Cara Tang, Cindy S. Tucker, Elizabeth K. Hawthorne, C. Servin, Teresa Moore
{"title":"Curricular Guidance for Associate-Degree Transfer Programs in Computer Science with Contemporary Cybersecurity Concepts (Abstract Only)","authors":"Cara Tang, Cindy S. Tucker, Elizabeth K. Hawthorne, C. Servin, Teresa Moore","doi":"10.1145/3017680.3022398","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3017680.3022398","url":null,"abstract":"In 2015, under the auspices of the ACM Education Board the Committee for Computing Education in Community Colleges (CCECC) began an effort to update the ACM Computing Curricula 2009: Guidelines for Associate-Degree Transfer Curriculum in Computer Science with inclusion of contemporary cybersecurity concepts. To this end, the CCECC established a task force of community college educators to review the ACM/IEEE Computer Science Curricula 2013 (CS2013) and identify foundational material in CS2013 that is appropriate for the first two years of a computer science education. To further inform the guidance, the CCECC administered surveys to a global audience of computer science educators to solicit input related to CS2013 knowledge areas (KAs) and knowledge units (KUs) and on cybersecurity topics, which are appropriate for associate-degree computer science transfer programs. The guidance has been through two rounds of public review and comment","PeriodicalId":344382,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 2017 ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education","volume":"13 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131397462","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Curriculum Model Featuring Oral Communication Instruction and Practice","authors":"Karen Anewalt, Jennifer A. Polack","doi":"10.1145/3017680.3017775","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3017680.3017775","url":null,"abstract":"Good oral communication skills are essential for success in the workplace. Burge [3] recently highlighted the need to create a curriculum-wide program emphasizing communication skills. We have implemented a curriculum that provides communication skills instruction and practice at each level of the computer science major. Here we present a description of the coursework emphasizing formal presentation and small group communication skills. We also share findings from a survey of alumni showing their perception of communication preparation. Even in our program that provides significant opportunities for communication skill development, the majority of alumni felt that additional instruction should be integrated into the major curriculum.","PeriodicalId":344382,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 2017 ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education","volume":"31 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132713045","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Recursive Convergence","authors":"Amy MacDonough","doi":"10.1145/3017680.3022457","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3017680.3022457","url":null,"abstract":"Ideally, we would always be able to write clear, concise programs and have them run quickly. One major impediment is the redundancy which can occur in direct recursive solutions. In some cases, this means writing a loop even if the programmer is more comfortable thinking in terms of recursion. In other cases the impact on code is even more dramatic, and in these cases most programmers choose to sacrifice clarity in exchange for improved asymptotic complexity. There exist program transformation techniques that would allow us to write idiomatic recursive programs without losing efficiency. One such transformation is the \"tupling\" transformation, which can and has been implemented as an automatic compiler optimization. This transformation is, however, only applicable to a narrow class of problems. We are exploring related transformations, such as tabulation, which can helpfully be applied to a wider class of recursive programs, and attempting to answer the question of when these transformation techniques are most useful to programmers aiming to balance program clarity with performance.","PeriodicalId":344382,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 2017 ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education","volume":"86 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131897283","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Yerika Jimenez, Theodore Hays, Christina Gardner-Mccune
{"title":"Computational Thinking App Design Mat: Supporting the Development of Students' Computational Thinking Skills (Abstract Only)","authors":"Yerika Jimenez, Theodore Hays, Christina Gardner-Mccune","doi":"10.1145/3017680.3022412","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3017680.3022412","url":null,"abstract":"Tools like MIT App Inventor and Scratch are designed to help students develop programming and computational thinking skills by allowing them to use their interest and personal experiences to create meaningful artifacts. However, students often need additional help in translating their ideas into functional programs because they lack understanding of how to map the visual aspects of their projects to programming constructs and understanding of how to develop appropriate algorithms that bring their ideas to life. To address this issue, we created a Computational Thinking App Design Mat (App Design Mat) to scaffolds students' CT skill development in the context of creating a mobile application with MIT APP Inventor 2. The App Design Mat fosters student engagement in computational thinking through four areas of the mat: Problem Decomposition, Pattern Abstraction, Pattern Recognition, and Algorithm Design. In this poster will describe the design and results from the use of the App Design Mat with 80 eighth grade students. Our results suggest that most students understood the purpose of using the App Design Mat, used the App Design Mat effectively, and used some aspects of the App Design Mat in developing their final mobile app project.","PeriodicalId":344382,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 2017 ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education","volume":"2 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114265802","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
K. Parker, Sloan Davis, C. Stephenson, Jason Ravitz
{"title":"Improving Effectiveness of CS Teacher Professional Development (Abstract Only)","authors":"K. Parker, Sloan Davis, C. Stephenson, Jason Ravitz","doi":"10.1145/3017680.3022356","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3017680.3022356","url":null,"abstract":"Recent studies on the impact of CS teacher professional development (PD) opportunities have highlighted areas of improvement to effectively grow the number of well-prepared CS teachers. In this BoF Google will share data from CS4HS, an annual program that awards funding to research institutions and education nonprofits globally for the purpose of developing innovative and scalable CS PD that maps to local standards and demands. These data will serve as a starting point to engage the attendees in a wide-ranging and action-oriented discussion on ways the CS education community can improve our PD processes and results.","PeriodicalId":344382,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 2017 ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education","volume":"132 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114687769","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct: Teaching Strategies and the Coming Update (Abstract Only)","authors":"B. Brinkman, K. Carter","doi":"10.1145/3017680.3022340","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3017680.3022340","url":null,"abstract":"Have you used the ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct in your teaching? Would you like to? Recent events are leading to increased interest in the Code: 1) The AP CS curriculum now includes \"computing in context\" as one of the six course topics. 