Professional Documents
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Writing Project 2:
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Dear Maria,
As I am writing these lines, the chimes from Storke Tower are reminding me of the upcoming
deadline for Writing Project 2. I remember the time period before the deadline for WP1 quite well
and only now have realized how much has happened between these two moments in time. In this
letter, I wanted to reflect on the most important stages of completing Writing Project 2 and compare
my writing process for this assignment with the process for WP1.
One of the most successful stages of completing WP2 was the interview. I was excited when I first
read about it in the project description, and, frankly, the rest of the project was built around this
interview. I knew that Professor Mirza knew a lot about publications in Computer Science
education, and therefore deliberately chose this specific topic for the project. It was a risk I took,
and, in my opinion, it paid off well – I had a great interview, learned a lot about the academic
community, and collected more information than what I could have hoped for. In fact, the result of
approaching this interview with such enthusiasm and thoughtfulness did not just end there – after
several days following the interview, I have received an invitation to join Professor Mirza’s team on
writing a literature review paper – this fact was discovered during the interview, and was discussed in
detail, which allows me to suggest that this interview definitely played a role in me getting invited. Commented [MOU1]: Congratulations!! This is great!
One of the struggles with this assignment was choosing the research papers to analyze and
incorporate into the final paper. I tried to choose those that contained excerpts relevant to the
writing conventions I’ve noticed while completing PB4, but the time constraint did not allow me to
choose from a larger pool of publications. It is unlikely that the bigger pool would change my
writing conventions, but they could make my arguments clearer.
This assignment was subjectively a bit easier to complete than Writing Project 1, partly because of
experience gained from the past. Knowing the expectations and format of the assignment helped a
lot with designing and refining the paper. I walked into WP2 with confidence and enthusiasm,
which, looking back, was not necessarily the case with WP1. I’m also walking out of WP2 with much
more confidence and a bit of sadness, as I have enjoyed analyzing something that I had a personal
connecting to, interviewing a professor, and writing the paper. This enjoyment resulted in better
time management, which, in my opinion, had a positive effect on the paper’s quality. What is even
more important is the fact that I can sense my growth as a writer based on the amount of time it
takes me to write, how many writing choices I am able to see, and how educated and justified my
writing decisions are. Commented [MOU2]: It makes me so happy to read these
words. I’m glad that you’re able to apply this knowledge to
your assignments!
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I am proud of the work I’ve done for this assignment and am looking forward to refining the paper
for the final portfolio.
Sincerely,
Arthur Gatin
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Arthur Gatin
Professor Fedorova
Writing 2
31 January 2019
Project Builder 3
a point in time and analyzing its values and practices. Teaching physics involves introducing
concepts that have changed our understanding of the universe, explain their significance, and
show how these concepts can be applied in the real world. Teaching writing involves reading
literary works and analyzing them for effective composition techniques. But how would you
Education in computer science is one of the oldest disciplines in a very modern field. One
of the higher education institutions that pioneered teaching computer science was Purdue
University. The department, according to the university’s website, was established in 1962, but it
wasn’t until the 1970’s that the faculty reached 10 members. Other universities across the nation
share similar timelines for the formations of computer science departments, which marks the
beginning of education in computer science. Ever since then, the faculty members across the
globe were collaborating to invent effective strategies to teach the logic behind computers.
The reason I have selected this particular discipline is because I recently became sort of a
tutors, which I am a part of, assists professors in teaching introductory courses in the major, and
is taught the art of teaching in the process. The early exposure to academic papers and research
on education in computer science made me realize how big the discipline really was, and how
much knowledge was produced since the ‘70s to make teaching more effective. The existing
knowledge of some of these publications not only allows me to predict the writing practices that
exist within the discipline, but also points me to resources to find more such publications that
My general strategy for this assignment is to get a sample of various credible publication
on education in computer science. Some will be on something very specific, such as the use of
describe dynamic memory. Others will be broader, such as the use of keynotes and visuals in
teaching computer science, or summary of challenges that students face in introductory computer
science courses. With thousands and thousands of publications available since the introduction of
computer science into academic curriculums, I will rely on the search engines and professors to
select the most influential ones. I will then group them not by the subject analyzed, but by how
the publication is structured and how it presents and interprets evidence. The number of these
publications will depend on how many I will be able to analyze without sacrificing the quality of
analysis of each one. Then, I would try to find similarities between how those key discoveries
were communicated and consider whether this communication helped these ideas become widely
recognized.
