CSE 492T, Spring 2021: Schedule

Meet each other; discuss course procedures, themes, and topics; reflect on our experiences in education

Reading: Chapter 16 of The Cambridge Handbook of Computing Education Research by Colleen Lewis, Niral Shah, Katrina Faulkner

Discussion Prompts:

• In your own words, define diversity, equity, access, and justice.
• Which of the vignettes did you find most compelling? Why?
• Give one or two ideas or tools you identified in the chapter that you can apply to your own teaching. (If you are not currently teaching, think about a future opportunity.)
• What questions or concerns do you have about this reading?

Reading: Ethics, Identity, and Political Vision: Toward a Justice-Centered Approach to Equity in Computer Science Education by Sepehr Vakil

Discussion Prompts:

• Do you agree with Vakil's three pillars of justice-centered CS education (ethics in curriculum, identity in classrooms, and political vision)? What do you see as the pros and cons of this framing?
• What can we glean from Vakil's examples of progress that we can apply at UW or in other programs you have experience with?
• What questions or concerns do you have about this reading?

Reading: Chapter 1 of Learner-centered design of computing education: Research on computing for everyone by Mark Guzdial

Reading: Teaching Perspectives Inventory

Discussion Prompts:

• Which of the motivations for Computing for All that Guzdial outlines do you find most compelling? Are there any that he did not include that you think are important?
• Which Teaching Perspective did you most closely align with? Did this surprise you? Why or why not?
• What questions or concerns do you have about this reading?

Reading: Chapter 6 of How Learning Works II

Discussion Prompts:

• Which element(s) of learner motivation mentioned in the report did you find most interesting? Why?
• How have your learning experiences and motivation been influenced your teachers? How do you think you have influenced the motivations of your students when you have been a teacher (if you have)?
• What questions or concerns do you have about this reading?

Reading: Chapter 9 of The Cambridge Handbook of Computing Education Research by Anthony Robins, Lauren Margulieux, Briana Morrison

Discussion Prompts:

• Which cognitive science concept, idea, or theory from the chapter did you find most interesting? Which did you think could be most useful in your teaching? Why?
• How do you think the concept of transfer manifests in computer science? What did you learn about transfer that might be relevant for your teaching?
• What questions or concerns do you have about this reading?

Reading: Chapter 1 of Understanding By Design by Grant Wiggins, Jay McTighe

Discussion Prompts:

• Do you agree with the authors' descriptions of the advantages of backwards design and the drawbacks of the traditional design process? Why or why not?
• What evidence of good course design (backwards or otherwise) have you seen in classes you've taken and/or taught? What evidence of flawed design have you noticed?
• What questions or concerns do you have about this reading?

Reading: Steps toward excellence: The power of learning objectives by Robert Talbert

Reading: What is the Value of Course-Specific Learning Goals by Beth Simon, Jared Taylor

Reading: Developing Course-Level Learning Goals for Basic Data Structures in CS2 by Leo Porter, Daniel Zingaro, Cynthia Lee, Cynthia Taylor, Kevin C. Webb, Michael Clancy

Review our notes and thoughts from our first observation and consider what we can learn to improve our own practice from the observation

Reading: Formative and Summative Assessment in the Classroom by Dante Dixson, Frank Worrell

Discussion Prompts:

• In your own words, how would you define "formative assessment" and "summative assessment"? What role do you think each serves?
• What are some of the the best and worst examples of formative and summative assessment you have seen in your classes? How effective do you think they were at assessing the relevant learning objectives?
• What questions or concerns do you have about this reading?

Reading: Season 2, Episode 4 of The CS-Ed Podcast

Reading: Grading for equity episode of The Harvard EdCast

Discussion Prompts:

• Which of Feldman's ideas and suggestions did you find most intriguing or surprising? Why?
• What do you see as the biggest threats to equity in grading practices at UW, especially in CSE? What types of students do you think are harmed by these inequities?
• What ideas, either Feldman's or your own, would you like to see implemented to change grading practices at UW for increased equity? What barriers do you foresee to implementing these ideas?
• What questions or concerns do you have about this reading?

