Category Archives: Education

ITiCSE 2023 Keynote: Generative AI in Computing Education

I had so much fun presenting the closing ITiCSE 2023 keynote “Chat Overflow: Artificially Intelligent Models for Computing Education – renAIssance or apocAlypse?” with Paul Denny, Juho Leinonen and James Prather. Rather than ramble on here, I’ll just provide links to the video and slides 🙂 Thanks to Mikko-Jussi Laakso and the ITiCSE 2023 team for inviting us!

ITiCSE 2022, Dublin – Early Bird Registration Closes May 31!

Registration for ITiCSE 2022 is now open at iticse.acm.org/2022 and Early-Bird registration closes May 31 so now is the time to register!

This year ITiCSE is being held in Dublin, Ireland at University College Dublin.

Conference dates are July 11th to July 13th, 2022. There is a reception on Sunday evening, July 10, along with the traditional ITiCSE excursion and banquet on Tuesday afternoon and evening.

Held annually in Europe, the ACM SIGCSE conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education is the second-oldest and second-largest computer science education conference. 

This year there were a record number of paper submissions (276) of which 79 accepted papers will be delivered over three days in five parallel sessions, in addition to panels, posters, special sessions, nine working groups, and three keynotes: 
  • Professor Letizia Jaccheri, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU): “Gender Issues in Computer Science Research, Education and Society”
  • Titus Winters, Principal Engineer at Google: “The Gap Between Industry and CS Education”
  • Elizabeth Oldham, Trinity College Dublin: “Computing in the Irish School Curriculum: What Can We Learn from a Fifty-Year Adventure?”
Details including a provisional program are available at iticse.acm.org/2022.

Call for Nominations: Editor-In-Chief ACM Transactions on Computing Education

The term of the current Editor-in-Chief (EiC) of the ACM Transactions on Computing Education (TOCE) (https://dl.acm.org/journal/toce) is coming to an end, and the ACM Publications Board has set up a nominating committee to assist the Board in selecting the next EiC. TOCE was established in 2001 and is a premier journal for computing education, publishing over 30 papers annually.

Nominations, including self-nominations, are invited for a three-year term as TOCE EiC, beginning on September 1, 2021. The EiC appointment may be renewed at most one time. This is an entirely voluntary position, but ACM will provide appropriate administrative support.

Appointed by the ACM Publications Board, Editors-in-Chief (EiCs) of ACM journals are delegated full responsibility for the editorial management of the journal consistent with the journal’s charter and general ACM policies. The Board relies on EiCs to ensure that the content of the journal is of high quality and that the editorial review process is both timely and fair. He/she has the final say on acceptance of papers, size of the Editorial Board, and appointment of Associate Editors. A complete list of responsibilities is found in the ACM Volunteer Editors Position Descriptions (http://www.acm.org/publications/policies/position_descriptions).

Additional information can be found in the following documents:

Nominations should include a vita along with a brief statement of why the nominee should be considered. Self-nominations are encouraged. Nominations should include a statement of the candidate’s vision for the future development of TOCE. The deadline for submitting nominations is July 21, 2021, although nominations will continue to be accepted until the position is filled.

Please send all nominations to the nominating committee chairs, Mark Guzdial (mjguz AT umich DOT edu) and Betsy DiSalvo (bdisalvo AT cc.gatech DOT edu).

The search committee members are:

  • Betsy DiSalvo (Georgia Institute of Technology), co-chair
  • Mark Guzdial (University of Michigan), co-chair
  • Diana Franklin (University of Chicago)
  • Andrew Luxton-Reilly (University of Auckland)
  • Aman Yadav (Michigan State University)

Louiqa Raschid (University of Maryland) will serve as the ACM Publications Board Liaison

SIGCSE 2020 International “Buddy” Program

This year I’m thrilled to be serving as the SIGCSE 2020 International Liaison. Although I originally hail from the US, I’ve been based in Ireland for decades and I attend US conferences as an “international” attendee. My first SIGCSE Technical Symposium was a bit overwhelming. I knew (of) many of those who attended my talk but they definitely didn’t know me! I also didn’t really connect much. It wasn’t until I participated in an ITiCSE working group that I really began to get involved in the SIGCSE community.

A number of recent comments have indicated opportunities to improve the experiences of SIGCSE attendees who are traveling from outside the US, and in particular for those attendees who are relative newcomers to the Symposium.

For the last decade (2010-2019 inclusive) the average symposium attendance was 1385. The average number of non-US attendees was 101 (7%). Excluding Canada, this falls to 71 (5%). In 2019, a record attendance year, these numbers were actually slightly lower percentage-wise. We would like to see these numbers improve.