Approaching the task by gathering publications spanning the entire discipline will allow
me to analyze the most influential works in computer science education, their findings, how they
were communicated, and how they have since changed the classroom education all across the
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globe. Additionally, knowledge of effective writing practices can be applied far outside of
computer science, a relatively small discipline, and will improve my writing and reading skills.
Finally, understanding what the most effective way to teach and write about teaching might
Arthur Gatin
Professor Fedorova
Writing 2
6 February 2019
Project Builder 4
Source #1. Dickson, Paul E., et al. “Using Undergraduate Teaching Assistants in Small Classes.”
the undergraduate learning program in universities across the US and compares them to the one
at Hampshire College, where Dickson himself is a professor. Even though no prior knowledge of
the program is required to understand Dickson’s publication, he is indeed writing for a specific
audience. His publication, written for an annual computer science colloquium, argues in favor of
using undergraduate TA’s in the computer science curriculum. Qualitative reasons in support of
the program allow Dickson to arrive at the conclusion that this program “will most likely benefit
any college that implements it”. Since this message is supposed to encourage the use of the
program in computer science curriculums, Dickson is targeting the Deans and Senior professors
of computer science departments, since only a few professors would be able to change their
schools’ policies. Most articles aimed at such small audiences will have a clear message about
the discipline, therefore, authors are required to have a strong knowledge of the kinds of research
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currently done in the field to argue for or against a particular program. To make an argument,
articles of this nature would have a strong conclusion, listing all of the pros or cons of a program
– a convention that is seen in almost every argumentative article. This publication will appear in
my final essay to show how particular writing conventions may appear throughout the discipline
Source #2. Farghally, Mohammed F., et al. “Evaluating the Effectiveness of Algorithm Analysis
This publication, also presented at the annual symposium on computer science education,
advocates use of a new way of visualizing algorithms in teaching computer science. Professors
Farghally, Shanin and Shaffer from Virginia Tech summarize their developments in effective
visualization, provide an example of how those could be applied in the classrooms, argue why
this improvement would enhance students’ learning, and present quantitative and qualitative data
in support of their argument. In contrast to the first publication, this one is aimed at a wider
audience, targeting potentially all computer science educators who are willing to improve their
teaching. Additionally, since the visualizations presented are relevant to specific topics in
computer science, more prior knowledge is needed to get the most benefit out of this research.
That includes specific sorting methods, the concept of code efficiency, and even the existing
methods of teaching those concepts to be able to compare and contrast them to the method
presented. The article builds on the previously completed research, mentions its authors and,
briefly, outcomes. This allows the authors to present the state a particular topic at the beginning
of research, and show everything else as new findings, and not just a proposal already
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established – a strategy that is seen throughout many publications. To emphasize how their
findings affect a particular topic, authors use models, graphs, and other visuals in their work,
which is becoming a convention among publications on topics that are easier to demonstrate
using visuals. Worth noting is the inclusion of the paragraph about student satisfaction with a
particular model, practice, or approach under examination. This showcases student satisfaction as
a valuable parameter at evaluating innovations in teaching, and how including quantitative data
about it to raise credibility is becoming a convention as well. I am going to use this publication
not only as an example of a research topic, but also to analyze how the writing conventions
found here apply to other works in the discipline, even if they are focused on entirely different
elements of teaching.
Source #3. Bezakova, Ivona, et al. “Board Game Strategies in Introductory Computer Science.”
In her publication for the 2013 annual Technical Symposium for Computer Science
Education, Bezakova presents her findings on several possible projects to complement students’
learning in the intro-computer science classes. In my opinion, the general state of computer
science at the time has led to this research, as professors were looking for ways to incorporate
new branches of the fast-growing field into their existing classes. Being a professor herself, she
writes to other professors looking for ways to improve their classes and argues why and how her
proposals are effective. Same as in the previous article, the audience is expected to be fluent in
basic computer science principles and terminology, but to get the most out of Bezakova’s
findings, one must be part of the teaching staff with the power to make changes to the
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curriculum. Ivona often references other authors and uses the results of their research in making
the games more relevant to the larger concepts in programming – a strategy that adds credibility
to her research and is seen in other publications as well. Another convention that Bezakova
follows is taking advantage of the visual tools available, such as diagrams and screenshots, to
illustrate her projects for better understanding. When Ivona discusses her own implementation of
games in the curriculum, she follows the convention of presenting students’ feedback in a new
way – by citing their course evaluations. This is a great example of how a convention may be
followed in many ways, depending on the author and their style, and is one of the reasons this
article was chosen for the final paper. Another reason would be the similarities in content and
writing with the previous papers considering different topics, which proves that conventions are
formed by genres and not specific works in them. This will present conventions as rules that help
thousands of teachers communicate more effectively and not just particular writers’ choices,
Arthur Gatin
Professor Fedorova
Writing 2
11 February 2019
So, to get us started, the first question would be when and why did you get involved in
It was toward the end of my post-doc as I got into teaching when I got aware of education in
computer science being a field, but I didn’t really get into it until I got a position here at UCSB.