Reading: Weekly Programs in a CS1 Class: Experiences with Auto-graded Many-small Programs (MSP) by Joe Michael Allen, Frank Vahid, Kelly Downey, Alex Daniel Edgecomb

Discussion Prompts:

• What are your feelings on a "many small programs" vs. a "one large program" approach to assessment in computer science? What do you see as the pros and cons of each approach?
• Do you agree with the authors' claim that the shift to MSP was enabled by the use of auto-graders for their programming assignments? What advantages and disadvantages do you see with using auto-graders for programming assignments?
• What questions or concerns do you have about this reading?

Reading: Scored out of 10: Experiences with Binary Grading Across the Curriculum by Andrew Berns

Reading: Toward an Ungraded CS50 by David J. Malan

Discussion Prompts:

• What do you see as the advantages and disadvantages of a pass-fail system, for either individual assignments or for a course as a whole? What populations of students do you think would be most helped or hurt by such a system?
• Do you think a pass-fail system is a better fit for certain types of assignments or courses than others? If so, which ones? If not, why not?
• What barriers do you foresee to implementing a pass-fail system in courses? How could these barriers be overcome?
• What questions or concerns do you have about this reading?

Reading: PORTAAL: A Classroom Observation Tool Assessing Evidence-Based Teaching Practices for Active Learning in Large Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Classes

Discussion Prompts:

• Do you agree that the techniques identified by the authors are important and/or valuable for increasing student learning? Why or why not? Are there are other techniques that are not included you think should be?
• Which of the elements of PORTAAL have you seen utilized most often? Which have you seen utilized least often? Why do you think those elements are more or less common?
• Which elements do you think would be easiest and hardest to implement in CS classes? Why?
• What questions or concerns do you have about this reading?

Reading: Experience report: peer instruction in introductory computing by Beth Simon, Michael Kohanfars, Jeff Lee, Karen Tamayo, Quintin Cutts

Reading: Peer instruction: do students really learn from peer discussion in computing? by Leo Porter, Cynthia Lee, Beth Simon, Daniel Zingaro

Discussion Prompts:

• What do you see as the benefits of Peer Instruction? What are some barriers to using it in CS classes?
• What do you think of the discussion of isomorphic questions_hide in the 2011 ICER paper? Do you agree with the conclusions that isomorphic questions_hide can provide additional insight into student understanding? How could you envision utilizing isomorphic questions_hide in your own teaching?
• What questions or concerns do you have about this reading?

Reflect on what we have discussed so far, along with the results of our observations, and consider how we can utilize what we have learned to improve our own teaching

Reading: Reducing withdrawal and failure rates in introductory programming with subgoal labeled worked examples by Lauren Margulieux, Briana Morrison, Adrienne Decker

Discussion Prompts:

• Have you encountered worked examples and/or subgoal labels in your own educational experiences (either as a student or a teacher)? If so, how effective did you find them? If not, what are some times they could have been useful?
• What do you make of the fact that subgoal labels led to higher performance initially, but not in the long term? How do you weigh those results against the other results the authors found (such as decrease dropout rates and lower variance in scores)?
• What questions or concerns do you have about this reading?

Reading: Universal Design: Implications for Computing Education by Sheryl Burgstahler

Discussion Prompts:

• What issues have you seen, or could you imagine, related to equitable treatment of people with disabilities in your classes? What are your thoughts on the approaches for making classes more accessible suggested in the article?
• How do you think the concept of universal design interacts and intersects with some of the other ideas we've discussed this quarter? How can it apply to other aspects of equity and inclusion?
• What questions or concerns do you have about this reading?

Think back over all the material we have covered and reflect on what concrete actions or ideas we would like to begin to incorporate into our teaching

Discussion Prompts:

• What are the ideas and concepts you found most interesting and useful from the quarter?
• What questions and concerns do you still have about topics we discussed or other aspects of equitable pedagogy? What do you want to learn more about?
• What ideas/concepts did we NOT discuss that you wish we would have?
• What ideas do you have for what you will do in your teaching going forward based on what we learned?