Digging up my first CS education research work

Once again, it is Computer Science Education Week. In previous years, I feel like my inbox and news feed were inundated with reminders and requests to take action. My participation has taken the form of blog posts the last few years. This year, no one requested it—and maybe they didn't last year either, since it seems I made no CSEdWeek post in 2013—but it turns out that I have a good and relevant story to tell anyway.

My first semester as an Assistant Professor was Fall 2005 at Ball State University. I had come to Ball State on the strength of my doctoral work in interactive program visualization, which was a line of inquiry I intended to continue pursuing. One of the reasons I had become interested in this work was because it had implications to Computer Science education, helping people to understand the semantics of program execution; however, my own doctoral work was more theoretical and engineering, not assessment of application. 

In that first semester, I was assigned to teach CS120, the department's introduction to Computer Science, which at the time was taught in C++. The textbook contained classic and uninteresting problems, and as I had done in graduate school, I spent some time crafting my own programming projects. The students' final project was to make a text-based adventure game set in Mounds State Park. This was inspired by John Estell's Nifty Assignment. I remember the project having been a great success in terms of students' engagement and learning outcomes.

I was reminded of this assignment yesterday, when I was gathering scrap paper to bring to my CS222 final exam. My exam followed a similar format to what I described two years ago, although I have stopped asking for mind maps. My scrap paper supply has been getting smaller, and so I grabbed the whole stack to bring downstairs. At the bottom of the stack were about thirty of these forms:

It's a survey I designed in Fall 2005 to gather some feedback from students about the final project. This represents the first effort I can remember of trying to conduct actual Computer Science Education research: to have real data and coherent theories about the relationship between what I was doing and what the students were learning. Looking at the form now, having been involved in Computer Science Education research for almost ten years, I was bit surprised to see that I think it's a decent instrument. At the time, I knew nothing of qualitative research methods or even quantitative research methods, and I had no formal understanding of constructivism or constructionism. Not too bad for a novice.

Today, in 2014, I feel much more comfortable with Computer Science Education Research as part of my identity as a scholar. I have written several articles in this area, and while my more technical work still has more citations, the metrics suggest that my work has made a real difference in the community—a small difference, but a difference nonetheless. This gives me great satisfaction, to know that I am helping students here in Muncie, and that through a network of like-minded scholars, there can be a ripple effect to other places and instutitions, similar to how John Estell's Nifty Assignment prompted me to make an interesting new assignment for my students.

It was fun to post this same picture on Facebook and hear back from students I had that semester. It was a memorable assignment for them as well!

Students' pride in their work: A CSEdWeek 2012 Post

Two weeks ago, I received an invitation from an undergraduate to come to the presentation of his independent study project. Turns out it was part of a series of presentations connected to a colleague's graph theory courses. Some of the presentations were connected with educational mobile applications, which piqued my curiosity enough that I decided to attend. I was one of three or four guests in the classroom, and the students demonstrated some decent technical prototypes. I provided a little bit of feedback from a HCI and design perspectives.

The experience made me think about the good work that my students are doing. The following Friday, I related the story to my CS222 class, who were a day away from the deadline on their six-week team projects. The teams and projects are self-selected, and this semester, I had three teams, each of which created a video game. I told the students, honestly, that their work was more interesting, and I asked whether they would like me to invite the rest of the department to come to their final project presentations. They responded immediately and excitedly that we should, and so I posted the announcement on the department's Facebook page.

Last Monday were the final presentations, and we brought in about eight outsiders—not bad for a class of twelve students! My recollection is that there were three faculty/staff there and around five undergraduates, all of whom had taken CS222 in the past. This is significant since these student-attendees came in with realistic expectations, having gone through the six-week project in a similar format themselves.

The three presentations went well. I had given them a presentation evaluation rubric ahead of time, and this rubric emphasized three categories: the executable release itself, achievement of milestone #2 objectives, and software architecture. Each of the groups covered these categories quite clearly in their allotted fifteen minutes. Note that game design was explicitly not part of the course: I made it clear to the students at the outset that they were welcome to create games in their six-week project, but that I would only formally evaluate them as software artifacts and not for their game design qualities, since that was outside the syllabus. Still, most of the questions from the audience were related to game design, and the teams provided responses that showed a good general understanding of game design; this is good for me, since hopefully I can recruit these students into my game design and game programming courses in the future!

It is well known that many people fear public speaking, and my students are not exceptional in this regard. I think that in most cases, these students would not volunteer to speak in front of a room of students, faculty, and staff; yet, when presented with the opportunity, they jumped at it. This speaks to the power of providing students with motivating contexts for their work. By giving students the freedom to choose a project that they wanted to complete, not only did I get them to commit to the requisite technical and collaborative tasks—they also gained the important social experience of public presentation.

I know I'm two days late in my CSEdWeek pledge to write a related blog post, but I hope that this post helps point in a fruitful direction. I've been using student-directed projects in my teaching for quite a few years with success, but I don't always make the opportunity for public presentation. Seeing how my students learned from this experience, I am going to try harder in future CS222 offerings to open up the final presentations. By putting it here on my blog, you can hold me to it next semester.

