1. SIGCSE Potpourri A Selections of Things Learned and Observed at SIGCSE conference, March 2015 Kansas City Proceedings: http://goo.gl/MnkYMS

2. Observed and eaten!

3. Sherriff loves bbq too

4. (1) Workshop: Girls Who Code https://girlswhocode.com/programs/ Girls Who Code: program with summer camp-like programs for HS students to learn to code – Some after-school clubs too Among many interesting things: – Process instructors use in teaching that focus on a lot before actually coding – They call it “scaffolding” – May take several hours, half a day – (Process on next slide.)

5. GWC Scaffolding Process 1.Describe finished product, show working example 2.Instructor writes out starter or group code, explains it. 3.With students, outline algorithm in English on whiteboard 4.Iterate until all agree pseudo-code is OK 5.Have students identify what will become variables, loops, conditionals, etc 6.Have students modify pseudo-code using variables, loops, conditionals, etc. 7.Erase the board! (Maybe not for complex problems later.) 8.Students write code (Example intermed. project: write 2048 game in JS for browser.)

6. GWC: Other Make student work persistent and public during the camp First Penguin Award – Given to first student who jumps in – Reward discomfort

7. (2) Booming Enrollments: Good Times? Univ. with PhD programs: UG enrollment up 61% in 3 years % of women award Bach. Degrees in 2013: – 17% in CIS (broadly) – 13% in CS – 10% in CpE – 10% in SW Engin. BTW, at UVa: – BS: in ’12-13, 20/78 = 27%. In ‘11-12, 10/53=19%. – CpE: in ‘12-13, 12/33=36%. In ‘11-12, 5/30=17% – BA: ?? Percentage majors at UVa (Oct. ‘14): – BS: 24.6%; CpE: 18.5%; BA: 38.7%; Overall: 27.6%

8. Enrollment, Diversity, Retention Factors: – If majors declare early and many of them are ones who had CS in high school (AP etc), then often leads to more men, white, and Asian students – Programs with a “weedout” component favor students with HS experience – Large classes make it hard to judge a student’s progress and success and attitude Strategies for these: – Use TAs well; different intro courses for different target audiences; teaching specialist faculty

9. Other places Cornell: 400 students in OS course UCB: 700 in data structures Stanford: essentially all 1 st years take CS1 Univ. of Washington – 2800 in first intro course. 83 TAs (45% women) – 1800 in 2 nd intro course – Comments: Problems like puzzle-solving, not trivial tasks and problems. Can show off to others. TA-led sections: small enough, TAs trained to make them interactive, work in small groups, voices heard, get questions answered

10. Coping with Large Classes Use Google forms for *many* things. Limit things that require interaction. I.e. give X slip days for all reasons, including emergencies. Embed rules etc into automated system, and students are more likely to accept. Assign TAs to answer questions on specific weeks, HWs. Not have instructors answer Piazza questions: stops conversation. If repeat questions on Piazza, deduct points. Don't hold office hours the day it's due. Encourages them to start early. Delete prohibited email requests in front of class (perhaps fake ones from TA). Make-up exams a problem: use later exam to replace missed exam. UW: hire two "coordinators" to hire, train, and manage TAs.

11. (3) Effect of Authoring Practice Questions Course with high-stakes final exam for CS1 Students required to generate practice questions Group who generated questions did better than control – particularly on topics they generated questions for 364 students created about 3 questions each Web-based system records question, answer, explanation, allows others to practice

12. (4) SPOCs: Small Private On-line Course Tailoring or incorporating a MOOC into an instructor's local course. – "Wrapping" a class. Using a MOOC like a textbook. – Can work like a flipped classroom. Use MOOC resources: – videos or a subset of them. – auto-grading system. – peer-grading focus, and possibly tools.

13. SPOC experiences Frees up: – class time for hands-on, active learning – TA time for more "high-touch" value Student responses: – not bothered by material coming from someplace else, material available outside their class. – not bothered that others outside uni are taking MOOC – students didn't like going to multiple sites/tools/?? – existence of solutions – some hated quizzes in or before class after watching videos (research shows it’s good and also hated)