About The CS Education Reading Group
The Group meets once a week to discuss chosen works from the CS education (and related) literature. We meet Fridays at 3PM in ICCS 238, resuming on January 7, 2010. Anybody is welcome to come. Paper selections will be posted here, as well as sent to the cssei-interest mailing list. This term, papers will be selected by students taking CPSC 490 (CS Education); previous selections may be found on the cssei-interest list, and the CS Twiki page.
Papers for 2010W2
Of the twelve weeks this term, eight of them will feature a CPSC 490 student presenting papers on a topic of their own choosing. The 490 students will also have three short discussion questions prepared each week; these will often be used to start our discussions.
January 7: The Classroom Experience
Presenter: Elizabeth Patitsas -- CPSC 490 Discussion Questions.- Hitchens, Lister. 2009. A Focus Group Study of Student Attitudes to Lectures.
- Carbonne, Manilla, Fitzgerald. 2007. Computer science and IT teachers' conceptions of successful and unsuccessful teaching: A phenomenographic study.
January 14: Curriculum and Course Management
Presenters: Elizabeth Patitsas, Steve Wolfman -- CPSC 490 Discussion Questions- Gruba, Moffat, Sondergaard, Zobel. 2004. What Drives Curriculum Change?
- Clear. 1997. Coupling and Cohesion Among Disciplines: Some Curriculum Paradigms.
- Rowe. 2010. Confessions of a central planner.
January 21: The CS Teaching Environment
Presenter: Elizabeth Patitsas -- CPSC 490 Discussion Questions.- Tedre, Sutinen. 2008. Three traditions of computing: what educators should know.
- Tutty, Sheard, Avram. 2008. Teaching in the current higher education environment: perceptions of IT academics.
- Machanick. 2007. A social construction approach to computer science education.
January 28: Attitudes of Potential Students
Presenter: Shannon Larson -- CPSC 490 Discussion Questions.- Greening. 1998. Computer science: through the eyes of potential students.
- Schulte, Knobelsdorf. 2007. Attitudes towards computer science-computing experiences as a starting point and barrier to computer science.
- Carter. 2006. Why students with an apparent aptitude for computer science don't choose to major in computer science.
February 4: Online educational technologies
Presenter: Thea McKerricher -- CPSC 490 Discussion Questions.- Thomas, King, Minocha. 2009. The effective use of a simple wiki to support collaborative learning activities.
- Cloete, de Villiers, Roodt. 2009. Facebook as an academic tool for ICT lecturers
February 11: K-12 Computing
Presenter: Richard Lei -- CPSC 490 Discussion Questions.- Fletcher. 2009. Education: Human computing skills: rethinking the K-12 experience
- Maloney, Peppler, Kafai, Resnick, Rusk. 2008. Programming by choice: urban youth learning programming with scratch
- Goode. 2008. Increasing diversity in k-12 computer science: strategies from the field
February 18: canceled
No meeting due to Reading Week.
February 25: CS and the Arts
Presenter: Elizabeth Patitsas -- CPSC 490 Discussion Questions.- Lockhart. 2002. A Mathematician's lament -- read pages 1-3.
- Barker, Garvin-Doxas, Roberts. 2005. What can computer science learn from a fine arts approach to teaching? -- read the abstract, then Sections 3 and 4.
March 4: The BASICs
Presenter: Jerome Li -- CPSC 490 Discussion Questions.- Bayman, Mayer. 1983. A diagnosis of beginning programmers' misconceptions of BASIC programming statements.
- McGee, Polychronopoulos, Wilson. 1987. The influence of BASIC on performance in introductory computer science courses using Pascal.
- Dijkstra. 1984. The threats to computing science.
March 11: Canceled
March 18: Games
Presenter: Benjamin Israel -- CPSC 490 Discussion Questions.- Muratet et al. 2009. Towards a serious game to help students learn computer programming.
- Squire. 2005Changing the game: What happens when video games enter the classroom?.
March 25
Presenter: Ken Yasuhara -- CPSC 490 Discussion Questions.- Kinnunen et al. 2007. Through the eyes of instructors: a phenomenographic investigation of student success.
April 1: Students' choice of papers to revisit
Presenter: Elizabeth Patitsas (no discussion questions).- Rowe. 2010. Confessions of a central planner.
- Dijkstra. 1984. The threats to computing science.
- Lockhart. 2002. A Mathematician's lament -- read pages 1-3.
Information for CPSC 490 students
Readings
Normally, readings will be emailed to you two weeks in advance, along with short discussion questions about the readings. The short discussion questions are due at the start of the class that the readings are presented in.
Presenting
You are to present in one week of the term. This means picking papers, and leading a discussion about them. You may sign up to pick a week to present in before picking a topic, or papers. The papers, the topic uniting them, and reading questions (see below) should be sent to Elizabeth two weeks in advance of when you present. Everybody needs to have chosen what week they are presenting in before Reading Week.
Selecting papers
There are three guidelines for paper selections. Firstly, you must read all the papers you sign up to present beforehand. Secondly, the total length of all papers must be at least 10 pages, and cannot exceed 30 pages. (You may have only one paper.) Finally, at least one of the readings must be a peer reviewed article; additional readings may be of any medium (chapter of a book, blog post, news article, Ted talk, etc). See here for tips on finding papers. You are free to reuse articles from your literature review project.
Your choice of paper selections is due two weeks in advance along with a list of three short answer questions about the readings. These short answer questions should be designed to test if your classmates have read the readings, and to have your classmates try to relate the readings to their own experiences as a student. For example, "Have you ever been taught using the method outlined in Paper 1?", or "What do you agree or disagree about the argument in Paper 2?". For more examples, see the questions for weeks 1, 2 and 3. You will have the task of marking these after your presentation.