UCSB or UCSD?
UCSB.
Ok. UCSB. I have read some of your publications on underwater systems from UCSD.
Yeah, it was mostly the underwater systems – that’s what I was doing at UCSD, and then I got
into teaching, but when I first started, I wasn’t really doing research in education, I was teaching,
but then once I’ve got my faculty position, that’s when I started getting into research on
education.
So when you got involved in education in computer science, you saw how many
Yes. Really, a lot of research is focused on teaching intro courses, but it also spans other things.
There are different areas: better pedagogy, designs of curriculums, research on K-12 education,
So since all of this is relevant to you as a professor, how would you go about learning more
about education? Where would you find the recent studies, research that is being done,
So yeah – there is an organization, an outlet called ACM, you might be familiar with that,
Association of Computing Machinery, and in general CS research is published through there and
IEEE [Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers], but then there are some very good
conferences that are really focused on CS Education research, and one of them is called SIGCSE,
I’m actually going to that conference this quarter, and then there are regional versions of
SIGCSE, where essentially educators get together and talk about pedagogy and present their
research, so those are the main outlets: there is SIGCSE, there is ICER, there is a bunch of
others. And also through my colleagues, and what we are interested in, that we learn about the
It’s good that you’ve mentioned SIGCSE because that is a good introduction to the next
question. And I’m going to ask about the colloquiums as well. So how do you use
publications that you find wither at those conferences or through your colleagues in your
classroom?
That is a great question. It is not always easily transferrable like that. It informs my teaching for
sure, but there is a lot involved there. It is not as simple as just taking that and adding that to your
course. But for example, there is a lot of research done in peer instruction – clickers are a form of
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peer instruction – showing that when using peer instruction compared to the traditional way of
doing things, peer instructions really wins. Students do much better, and they learn much better,
and those kinds of things definitely inform my teaching, because research shows that it is the
right way to do. And there is also a lot of work on developing curriculums for, say, introductory
courses, so I definitely look at that and use that wherever it’s applicable, but for some of the
things you need to completely restructure the way you teach your class – it depends on how well
you can adapt to these new things, because it is tied to your style of teaching, everything. So, I
try to stay informed, and if I make sure that is I make choices in my class, that there is research
that supports those choices. All of those things have been studied, so if we do it in our
classrooms, it’s not just because I thought it was a great idea, usually, there is some research
done on it. The results are situational a little bit because a lot of factors are involved there.
Here is a very important question based on that but might not be the easiest one. When you
are looking through a publication, what are the things that you are looking for, what are
the areas that interest you in a publication, and what gives you an idea of how effective it is
I would be really interested in the results section, and usually the beginning and the end. Like in
most research papers, in the beginning they set up their problem, they motivate it, and so on, and
towards the end they talk about what experiments they ran, and what results they got, and if that
looks interesting, I would look at their methodology – for CS it’s really important to have set up
the right methodology as you are dealing with human subjects. So, the beginning, end, and
You have all kinds of papers. You have papers that are simply experience reports like “I’ve tried
this thing in my class, and I thought it was interesting”, and then there are the more rigorous
research papers, with experiments, control groups with enough students, and compare the
outcome of when you didn’t do that intervention with when you actually did the intervention, so
that you’re making a more apples-to-apples comparison. You get all kinds.
So a bit about researchers. One of the researchers that I think you have as a role model, or
at least respect in the field, is Andries van Dam. You mentioned him as a professor at
Brown University. What do you think makes his publications so effective and why are they
important to study?