I am happy to announce that this year the SIGCSE Symposium is piloting an “International Buddy Program”. Simply put, the program pairs up non-US attendees with more experienced attendees (from anywhere) to try and improve the experience of those coming from outside the US, and particularly those who are relatively new to the Symposium or the community. Everyone who registers for the Symposium will have an opportunity during registration, to sign up to be paired-up, either as a non-US attendee or as an experienced attendee. Of course this is optional! More details are available at https://www.brettbecker.com/sigcse2020/

I’d also like to thank the expanded International Committee for their service this year (listed below).

If you have any questions, feel free to email me directly.

Finally, if you are from outside the US and going to Portland, don’t forget to sign up for the international lunch during registration!

SIGCSE 2020 International Committee

Miles Berry University of Roehampton
Steven Bradley Durham University
Jennifer Campbell University of Toronto
Ernesto Cuadros-Vargas UTEC
Paul Denny University of Auckland
Rodrigo Duran Aalto University
Orit Hazzan Technion
Arto Hellas University of Helsinki
Amey Karkare IIT Kanpur
Carsten Kleiner Hochschule Hannover
Viraj Kumar Indian Institute of Science
Chao Mbogo Kenya Methodist University
Chris McDonald University of Western Australia
André Santos Instituto Universitário de Lisboa
Marco Silva Federal University of Technology
Lenandlar Singh University of Guyana
Hironori Washizaki Waseda University
Gary Wong University of Hong Kong
Ming Zhang Peking University

People of ACM Europe December 2019

I am really happy to be featured in the “People of ACM Europe” December 2019. The questions I was asked were really interesting to answer. I noticed that each month the questions are really tailored to highlight the person’s role which is really cool. This coincided with the launch of the Ireland ACM SIGCSE Chapter which currently has over 150 members! The launch was fantastic – so great to see so many computing education folks in under the same roof!

Announcing the Ireland ACM SIGCSE Chapter!

Along with Keith Quille and Catherine Mooney, I am thrilled to announce the chartering of the Ireland ACM SIGCSE chapter!*

*ACM -> Assoctation of Computing Machinery; SIGCSE -> Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education.

The mission of the Ireland ACM SIGCSE chapter is:

  • to provide a forum to promote Computing Education in Ireland at all levels of education, across all disciplines and sectors;
  • to promote Computing Education research and practice in Ireland and abroad;
  • to positively influence equality, diversity, and inclusion in computing, everywhere.

We now have nearly 100 members and anyone with an interest in Computing Education in Ireland can join the chapter. There are no dues, but membership in ACM and SIGCSE is encouraged. You can join the Ireland ACM SIGCSE Chapter at https://SIGCSEire.acm.org.

We are looking forward to the chapter launch, hosted by the School of Computer Science at University College Dublin on December 11, 2019 from 2-6pm. We are honoured to announce a keynote from Professor Amber Settle of DePaul Univerisity in Chicago, SIGCSE board member (immediate past-chair), who is going to officially launch the chapter. We will also have a keynote from Associate Professor Paul Dickson (Ithaca College, NY), and have welcome addresses from Associate Professor Chris Bleakley (Head of School of Computer Science, UCD) and Professor Joe Carthy (College Principal, College Of Science, UCD).

Registration for the chapter launch is free but essential (and separate to applying for membership). A link to the eventbrite registration page is available at https://SIGCSEire.acm.org. You can follow the Chapter on Twitter @SIGCSEire.

We look forward to working with you in a new era of Computing Education in Ireland!

UK and Ireland Computing Education Research Conference

This year, Neil Brown and I are serving as program co-chairs of the new UK and Ireland Computing Education Research (UKICER) conference. It will be held at the University of Kent on 5-6th September 2019. The committee includes Janet Carter as conference chair, along with Sally FincherQuintin Cuttsand Steven Bradley. Steven has been running the Computing Education Practice conference at Durham for the past few years, which has grown impressively. We believe that there is a growing community of computing education researchers in the UK and Ireland, but we do not have a local conference to support this community’s growth. Our hope is that this sister conference to CEP will provide a useful outlet to share Irish and British computing education research, and encourage research collaborations.

The conference will run roughly from lunchtime on the 5th to lunchtime on the 6th, with some collaboration-building events beforehand and some workshops afterwards. We thus invite submissions of research papers (max 6 pages, ACM format), and proposals for 1-2 hour workshops, by the beginning of June. More details are available on the conference website. Please feel free to send any questions to [email protected] and please do share this news with anyone you think might be interested in submitting or attending. We hope to see a variety of researchers and educators for all age groups.