Programme - Day One

Abstract: "While interest in computer science degrees has declined, interest in computer science continues to grow across campus.  One estimate suggests that by 2012 there will be some 13 million end-user programmers in the United States, compared to an estimated 3 million professional software developers.  In this talk, I argue for more attention to that much greater number, for having an impact by making the non-professional programmer more successful.  I will present historical evidence that our field had a goal of teaching the non-professional programmers 40 years ago, and that end-user programmers want what we have to offer, but that we need to develop new kinds of classes and new kinds of approaches to teaching computing to meet their needs.  I will present methods for teaching computing that have improved success rates for non-computing majors (while still including programming), such as contextualized computing education. "

Abstract: "It has now been 10 years since the first annual HEA-ICS 1-day Teaching of Programming conference was held in Leeds. Each year people have reported on their initiatives: to help struggling students; to motive the top of the class; to make learning more interesting and relevant to the entire cohort. What has worked? What has failed? Are the current issues exactly the same as they were in 2000?

In this paper we attempt to answer some of these questions. We have undertaken a literature review of papers presenting both problems and initiatives and have summarised and synthesised their conclusions. As well as searching for perennial issues and good ideas that are still in use we have identified some that have been discontinued; forgotten, impractical, or ineffective.

This paper addresses two of the three key issues for the HEA-ICS conference this year: quality enhancement and assessment; and student engagement. There have been many significant impacts upon the programming aspects of Computer Science over the last 10 years. For example: many Universities (not just in the UK) now teach Java as a first programming language and many of those have tried using BlueJ as an initial learning environment. We will bring together opinions that have been expressed and tips for coping in order to consolidate the information that is available.

Academics with increasing teaching loads and diminishing preparation time do not want to spend what little time they do have searching through archives of papers reporting the highs and lows of other people’s experience.

The aims of this work are to synthesise our findings and provide a digest of issues and initiatives along with a short recommended reading list. 'We’ve done the hard work so you don’t have to.'”

Abstract: "Code writing problems vary in complexity and difficulty. The style of student solutions also varies. In this paper, we look at coding problems used in an introductory programming paper and using the principles derived from the SOLO taxonomy, endeavour to rank the complexity of the questions and their solutions.

We argue that initial problems should be directly translatable and have direct translation solutions. Question complexity should then allow for the variant answer types before moving to more complex question types. Through using this strategy students are also introduced to problem solving techniques."

Abstract: "The goal of engaging and enthusing students in higher-level computing concepts can remain elusive for Higher Education institutions. This paper discusses the development of the Mobile Application Deployment (MAD) Module that uses an approach to the teaching of advanced Java programming concepts that seeks to achieve this goal by encouraging students to develop mobile phone applications using Java Micro Edition."

Abstract: "Learning object-oriented (OO) design is much more than just learning to draw UML diagrams. It is about learning the steps and deliverables of an OO modelling process, whereby gradual transitions from software functional requirements to implementable class design can be achieved. This paper introduces objFusion, - a web-based environment which was developed to be a lightweight, yet capable of supporting students learning OO design with essential OO design heuristics and of maintaining the semantic links between models of different steps in an OO design process."

Abstract: "In this paper, we describe the ELMS (Education in Library Management Systems Project), which virtualised teaching on the ‘Digital Libraries’ module at Strathclyde University. It examines teaching all aspects of library management systems and related topics MARC (MAchine Readable Cataloguing) and databases. Current developments in adding teaching of mash-ups and simple scripting are outlined."

Abstract: "We discuss a masters module which was designed to address two significant problems: 1) How to introduce international masters students to ‘learner-centred teaching’ and ‘inquiry-based learning’ (IBL) approaches, and 2) How to develop research & information literacy skills in all our masters computing students. To solve these problems we designed a new module which incorporates a structured sequence of IBL activities, which act as scaffolding to help international students understand and adjust to masters-level research-informed teaching approaches, including collaborative learning (e.g. via groupwork, presentations and peer review) and reflective learning activities. The module embeds research & information literacy skills within the context of a group project where students design and implement a website. The organizing scheme for the information literacy skills development is the SCONUL Seven Pillars Model of Information Literacy. We discuss the design and implementation of the module, and an independent module evaluation which used feedback from the students, via an on-line survey, interviews and focus groups, and a reflective dialogue with the module leader. We see the module development as an ongoing action research project and therefore conclude by suggesting enhancements for the next iteration. In presenting this paper we hope to stimulate discussion about how we can meet the needs of international students within the time constraints of a one-year taught masters programme."