Interesting that you’ve brought that up because actually Andie has not published in CS Education
research that much, and that is common in computer science education. Right now, I think, he
has one paper on tutors which I’ve put up. See, that’s the thing with CS Education research –
there are three groups: folks who are not actively doing research, but they are interested because
they want to use it in their classrooms and teach better, there are folks who are primarily
teachers, but are also doing some research on the side because it keeps it interesting for them,
and they can study the things they do in the class and see if they are effective or not, and then
there are pure researchers, we have some of those, who are really interested in the CS Education
research, but are not into teaching so much. And there you find those you have really good
educators, who are very effective in the classroom, but who have not necessarily published or
written papers on it. So Andie is one of those people, I think. He is a father of graphics, and he’s
published a lot on that but hasn’t published in CS Education that much. However, he did start
this awesome tutor program, that’s why it was really interesting to me.
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Does UCSB contain CS Educations of all those three groups? How do you interact with the
So UCSB has people in other departments who are interested in this space, but not in Computer
Science. Within CS, there aren’t that many of us – it used to be one person who was running it,
now it’s grown to three, maybe it will grow some more. So for us it’s really important to attend
these conferences, and that’s where we connect with other people like us but from other
universities, so it’s mostly the conferences where we make that connection, and then here we
have a really small group, but it’s really cool, and for example, I get together every Thursday for
two or three hours with the other folks, and we read papers, and we are writing one right now, so
we work on that.
Yes. On tutors.
Great! Are you planning on publishing it, or submitting to one of the conferences?
Yes.
Awesome! Now it’s time to talk about the colloquium which those papers are usually
Yes, so that is the conferences, they happen multiple times every year, SIGCSE, as I said, is one
of them, around 1000 people show up from all over the US, and they meet there, and so on.
They meet and present their research, their findings on education, right?
Yes. Usually, you write a paper, you submit it, and if it gets accepted, you go and present. And
You have mentioned that a paper needs to be accepted. I looked it up, and the average
acceptance rate for papers for that specific conference, SIGCSE, is about 35%. What do
So, it’s really the innovations and the results, and their methodology. SIGCSE has been evolving
as well. It used to and it still tries to attract as many people from across the country as possible
who are working in education, because it’s more about the community and the conversations that
people have when they are there, so even if I don’t have a publication, I’ve been going to
SIGCSE for the past couple of years. Now they are clearer guidelines as to what gets accepted,
and on which track. As I said, there are two tracks in Computer Science education, and one of
them is the experience report track, where you don’t need to do rigorous experimental empirical
research to establish that a certain hypothesis is true or not. You can write about what you do and
inform the community and start a conversation around it. And there is another track with a more
rigorous research, and they judge you on all kinds of things – is the question that you are asking
interesting, is it well motivated, have you read other related works and connecting to that related
work, are you aware of how you would position your idea in this space of ideas – and that is true
for all research in CS. Did you go in with a specific question in mind, and was it not that
concrete, how did you actually carry out the work, what was your methodology, are there any
threat to validity that you could think of. Your results may not be very reliable just because there
are too many variables, and things you can control and can’t control, so how well have you
thought through all of it, and the discussion, the writing about it, for example, “This is what I
did, this was my best effort, but you might want to take these results with a pinch of salt because
this and this and that was not in my control, and this might have affected my results”, and then
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are the results interesting. All of those criteria are used essentially to determine the quality of a
Brilliant! Now a question on the effects of those publications. I have talked to one of the
experienced tutors in Computer Science, Dylan, and he told me that when the program
[Undergraduate tutors in Computer Science] just started, it was very different from its
science influence the program at UCSB, and who gets to decide which results can be
Great question! So a paper I’m writing right now tries to study all the stuff that has been written
on undergraduate tutors and TAs. It’s not a very well-studied area, I think it’s an important area,
but it’s hard to study – too many variables are involved. If you go out there and look for
programs that use undergraduate tutors, they will say that they are awesome, we wouldn’t have
done this without them, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that all of the universities such as
Stanford, Berkeley, Brown, San Diego, that have a long history with those programs have
actually studied them or written papers about them. We are slowly looking at the lay of the land,
seeing what practices we want to adopt, what experiments we should run, so it’s not fully
established. You would think that it’s a done deal, that so much research would tell you exactly
what to do with tutors in education, but that’s not the case right now.
Does that mean that it was hard for you to select, or, rather, handpick the publications on
undergraduate teaching assistants for 190J? [CS 190J – a tutoring class at UCSB]
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So that was actually a group effort – me and professor Conrad, we went and searched the entire
literature on undergraduate tutors because of this paper we are writing. But it wasn’t hard to find
those – there are keywords and digital libraries that make it possible.
