1. Computer Science Education Research – a smattering of results Carol Zander Software Design Debugging Fixed vs. Growth Mindset Threshold Concepts Threshold Skills Self-directed Learning

2. Education research How do students learn? What should students learn? What do students learn? How should things be taught? How do we measure what has been learned? …

3. CS Education research How do students learn CS topics? What CS topics should students learn? What CS topics do students learn? How should CS topics be taught? How do we measure what has been learned in CS? …

4. Education vs. CS Education research Although CS Education research has things in common with education research in general, doing CS education research requires domain expertise

5. A model for empirical research in CS Education Decide on question(s) to examine Decide what kind of evidence would provide convincing answers to the question Try and obtain the required evidence from the data Convince others

6. Software Design Can Graduating Students Design Software? Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE), 2006 Categorizing Student Software Designs: Methods, results, and implications Computer Science Education Journal, 2006 Comparing Student Software Designs using Semantic Categorization Finnish/Baltic Sea Conference on Computer Science Education, 2005

7. Software Design Large study – 22 researchers from 22 institutions, 4 countries (150 graduating senior designs) Design task: Given a challenging design problem – Analyze, decompose and organize a task into meaningful and manageable parts

8. Software Design

9. Software design categories Nothing – little or no content Restatement – restates design requirements Skumtomte – small amount past restatement First step – some significant work past restatement Partial design – provides a description of the parts, and overview showing relationships, but incomplete Complete design – well-developed solutions which include an understandable overview, part descriptions with explicit communication between the parts

10. Can graduating students design software? ???

11. Can graduating students design software? NO

12. Can graduating students design software? Revisited Can Graduating Students Design Software? Revisited Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE), 2011

13. Why revisit? Despite Aberystwyth being one of the institutions that provided students …. …..Chris Loftus and Lynda Thomas couldn’t believe it Aberystwyth students do good dissertations, get good jobs, have an intensive program of courses including:  Software Design (taught UML)  Data structures and algorithms  Etc.

14. Can graduating students design software in groups? ???

15. Can graduating students design software in groups? NO

16. Can graduating students recognize good design? ???

17. Can graduating students recognize good design? YES! Best design to implement from Number of students Student Total Our rating C00Restatement A2+1*.332.33Skumtomte B0+2*.51Skumtomte D1+1*.331.33Skumtomte E2+1*.52.5Skumtomte F16 +3*.5+2*.3318.16Partial design G (authors)13 +4*.5+2*.3315.66 Complete design

18. Debugging Debugging: Finding, Fixing and Flailing, A Multi-Institutional Study of Novice Debuggers Computer Science Education Journal, 2008 Figure shows quality of debugging strategies versus bugs fixed. Student self-assessment of debugging ability shown in error bars.

19. Debugging Journal, 2008

20. Debugging Debugging: The Good, the Bad, and the Quirky – a Qualitative Analysis of Novices’ Strategies Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE), 2008

21. Debugging strategies Gain domain knowledgeIsolating the problem Tracing, including: Mental, Print & Debugger Pattern matching Consider alternatives TestingEnvironmental Understanding codeWork around problem Using resourcesJust in Case Using ToolsTinkering

22. Fixed vs. Growth Mindset Carol Dweck studied mindsets about intelligence and academic success (Social Psychology, Stanford University) Fixed mindset (fixed intelligence) – avoid challenges and perform worse academically Growth mindset – intelligence can grow with effort and hard work Take-away message: Don’t tell students they are successful because they are smart … emphasize hard work leads to success

23. Fixed vs. Growth Mindset Saying Isn’t Necessarily Believing: Influencing Self-theories in Computing International Computing Education Research (ICER), 2008 Research done – Intervention “Saying is believing” exercise: - Gave lecture on fixed/growth mindset. - Describe something challenging to learn. Even though you may have made mistakes, with practice/perseverance you succeeded. - Give advice to a beginning programmer to help them cope.

24. Threshold Concepts Threshold concepts (Meyer and Land, 2005) -Transformative -Integrative -Irreversible -Troublesome -Characteristic of the discipline

25. Threshold Concepts For example: Math: limit Literature: irony Physics: heat transfer Economics: opportunity cost Medicine: pain

26. Threshold Concepts Good evidence that two specific concepts satisfy the criteria: - Object-oriented programming - Pointers/memory

27. Threshold Concepts – other work Searching for threshold concepts and investigation overview (Eckerdal et al., 2006; Boustedt et al., 2007; Zander et al., 2008; Thomas et al., 2009) Learning troublesome concepts (McCartney et al., 2007) Liminal spaces (Eckerdal et al., 2007, McCartney et al., 2007) Integration associated with object-oriented programming (Sanders et al., 2008) Transformations related to “abstraction” (Moström et al., 2008) Transformations (Moström et al., 2009, Zander et al., 2009, Thomas et al., 2010)

28. Research foci, questions, data analyzed PhaseFocusMain Research QuestionsData collection 1TC in general- What are the TCs according to instructors? - What TCs are suggested by literature? Informal interviews Lit review 2TC in general Troublesome - What are the TCs according to students? - What strategies do students use to get unstuck? Semi-structured interviews 3LiminalityIs the “liminal space” a useful metaphor for learning computing? Semi-structured interviews 4Integration-How do students who have recently Learned OOP express the relationship between concepts? - What are the important concepts? Concept maps 5TransformationWhat concepts and experiences transform the way students view computing? Student essays

29. My Research Colleagues Anna Eckerdal Uppsala University (Sweden) Robert McCartney University of Connecticut (USA) Jan Erik Moström Umeå University (Sweden) Kate Sanders Rhode Island College (USA) Lynda Thomas University of Wales, Aberystwyth (UK) Jonas BoustedtHögskolan i Gävle (Sweden)

30. Threshold Skills When discussing threshold concepts, students often emphasized problems with learning how to apply the concepts through programming rather than the concept itself. This led us to examine threshold skills.

31. Informal or Self-directed Learning Given rapidly changing/growing nature of computing, students will have to continue learning after they graduate. Most learning takes place outside of formal training. Students' perceptions of the differences between formal and informal learning International Computing Education Research (ICER), 2011

32. Threshold Concepts – recent work Harnessing Surprise: Tales from Students' Transformational Biographies Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE), 2010, to appear Based on philosophical position that surprise causes learning … (MRI scans give evidence that memory and the learning of concepts is enhanced by surprise.) … as educators, we should try and set up situations in which our students experience it more often. Thank you