2) The ACM has initiated an update of the Code, to be completed in early 2018. 3) There have been several court cases (Oracle v. Google is a recent example) and stories in the popular press (including in the New York Times) that have cited the Code. It is therefore increasingly important that students and teachers become aware of and comfortable with the Code. This BoF invites college and high school teachers to share assignments (or assignment ideas) that incorporate the Code, particularly outside of \"the ethics class.\" We will also discuss proposed updates to the Code, and any items that are missing or anachronistic in the current Code. Representatives of the ACM Committee on Professional Ethics will collect this feedback and provide it to the Code 2018 Task Force.","PeriodicalId":344382,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 2017 ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education","volume":"150 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114732409","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Modern Wearable Devices Course for Computer Science Undergraduates","authors":"C. Gregg, Raewyn Duvall, Kate Wasynczuk","doi":"10.1145/3017680.3017731","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3017680.3017731","url":null,"abstract":"A problem that many tech companies face today is that many computer science students entering the work force lack fundamental skills for understanding the entire process of a system that is not solely software. Some students may take a series of courses on analog and/or digital circuits, but the integration with modern devices is sorely missing from most curricula. We designed the Tufts University Comp 50: Wearable Devices course to introduce the basics of digital and analog circuits to students with software-driven backgrounds by studying the intricacies of the production of wearable electronic devices. The course focused on the skills needed to design hardware, software, and a chassis for a final wearable product that was novel and potentially marketable. The primary objective was to provide a course that serves as an introduction to digital electronics but with a tangible goal to produce a high-fidelity prototype that student teams presented at the end of the semester. Given the nature of modern wearable devices, which are small, energy efficient, and strongly favor connectivity to other devices, we developed the curriculum around designing a surface-mount Printed Circuit Board (PCB), and we outfitted the student kits with coin-cell battery powered, Bluetooth-connected, Arduino-compatible devices that they needed to learn how to program and connect. We also integrated iOS development into the course so that students' final projects could communicate with both their phones or tablets, or to the Internet via these devices. As the \"wearble devices\"' field is relatively new, this paper discusses the decisions we made for the set-up of this class, what worked and what did not, and what we would change and improve when we teach it again.","PeriodicalId":344382,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 2017 ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education","volume":"247 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115110609","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Tapped-based Authentication for Mobile Device Security","authors":"Lukasz Brodowski, Cameron Dziurgot, Donald Moretz","doi":"10.1145/3017680.3022453","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3017680.3022453","url":null,"abstract":"Passkeys have been around since personal phones have existed. The typical numeric PIN offers a limited number of combinations and is relatively easy to crack by guessing or eavesdropping. A tap sequence used as a passkey offers an infinite number of different combinations making it unique to that person and that person alone. Once a passkey is saved, it can be compared using the Euclidean distance formula to any other passkey resulting in a dissimilarity score to the master key. If this score is within a certain threshold, that passkey will grant or deny the user access. Our results show that it is possible to authenticate using a unique tap sequence, and convenient enough to be used every day to unlock a personal device.","PeriodicalId":344382,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 2017 ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education","volume":"14 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123397407","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Student Perspectives of Team-Based Learning in a CS Course: Summary of Qualitative Findings","authors":"Michael S. Kirkpatrick","doi":"10.1145/3017680.3017699","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3017680.3017699","url":null,"abstract":"Team-Based Learning (TBL) is an active learning pedagogy that involves a substantial amount of preparation work by students. While previous work shows that objective measures of student learning outcomes improved after TBL adoption in CS, little work has been done to evaluate the students' perspectives rigorously. In this work, we present the qualitative findings from a larger mixed-methods study of student perspectives. These results suggest that most students find TBL rewarding, although there are some aspects of the pedagogy that can be frustrating and may require alteration for TBL adoption in CS.","PeriodicalId":344382,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 2017 ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124935488","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
L. Pollock, C. Mouza, Amanda Czik, Alexis Little, Debra J. Coffey, Joan Buttram
{"title":"From Professional Development to the Classroom: Findings from CS K-12 Teachers","authors":"L. Pollock, C. Mouza, Amanda Czik, Alexis Little, Debra J. Coffey, Joan Buttram","doi":"10.1145/3017680.3017739","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3017680.3017739","url":null,"abstract":"The CS for All initiative places increased emphasis on the need to prepare K-12 teachers of computer science (CS). Professional development (PD) programs continue to be an essential mechanism for preparing in-service teachers who have little formal background in CS content, skills, and teaching pedagogy. While increased investment by federal agencies and the industry has raised the number of CS PD opportunities for K-12 teachers, there has been limited study of how teachers apply what they learn back in their classroom. This paper describes an in-depth qualitative study through interviews of 28 elementary, middle and high school teachers who participated in summer PD in preparation of teaching a full CS course or integrate CS modules into existing courses (e.g., science, engineering, business, technology, etc). The interview protocol focused on educators' involvement in the PD, specific skills and strategies they learned, whether and how they have been able to apply these new skills in the classroom, what facilitated or impeded this application, and how students have responded.","PeriodicalId":344382,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 2017 ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education","volume":"144 1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123149406","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}