Just to clarify – did you select the best ones [publications] or the ones that related best to
the topic? Did you have a bigger pool of the papers to choose from?
We did have a bigger pool, so we narrowed it down to some extent, but it’s not a space in which
there are millions and millions of papers, and so ended up putting most of them, most of what we
thought was most related to the topic. And also, it’s hard to say what’s the best at this point [of
research].
I think we have covered all the questions. Maybe, a finishing one: I did not know that you
were collaborating with other professors on writing your own research paper, so which
writing practices will you employ to make it more effective? Maybe it is too early to ask,
So this is a literature review, but this is a what it’s called a structured literature review, which is
reading all the papers that exist and have a discussion on what is out there, and what the state is
on those topics. It’s really more than summarizing the papers, you really have to see how the
papers are related, and discuss them, revealing interesting results. We are going in with some
research question we want answered from reading these other papers, and essentially they are
what are the practices around undergraduate tutors, what are the reported benefits about
undergraduate tutor programs, how would the students, instructors, and institutions benefit from
those, and, lastly, what are the research questions that people have actually studied in the space,
Arthur Gatin
Professor Fedorova
Writing 2
13 February 2019
WP 2: Working Draft
Education in computer science is one of the oldest disciplines in a very modern field. One
of the higher education institutions that pioneered teaching computer science was Purdue
University. The department, according to the university’s website, was established in 1962, but it
wasn’t until the 1970’s that the faculty reached 10 members. Other universities across the nation
share similar timelines for the formations of computer science departments, which marks the
beginning of education in computer science. Ever since then, the faculty members across the
globe were collaborating on creating publications of how to be more effective and sharing then
within their discourse community. Eventually, it has shaped the field and created certain writing
conventions used up to today. In the current net of ideas, computer science educators build on
existing work, acknowledge the contextuality of their studies, and reflect on students’ feedback
to make their publications more effective and make a difference in the discipline.
First, let’s examine how and why referencing and developing from others’ work is
common and encouraged in computer science education. While it is a relatively common writing
practice among academics in various fields, it has a greater importance specifically in computer
science education. One of the main reasons for it is the fact that computer science education has
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a closed set of topics, and almost 50 years of research has made it increasingly difficult to find a
paper that would unravel something previously unseen. Most of the recent publications on
education in computer science either summarize teaching experience using a particular program
or curriculum feature, criticize and improve existing teaching strategies, or, sometimes, provide
courses presents an excellent example of how references may be used in such publications. Early
in the paper, Bezakova establishes why such research was relevant – “Previous research has
demonstrated that learning to program in context increases student motivation [23, 24]”. This
allows the audience to get an idea of what has motivated her research, provides related work to
investigate further, and illustrates how her results may be applied in the classroom. Other
references serve a different purpose, providing examples of existing games that were used by
Bezakova as models for creating her own: “Summet, et al. [27] proposed an interesting context
for CS1 centered around programming robot strategies: their students implemented various robot
behaviors, using physical robot devices”, “On the other hand, player strategies for games like
Tic-Tac-Toe are a favorite topic in introductory artificial intelligence courses [9]”. Overall, it
adds significant value to the paper by demonstrating that it is not simply as an experience report,
but a careful study and addition to existing knowledge. Diba Mirza, Ph.D., professor of
Computer Science at UCSB and a CS Education researcher, considers citations one of the
primary characteristics of a successful writing paper. According to her, a good publication would
have a well-defined place in the existing space of ideas around computer science education. This
one of the currently used criteria used to select the best papers for computer science conferences.
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Experiments inspired by previous works on the topic do not make a publication great on
their own. Diba Mirza states that for her, as a reader and teaching professor, the result section of
the paper is often even more important than the details about conducted experiments. She adds
that the context in which an experiment was run is also a crucial part of a successful paper,
because it helps educators decide whether the results of a publication could be repeated or
applied in a classroom. The acknowledgement of a specific context an experiment was ran in,
and analysis of what variables could have influenced the results have also become a convention
in education in computer science and could be found in works of a wide range of topics.