CS Ed Week: Reflections on a busy week

Once again, we've reached the end of CSEdWeek, and I'm pushing to get this post in before it's over.

I attended two blogworthy public events this week. On Monday, I went to the Indiana Historical Society's Annual Founders Day Dinner and Awards celebration, along with my collaborator Ronald Morris and our Dean, Michael Maggiotto. The College of Sciences and Humanities at Ball State University was awarded the Outstanding Project of the Year award for Morgan's Raid.

Among the other recognized individuals and organizations were eight Centennial Businesses, Indiana companies celebrating 100 years of operation. Not surprisingly, none of these were software development companies. However, I'm willing to wager that all of them now rely upon software for their daily operations. In 2111, will they be looking back at 100-year-old software development shops?

Wednesday was the BSU Building Better Communities Project Showcase, where about twenty student teams showed how they worked with faculty mentors and community partners. Several of my students were there to demonstrate the Digital Archaeology Simulation project. A poster provided the background and rationale for the project, and the software is still under development by Emerging Technologies. A prototype was available, and while I didn't take the opportunity to run the latest build, several passers-by told me that they were quite impressed. Ball State University President Jo Ann Gora spent a few minutes with members of the team to talk to them about their work—a great opportunity for the students to show some of their best work (even if the photo is rather poor).

This week was also the final project presentations in CS222: Advanced Programming. Each team of four had to pitch a project and complete it in six weeks, with two three-week milestones. Several of the teams impressed me with their hard work and dedication, investing significant amounts of their own free time in order to create the most impressive systems they could.

Rather than make any grand conclusions, I think the best way to close this post is to say that I have a great job. My students rise to the challenges I set before them. They appreciate learning how to learn, and they respect the fact that I respect them. We all get a bit stressed this time of year, but it feels good at the end of a busy week to reflect on all the great learning experiences I have had with my students this year. Thanks to my students for sticking with me, for trusting me even when my methods are unconventional.

Happy CS Ed Week.

CS Ed Week

Today marks the end of 2010 CS Education Week. I could enumerate all the reasons why this is significant, but it's certainly easier for you to just follow that link and see for yourself.

In honor of CS Education Week, I want to reflect a little on how the field of CS Education has impacted me personally and professionally. I have always had a penchant for teaching, possibly because both of my parents were trained to be teachers. (Not that it's the training that matters per se, but that they both had interest and aptitude in the pursuit.) I had several teaching experiences prior to entering graduate school, and I knew that it was something for which I had a passion. However, entry into the academy is not through a focus on teaching, but rather on the individual intellectual pursuits represented by the doctorate. I spent seven years at the University at Buffalo, first on my masters and then on my doctorate. Although I would occasionally talk with my advisor about my interest in teaching, he sagely recommended avoiding teaching until the doctorate was complete: both are at least full-time jobs, and one who begins a lectureship tends to have much more difficulty finishing the dissertation.

I taught a few courses while at UB, but it wasn't until I became an Assistant Professor at Ball State University that I could really focus in on what it meant to be a good teacher. I found it challenging to keep up with my work on JIVE, partially due to the distance from UB and partially due to the stresses of the new job, being as how BSU is not a research-focused institution: with no grad students to work under me, I was unable to keep the pace of research and development.

My interest in design patterns and games led me to explore the intersection of these ideas with students, and this led to my first CS education publication, "Computer Games as a Motivation for Design Patterns," which I presented at SIGCSE 2007. This was my first time attending the conference, but it was an eye-opening experience. I learned more about education research and realized how many more opportunities I could make for significant research, but most importantly, I was inspired by being surrounded by a thousand CS professors who care deeply about student learning. Most professors are good folks who want their students to learn, but the SIGCSE community is different: these are scholars who have devoted their lives to helping make computer science education better. I'm proud and humbled to be among their ranks.

I have also become involved in the Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges, Midwest Region. I think I first went to this conference in 2006, inspired primarily by the idea of bringing a team of undergraduates to the programming competition, even though I didn't know any of the three members of the team. Since then, this has become one of my favorite annual trips, gathering several of our high-achieving students and spending two days chatting about research, education, and life. The regional conference serves a role similar to the international SIGCSE conference: it brings together a vibrant community of dedicated faculty from around the Midwest, and it's always reinvigorating to spend time with them. In fact, this is now my second year as the publicity chair for the conference and my first year as an at-large member of the regional steering committee.

There is a lot of room for improvement in higher education, and so there is a lot of room for improvement in Computer Science education. Thank you to all the scholars who have gone before me and the ones who will come afterwards—this year is my sixth as a professor, and I am proud to have seeded two alumni into CS graduate school who I know will be excellent professors. Thank you to organizations like ACM and IEEE who promote computing. Thanks to CCSC for their support of regional conferences, especially with tight travel budgets being the new norm. Thanks to CSTA for their work in K-12, where there is the greatest need to help students see the value of computational thinking, regardless of their future careers. Thanks to you, dear reader, for considering the value of computing and computer science education.