
Computing as a University Graduation Requirement convened as part of SIGSCE '24.
This session featured seven discussion leaders and more than 35 other CS educators to
discuss and debate whether computing has become important enough to be undergraduate-universal, perhaps
inspired by other undergraduate-universal experiences, e.g., critical reading, cogent writing, and compelling presentation.
Abstract:
Computing is everywhere, and it’s here to stay. Computing is crucial in many disciplines, and it influences every discipline. It’s unlikely we’ll willingly return to a society unmediated by computing. How do our institutions proceed?
This BoF asks, “Should computing be a requirement for all college and university students?”
Some say yes, citing potential for improving equity-of-access, for expanding students’ capabilities, for diversifying the people who understand and critique computing, and for increasing the diversity of computing participation. Some say no, citing the lack of equity-of-outcomes, the infeasibility of teaching all students equitably, and students’ need for freedom in choosing what they study. The wisest say, “Let’s consider the full spectrum of possibilities… .”
This session considers these possibilities, as expressed and constrained by 2024’s forces. Is computing’s value saturated - or soon to be? Or, is computing a meta-skill, whose practice in learning-to-learn amplifies individual efficacy along all paths? Is Computing1 too gate-kept to be as equitable a GenEd as Composition1? Or does requiring computing, in fact, help dismantle those gates? Can students adequately learn about core computing concepts via non-CS courses that use computing? What might a required computing course entail?
We invite and welcome all with an interest in computing-as-degree-requirement, program-requirement, or GenEd offering. The session’s seed materials highlight evidence against the idea, for the idea, and across its vast, uncertain middle.
Our BoF proposers include researchers and educators, both non-CS-requiring and CS-requiring, as well as non-CS-required and
CS-required “educatees.” ACM DL abstract
Citation: Zachary Dodds, Yuan Garcia, Vidushi Ojha, Mark Guzdial, Tamara Nelson-Fromm, Valerie Barr, and Stephanos Matsumoto. 2024. Computing as a University Graduation Requirement. In Proceedings of the 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 2 (SIGCSE 2024). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1908. https://doi.org/10.1145/3626253.3635389
The paper
Choosing our Computing Birthplace: VSCode vs Colab as GenED IDEs
has been presented and published from
CCSC-NW '23.
This paper analyzes the choice of development
environment across twelve criteria including amenability to sharing, software-development fidelity,
elucidating vs. hiding detail, and nine others.
The resulting mapping of intro-experience-to-IDE shows how the choice of one's computational birthplace
resonates deeply -- and has a lasting impact on one's notions of "how computing is done."
Abstract:
First impressions are important. The initial environment in which our computing students express themselves helps shape their foundational understanding of what computing is, what it's for, and who participates. This work distills experiences and insights from offering Comp1 and Comp2 with two different IDEs: Microsoft's VSCode and Google's Colab.
We identify and describe several axes along which we compare our students' experience of these two. This effort has changed the way we offer Comp1, a degree requirement of all students at our institution, and Comp2, an optional follow-up course, required by some computationally-themed programs.
Citation: Elena Miller, Katy Shaw, and Zachary Dodds. 2023. Choosing Our Computing Birthplace: VSCode vs Colab as GenEd IDEs. J. Comput. Sci. Coll. 39, 1 (October 2023), 103–111.
The paper
A Biology-based CS1:
Results and Reflections, Ten Years In has been published in
SIGCSE '21.
This paper analyzes a decade's worth of
outcomes in cs5green, HMC's pilot
Scripting-as-Professional-Literacy
course, using cs5gold, HMC's breadth-first
introduction to CS as a foil.
Abstract:
For a decade, our institution has offered both a biology-based CS1 (CS1-B) and a traditional, breadth-based CS1. This project follows the paths of students in both courses – tracking their subsequent interests (what courses do the two groups choose afterwards?) and their grades in those courses.
Within the biology-based cohort, we also contrast the futures of the students who chose a biology-themed introduction with the group who expressed no preference or requested the breadth-based approach. Even when student preference was not accommodated, equitable downstream performance results hold.
We discuss the implications of these results, including the possibility that, like introductory writing, introductory computing is a professional literacy in which many disciplines have a stake.
Citation: Zachary Dodds, Malia Morgan, Lindsay Popowski, Henry Coxe, Caroline Coxe, Kewei Zhou, Eliot Bush, and Ran Libeskind-Hadas. 2021. A Biology-based CS1: Results and Reflections, Ten Years In. In The 52nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE '21), March 13-20, 2021, Virtual Event, USA. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 6 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3408877.3432469
Incredibly,
The New Educators Wednesday Roundtable (NEWR '20)
was run in its entirety, 9am-5pm, on Wed., March 11, 2020 at the Oregon
Convention Center in Portland, OR as part of SIGCSE 2020's
pre-symposium program.