Paul Dickon’s paper on the use of undergraduate teaching assistants is a good example of
how one could acknowledge the context of an experiment and use that to predict the results of a
similar experiment if it were replicated in some other place. Dickson, professor at Hampshire
College, compares the results of using undergraduate tutors in computer science classrooms
among very different schools, including Brown, Stanford, and UC Irvine. Each of those
institution is unique in terms of student body, number of students, and size of a computer science
departments, so similar results between all of those schools’ results allow Dickson to conclude
that neither of those parameters is a criterion for this experiment. He ends his essay by
mentioning that according to the existing programs in undergraduate teaching and their results,
any university is able to benefit from adding the program to its curriculum. Even though Dickson
never separates schools into those that would benefit and those that wouldn’t, the potential effect
of the context is acknowledged, and reduced by choosing significant pool of schools to observe
and compare. A discussion about validity of the results and potential variables that might have
influenced the outcome, is required for the audience to determine whether their community
would be able to benefit or get similar results. This, according to Mirza, significantly improves
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the quality of a paper, and, with conferences becoming more and more selective in their choice
of papers, has become a convention among published works in computer science education.
Although computer science in general is not focused around academic writing, computer
science education is a growing field that contains a very significant amount of information on
how to be a more successful teacher. Members of the academic have over the years created many
writing conventions that make it easier to convey information within the discourse community.
Referencing previous research, acknowledging the context of a particular study, and paying
attention to students’ feedback are some of the techniques used in the community of academics
to effectively share knowledge, and make computer science more understandable and enjoyable
for students.
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Arthur Gatin
Professor Fedorova
Writing 2
21 February 2019
Education is often the first discipline to emerge in a new field, and computer science is
no exception. One of the institutions that pioneered teaching computer science was Purdue
University. Their department, according to the university’s website, was established in 1962, but Commented [MOU3]: Specify the department
it wasn’t until the 1970’s that the faculty reached 10 ten members. Other universities across the Commented [MOU4]: Try to avoid using contractions in
academic writing.
nation share a similar timeline for the formation of computer science departments, which marks Commented [MOU5]: No apostrophe. 1910s, 1920s etc.
Commented [MOU6]: Numbers under ten should be
the beginning of education in computer science. Ever since then, faculty members across the spelled out.
their teaching and shareing them within their discourse community. These events have forever Commented [MOU7]: It – you’re talking about
effectiveness
changed the field and created certain writing conventions used today. In the current net of ideas, Commented [MOU8]: What events? (This process?)
computer science educators build on existing work, acknowledge the context of their studies, and
reflect on student feedback to make their publications more effective and make a significant
has greater importance specifically in Computer Science education. One of the main reasons for Commented [MOU11]: Be concise.
it is the fact that CS education has a closed set of topics, and almost 50 years of research has
made it increasingly difficult to find a paper that would unravel something previously unseen. As
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a result, according to Diba Mirza, Ph.D., professor of Computer Science at UCSB and a CS
Education researcher, modern publications in computer science education are divided into three
major groups. They either summarize teaching experience using a particular program or
curriculum feature, review and make suggestions to existing teaching strategies, or provide an
overview of the current state of research on any topic (personal communication, February 6,
2018). References to previous research or experiments are essential for papers from any group to
courses presents an excellent example of how references may be used in such publications. Early Commented [MOU12]: Good transition.
in the paper, Bezakova establishes why such research was relevant – “Previous research has
demonstrated that learning to program in context increases student motivation [23, 24]”
(Bezakova 17). This statement allows the audience to get an idea of what has motivated her
research, provides related work to investigate further, and illustrates how her results may be Commented [MOU13]: I’m not sure what you mean.
applied in the classroom. Other references serve a different purpose, providing examples of
existing games that were used by Bezakova as models for creating her own: “Summet, et al. [27]
proposed an interesting context for CS1 centered around programming robot strategies: their
students implemented various robot behaviors, using physical robot devices” (Bezakova 18).
Overall, it adds significant value to the paper by demonstrating that it is not simply an experience
paper. According to her, a good publication would have a well-defined place in the existing
space of ideas around computer science education. This goal is achieved by connecting a paper
to previously conducted research, and, according to Mirza, is one of the currently used criteria
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used to select the best papers for computer science conferences (personal communication, Commented [MOU14]: This sentence needs some revision.
I feel like it has multiple clauses and, thus, it is a bit difficult
to read. What do you think?
February 6, 2018). However, references would not make experiments successful on their own.
Commented [MOU15]: What is the purpose of this
paragraph?
