A framework for enhancing the social good in computing education

Goldweber, Michael; Barr, John; Clear, Tony; Davoli, Renzo; Mann, Samuel; Patitsas, Elizabeth; Portnoff, Scott R.

doi:10.1145/2432596.2432616

Cited by 55 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 60 publications

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“…These include investigating repositories such as GitHub and social coding for good [28], slightly larger projects and those beneficial to users [15], and examining whether different code and community metrics can assess initial suitability before investing in preparing projects. Contributing the selected projects for use by other instructors [20,1] is also a concern of the future.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Selecting open source software projects to teach software engineering

Smith

McCartney

Gokhale

et al. 2014

Proceedings of the 45th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

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Aspiring software engineers must be able to comprehend and evolve legacy code, which is challenging because the code may be poorly documented, ill structured, and lacking in human support. These challenges of understanding and evolving existing code can be illustrated in academic settings by leveraging the rich and varied volume of Open Source Software (OSS) code. To teach SE with OSS, however, it is necessary to select uniform projects of appropriate size and complexity. This paper reports on our search for suitable OSS projects to teach an introductory SE course with a focus on maintenance and evolution. The search turned out to be quite labor intensive and cumbersome, contrary to our expectations that it would be quick and simple. The chosen projects successfully demonstrated the maintenance challenges, highlighting the promise of using OSS. The burden of selecting projects, however, may impede widespread integration of OSS into SE and other computing courses.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Selecting open source software projects to teach software engineering

Smith

McCartney

Gokhale

et al. 2014

Proceedings of the 45th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

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show abstract

“…The ITiCSE working group [12] offers 14 projects related to "social good" that motivate students and provide them with skills to solve complex problems; Erkan et al [11] do the same for a data structures course. By contrast, we weave the theme of solving problems with real-world impact throughout the course.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Data Programming CS1 Course

Anderson

Ernst

Ordóñez

et al. 2015

Proceedings of the 46th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

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This paper reports on our experience teaching introductory programming by means of real-world data analysis. We have found that students can be motivated to learn programming and computer science concepts in order to analyze DNA, predict the outcome of elections, detect fraudulent data, suggest friends in a social network, determine the authorship of documents, and more. The approach is more than just a collection of "nifty assignments"; rather, it affects the choice of topics and pedagogy. This paper describes how our approach has been used at four diverse colleges and universities to teach CS majors and nonmajors alike. It outlines the types of assignments, which are based on problems from science, engineering, business, and the humanities. Finally, it offers advice for anyone trying to integrate the approach into their own institution.

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“…and Scratch support game design. Data Science for Introductory Computing is a growing movement, with many instructors recognizing the inherent value [1], [2] Data science provides an authentic, useful context for every kind of student, since exploring data-oriented problems is something that almost all fields are beginning to find relevant [3], [4]. Additionally, it is readily possible to find data sources that connect to the world around the student and their past experiences, establishing a sense of personalized interest.…”

Section: B a New Solution: Data Sciencementioning

confidence: 99%

Position paper: From interest to usefulness with BlockPy, a block-based, educational environment

Bart

Tilevich

Shaffer

et al. 2015

2015 IEEE Blocks and Beyond Workshop (Blocks and Beyond)

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As block-based environments are used for more mature audiences, the environments must mature themselves. Based on holistic theories of academic motivation, this means making the environment present itself as both interesting and useful, without sacrificing pedagogical power and scaffolding. We present Data Science as a potential context that satisfies all of these constraints, and describe our new block-based programming environment for education that supports data science from day one: BlockPy, available at http://think.cs.vt.edu/blockpy/. BlockPy features a number of powerful, authentic features meant to promote transfer for students to conventional environments as they progress. This includes mutual language translation and interactive feedback, but also powerful tools for getting real-world data and visualizing it. As we have developed the tool, we have identified a number of major research questions that should be answered in order to determine the validity of our hypothesis and the potential of our approach: in particular, how can this environment and context support educators and diverse learners as they progress into conventional environments.

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A framework for enhancing the social good in computing education

Cited by 55 publications

References 60 publications

Selecting open source software projects to teach software engineering

Selecting open source software projects to teach software engineering

A Data Programming CS1 Course

Position paper: From interest to usefulness with BlockPy, a block-based, educational environment

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