The rest of SIGCSE '20 was canceled the next morning!
This Roundtable event convened 24 late-stage graduate students and
early-career CS educators to SIGCSE '20 for a slate of eight
presentations on career-balancing among the
forces of higher-education's many paths, expectations, demands, and
opportunities.
The CFI insight that CS does not own computing
emerged as an important touchstone. The paths for leveraging and
sharing our era's defining toolset are as compelling outside of
CS as they are within that departmental identity.
Many thanks to all of the Roundtable's presenters and participants, the
ACM board, and Diane Horton (U Toronto), co-organizer.
Thank you
... to all who attended Embracing our Future: CS Courses
and Curriculum for Non-CS-majors, a SIGCSE 2019 workshop held on
Wed. Feb 27, 2019, 7-10pm, at the Hyatt Regency Minneapolis, Greenway A (2nd
floor). This site is the clearinghouse for the workshop's slides,
links, and materials,
Is your CS department feeling squeezed between a burgeoning CS major and an even-faster-growing group of non-majors seeking computing skills and experiences? Join us for an overview of three departments' approaches to serving non-CS-majors. Hands-on opportunities to explore the curriculum are available to those with laptops; opportunities to plan for the post-CS-major future are open to all!
CS majors are certainly not disappearing, but the interest and demand for computing from non-CS majors is a far larger part of our future, as members of CS departments, than those on the disciplinary-major path. As computing evolves from valuable specialty to a professional literacy, CS departments face several challenges. How do we support both the traditional CS-major path and provide computing curriculum to a far broader audience? How do we partner with sibling departments in order to foster their sense of ownership and identity with computing's mindsets and toolsets? And, perhaps especially poignant in 2018, how do we invest energy into the CS-for-All future during a time that demand in our major pathway is at historic highs?
This workshop features three faculty members who have tried to answer these questions within the context of their departments. This workshop will share the results of those experiments, will offer hands-on exploration of a representative subset of the curricular materials, and will scaffold a strategic discussion of CS's future and identity in the era of "CS for All."
Mark Guzdial's post, "The Future of Computing Education is beyond CS majors" presaged the changes many CS departments now face. Even as demand for CS-as-specialty (the CS major) increases, the demand for CS skillsets, mindsets, and toolkits among non-CS majors is increasing at an even faster pace. The traditional tradeoff -- not worrying about non-majors -- will work in some circumstances for some amount of time, but will not serve the CS community's best interests as a long-term strategy. This workshop embraces this situation as "the right kind of problem to have," shares extra-CS-major curricula developed at three institutions, invites hands-on experience of representative facets, and -- perhaps most importantly -- convenes a group who will continue to creatively address this "problem" into the future.
Any CS professional seeking to bring computing to students whose primary professional identification might be something other than computer scientist or software engineer.
Dr. Darakhshan Mir is an assistant professor of computer science at Bucknell with deep interest in open access to computing for students across a wide, and more widely representative, variety of professional and personal identifications. To that end, she proposed and led the NSF-funded project, "Exploring Partnered Teaching of Interdisciplinary CS+X Courses," and has expanded Bucknell's introductory computing pathway with CSCI 187: Creative Computing and Society. Darakshan will present some of the innovations, experiences, and results from those efforts as part of this workshop.
Co-leading that NSF workshop was Dr. Paul Ruvolo, a member of the Computer Science department of Olin College. At Olin, all students are engineers -- and all Olin students develop human-centered design skills as the foundation of their professional skillset and identities. Supporting those fundamental principles, students need and want comfort and capability with computing's essentials -- along with a practiced ability to add new tool-and-technique expertise as required by open-ended, large-scale projects. This workshop will feature Paul's experiences teaching Olin's required computing course, Software Design and a two-semester, multi-disciplinary course, Quantitative Engineering Analysis. In addition to the engineering-specific insights, these courses illustrate the depth which which computing can integrate and support any discipline with an academic identity distinct from CS.
Within the sibling colleges in Claremont, CA, Zachary Dodds has developed a CS2-level course for non-CS majors, Computing for Insight. The course's first part practices skills widely used across STEM, social-science, business, and a growing number of other professional paths: scripting a workflow across thousands of files, ad-hoc learning and leveraging new libraries, and introductions to pixel-processing and machine learning. The second part features a self-designed computational project by each student or team, supporting their (non-CS) major or other non-CS professional or personal interests. Spring '19 is its fourth offering: this workshop will distill its evolution and the "Connective Computing" skills it seeks to support, both institutionally and individually.
| Date | Location |
|---|---|
| Wed. Feb. 27, 2019, 7-10pm | Hyatt Regency Minneapolis, Greenway A (2nd floor) |