Computing Educators Share Practices in Summer Teaching Workshop

The Illinois Computer Science Summer Teaching Workshop was held virtually on June 5 and 6. The workshop provided a welcoming and productive venue for the community of computing educators to share their practices and learn from one another. In its third year, the workshop had over 200 attendees representing 100 institutions from 9 countries, including Iceland, Japan, Jordan, the Netherlands, and Scotland. Illinois Computer Science contributed 22 attendees, roughly split evenly between faculty and students.

The Organizing Committee consisted of Yael Gertner, Teaching Assistant Professor; Michael Nowak, Teaching Assistant Professor; Brad Solomon, Teaching Assistant Professor and Luther Tychonievich, Teaching Associate Professor and from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Brad Solomon said that “the workshop is primarily focused on connecting the broader teaching faculty community. This year was a particular success at getting faculty from a wide variety of universities to attend and participate, and attendance was strong throughout the workshop. There was a great deal of discussion, both during and after. The workshop is also designed to share in-progress work or untested ideas, and people generally appreciate the format and opportunity. We had significantly more applicants for presenting than in previous years, so we had to split time blocks into smaller sections to maintain our high acceptance rate.”

This year the workshop featured 30 presentations on many topics in computing education.  New this year was a decision to include presentations of many different lengths, ranging from 30-minute invited talks to 5-minute brief reports. "We wanted to be welcoming to everyone, whether they had enough ideas for a full-length presentation or not," Luther Tychonievich noted. "The workshop is also designed to share in-progress work or untested ideas," Brad Solomon added. "We had significantly more applicants for presenting than in previous years," he noted, explaining that the shorter talks helped maintain a high acceptance rate.

Participants in the workshop were very engaged. Brad Solomon noted that "there was a great deal of discussion as well both during and after" each session. Tychonievich reported that the conversation in the online meeting continued for roughly an hour after the last presentation ended. The chat room had almost a thousand messages sent by 88 participants. Michael Nowak observed that the workshop “served as a catalyst, fostering a profound sense of community, where passionate minds converged, ideas flourished, and bonds formed, paving the way for collaboration and discussion beyond the confines of the workshop.”

Although presentations covered many topics in computing education, issues surrounding accessibility and the diversity of scholar and student groups emerged as a common theme. Brad Solomon said that “the focus on accessibility, diversity, and broadening participation in computing has less to do with any specific program at Illinois and more to do with recognizing and addressing one of the ongoing problems in CS education. While we invited several speakers who are well known for their work in this area, the number of talks on this subject was more a sign that these issues are prevalent across many universities and that it’s not clear how best to address it.” Tychonievich added that “in general, CS educators are focusing on how to better help CS students learn. Because CS students have a wide diversity in backgrounds and interests that usually means considering that diversity of students in many ways; thus, that topic tended to show up in many presentations, whether it was the focus on the presentation or just one aspect considered when presenting on a different topic."

"Overall, we are pleased with the outcome of this year’s workshop," Yael Gertner said. "It allowed us to disseminate some of the teaching innovations created by the teaching faculty here at Illinois. CS at Illinois is a leader in developing ways for teaching at scale and broadening participation in computing.  Participants reported that they enjoyed the variety of topics in each of our sessions.  They learned a great deal and got some excellent ideas to incorporate into their teaching. The online format and free registration made it easy to participate.  It was inspiring to engage with our participants in meaningful discussions during the Q&A.  We plan to build on this experience and continue to create an informative collaborative and accessible environment in next year’s workshop."