Observation shows that successful papers are also more likely to demonstrate the context I think that you can develop your discussion of citations a bit
more. Why do scholars cite? How does it help you as a
student? How does it help other scholars who do similar
of their experiments and results. The reason for this case is that in Computer Science education, research?
one cannot just apply results from a study to a different environment without adjustments, says
Mirza (personal communication, February 6, 2018). The context of an experiment matters, and
applied in a different classroom. A mention of the context an experiment was ran in and analysis
of variables that could have influenced the results have also become a convention in CS
Paul Dickson’s paper on the use of undergraduate teaching assistants is a good example
of how one could acknowledge the context of a study and use that to predict the results of a
similar future experiment. Dickson, professor at Hampshire College, compares the results of
using undergraduate tutors in computer science classrooms among very different schools,
including Brown, Stanford, and UC Irvine. Each of those institutions is unique in terms of
student body, the number of students, and size of computer science departments, so similar
results between all of those schools’ results allow Dickson to conclude that neither of those
parameters determines the outcome. He ends finishes his essay by mentioning that, according to
the existing programs in undergraduate teaching and their results, any university is able to
benefit from adding the program to its curriculum (Dickson 79). Even though Dickson never
separates schools into those that would benefit and those that would not, he acknowledged
acknowledges the context of his experiments and chooses a pool of diverse institutions that
allowed allows him to suggest that the outcome is systematic. A discussion about the validity of
Gatin 26
the results and potential variables that might have influenced the outcome is required for the
audience to determine whether their community would be able to benefit or get similar results.
This, according to Mirza, significantly improves the quality of a paper, and, with conferences
becoming more and more selective in their choice of papers, has become another convention
2018). However, widely applicable educational theories that the academics agree on are not
helpingdo not help the CS departments across the country solve one of their most pressing
problems.
science as a specialty. Her data shows that the number of Bachelor’s degrees awarded was down
more than 15% in 2006, following a 13% decrease in 2005. More alarming is the fact that the
decline in enrollment in Computer Science was not as steep – students were simply losing
interest in the major. (Becerra-Fernandez 128) This trend resulted not only in rapid developments
in education and programs created, but also in a new popular writing convention emerged in CS
Education.
With data showing stagnation in enrollment and decrease in retention rates for Computer Commented [MOU16]: Combine?
Science students, educators seeked to reflect on student satisfaction in their publications to Commented [MOU17]: sought
increase their validity. Even today, in a new wave of interest towards the field, this writing
feature continues to exist to show how a program or teaching detail will increase students’
such feedback might be collected and used in a publication: “Peer tutoring has been observed to
Gatin 27
improve both retention of individuals in the computer science program and student performance
in individual classes” (Cottam 218). Here, student retention, a form of student feedback, was
placed at the beginning of the results section, demonstrating its importance. Such placement in a
paper from 2011 provides evidence to suggest that, at the time, a question of student retention in
Computer Science was still somewhat urgent among academics. However, student feedback is
widely used in papers even after the “retention crisis” has ended. For example, Adrienne
Decker’s paper from 2019 contains student feedback collected on a much deeper level: “note that
the median line for the UTA semesters appears near the top of the box indicating a higher trend
of satisfaction with the UTA performance” (Decker 50). Here, Decker has used quantitative data
from surveys to determine students’ level of satisfaction with a particular program in her CS
department. These results play a big role in Decker’s argument in favor of using the said
her argument.
Computer Science education is a growing field that contains a significant amount of information
on how to be a more successful teacher. , over the years Members of the academic community Commented [MOU18]: I think that this sentence should be
revised because it needs to focus on how writing is
important in the discipline despite the fact that it is not built
have , over the years, created writing conventions that make it easier to convey information around writing.
within the discourse community. Referencing previous research, acknowledging the context of a
particular study, and paying attention to student feedback are some of the practices often used in
the academic community to effectively share knowledge, and make computer science more
Works Cited
doi:10.1145/1646353.1646387.
Bezakova, Ivona, et al. “Board Game Strategies in Introductory Computer Science.” Proceeding
of the 44th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education - SIGCSE '13,
2013, doi:10.1145/2445196.2445210.
Cottam, Joseph A., et al. “Tutoring for Retention.” Proceedings of the 42nd ACM Technical
doi:10.1145/1953163.1953227.
Decker, Adrienne, et al. “Through the Looking Glass.” ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, vol. 38, no. 1,