Category Archives: Reading

Some academic papers in CER

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Below is a collection of papers on student help-seeking and formative assessment. In conjunction with the reading academic papers assignment, pick 3 papers. For convenience, I have placed a copy of all of these papers in our Box folder. Remember, we can collectively edit that folder, so grab a copy for yourself, don’t edit it directly in Box if you take notes.

Undergrad TAs and Student Help-Seeking

Aaron J. Smith, Kristy Elizabeth Boyer, Jeffrey Forbes, Sarah Heckman, and Ketan Mayer-Patel. 2017. My Digital Hand: A Tool for Scaling Up One-to-One Peer Teaching in Support of Computer Science Learning. In Proceedings of the 2017 ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE ’17). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 549–554. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3017680.3017800

Yanyan Ren, Shriram Krishnamurthi, and Kathi Fisler. 2019. What Help Do Students Seek in TA Office Hours? In Proceedings of the 2019 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research (ICER ’19). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 41–49. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3291279.3339418

Diba Mirza, Phillip T. Conrad, Christian Lloyd, Ziad Matni, and Arthur Gatin. 2019. Undergraduate Teaching Assistants in Computer Science: A Systematic Literature Review. In Proceedings of the 2019 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research (ICER ’19). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 31–40. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3291279.3339422

L. Battestilli, M. Zahn, and S. Heckman, “Academic help seeking patterns in introductory
computer science courses,” in 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, (Minneapolis,
MN), ASEE Conferences, August 2022. https://peer.asee.org/41526

Zhikai Gao, Sarah Heckman, and Collin Lynch. 2022. Who Uses Office Hours? A Comparison of In-Person and Virtual Office Hours Utilization. In Proceedings of the 53rd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 1 (SIGCSE 2022). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 300–306. https://doi.org/10.1145/3478431.3499334

Formative Assessments

Neil C.C. Brown and Amjad Altadmri. 2014. Investigating novice programming mistakes: educator beliefs vs. student data. In Proceedings of the tenth annual conference on International computing education research (ICER ’14). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 43–50. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/2632320.2632343

Kristin Stephens-Martinez, An Ju, Krishna Parashar, Regina Ongowarsito, Nikunj Jain, Sreesha Venkat, and Armando Fox. 2017. Taking Advantage of Scale by Analyzing Frequent Constructed-Response, Code Tracing Wrong Answers. In Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research (ICER ’17). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 56–64. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3105726.3106188

Shuchi Grover. 2021. Toward A Framework for Formative Assessment of Conceptual Learning in K-12 Computer Science Classrooms. Proceedings of the 52nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 31–37. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3408877.3432460

Max Fowler, Binglin Chen, Sushmita Azad, Matthew West, and Craig Zilles. 2021. Autograding “Explain in Plain English” questions using NLP. Proceedings of the 52nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE ’21). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1163–1169. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3408877.3432539

How to read an academic paper & Group Project Discussion

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Reading academic papers is hard. In this class, we will discuss reading academic papers, how to apply this process, common pitfalls, and paper reading mindset.

Afterward, I’ll leave time for working on finding and forming groups. To help prepare for that, there is also a reading below on designing research questions.

Reading

Things to note

The above reading was not written by a CER researcher, so here is some interpolating:

  1. Here are some categories for CER papers
    1. Experimental studies
    2. Case studies
    3. Quasi-experimental studies
    4. Literature review
    5. Opinion paper
    6. Experience report
    7. Introduction of or application of an educational/CER theory
  2. CER Theories
    1. We have some, but there are not many
    2. Moreover, they are not widely used. If a paper does use one, this often strengthens the paper
  3. Mathematical proofs are rare in CER, the equivalent in CER is more the nitty gritty details of the method and data. It’s okay not to fully understand those after the second pass.

Handbook: Ch 3 Literature Review and Voices from the Field 3.1-3.3

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Read the following in The Cambridge handbook of computing education research of Chapter 3 “Computing Education: Literature Review and Voices from the Field”

  • 3.1 Introduction (1 page)
  • 3.2 Methods (1.5 pages)
  • 3.3 Findings: Rationales for Justifying CS Education (6.5 pages)

Add an entry about this reading to your QQC Doc.

Optional reading

“Good (and Bad) Reasons to Teach All Students Computer Science” episode from the #CSK8 podcast

Handbook: Ch 1 History of CER

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Read the following in The Cambridge handbook of computing education research

  • 1.1 The Scope of Computing Education Research (2 pages)
  • 1.2 Early Studies in Computing Education Research (5.5 pages)
  • (optional) 1.3 Redesigning the Learner’s Interface for Computing Education (2 pages)
  • 1.4 Enter the Education Researchers (4 pages)
  • (optional) 1.5 Computing Education Emerges as a Research Discipline (2 pages)
  • 1.6 Research Questions in Computing Education Research (2.5 pages)
  • 1.7 Conclusion: Future Research Questions in a Historical Context (2.5 page)

Add an entry about chapter 1 of the handbook to your QQC Doc. If you are wondering how much to write as the QQC’s for the entry, check out the QQC Doc Check-in post.