Abstract: "Pair programming is an approach often used in industry to increase productivity and reduce programming error. Although it typically takes longer to program when working in pairs the resulting product is often of better quality than that obtained when working alone. This paper extends this concept to pair programming in the classroom by introducing it into a first year, second semester programming module to encourage and increase student attendance and therefore enhance student engagement. This paper presents the methodology used and initial results obtained which indicate that attendance at practicals has increase in this academic year and also that practical assessment marks have increased in comparison to previous years."

Abstract: "This paper reports on the early stages of a project funded by the HEA-ICS, which aims to create an open educational resource to help develop media and information literacy skills in postgraduate research students. The resource uses a distinctive and holistic approach to the teaching of these subjects, which brings together Bruce et al’s ‘Six Frames of Information Literacy’ model (2007), Egan’s division of literacy into conventional, emergent and comprehensive (1990), and Whitworth’s objective, subjective and intersubjective domains of value (2009b). We describe here the structure and methods of the course, and look forward to the evaluation which will take place over summer 2010."

Abstract: "Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) are used widely as platforms to standardise the provision of teaching materials and implement institutional strategies for blended learning. As such, they provide unique opportunities for the collection of data not only on who is accessing online resources, but also on when, from where and how they choose to do so. Analysis of these data is potentially of great value in assessing the learning habits of the digital natives who enrol on today’s university courses. Such information can have significant implications for how we deliver and resource the teaching of computing in the future.

In this paper, we consider a recent project to deploy a market-leading commercial VLE solution across a large UK university. We highlight the limitations of this market-leading system for the large-scale analysis of student engagement and describe software developed locally at Leeds that runs outside of the VLE itself, performing extensive data mining of server log files to obtain the information it needs.

Our paper addresses the technical challenges of performing this type of data mining exercise and discusses the variety of insights that are possible from the analysis of such data. We also present some preliminary results from running our system on two academic years of VLE logins – several million in total, around 100,000 of which are from computing students. Our results illuminate distinct patterns of use amongst these students and shed new light on when and where they prefer study."

Abstract: "The School of Informatics at the University of Sussex has two television broadcast studios, which support teaching on our technical digital media degrees. In the first instance these facilities are used to give hands-on experience of aspects of broadcast technology, live video productions and digital content creation. However, over the last few years the School has been experimenting with several different methods of enhancing student learning, engagement and support on other courses using these studios, specialist techniques and associated systems. This paper reviews lecture and laboratory attendance, download rates and qualitative student feedback and shows that using these techniques has a significant effect on the student learning process. Other types of on-line support such as enhanced podcasts are also investigated and a tangible improvement in engagement over these techniques is shown."

Abstract: "This paper evaluates the use of a new technique for generating, disseminating and analysing feedback for programming courses at undergraduate level. The technique incorporates ideas from the popular Web 2.0 tagging paradigm and explores the resulting feedback generated. This interdisciplinary project between software engineering and education investigates how analysis of programming feedback can be used to direct remedial teaching. To illustrate the interdisciplinary nature of the project this paper utilizes a technique found primarily in social sciences called Thematic Analysis along with sentiment analysis in order to explore the feedback given to a cohort. The results presented here show experiences of using the technique and how the analysis of the resulting feedback data influenced teaching on a particular programming course. This paper concludes by identifying possible extensions to the research."

Abstract: "Defeating plagiarism detection systems involves determining effective approaches for greatest impact at lowest cost with the least likelihood of detection. Relatively simple techniques have been applied elsewhere for avoiding plagiarism detection, demonstrated at the last HEA-ICS conference. In this paper, we discuss defeats for seven plagiarism detection systems, including Essayrater, Seesources, PlagiarismDetector, and the popular Turnitin. We report on initial results of human experiments undertaken on visual similarity to assess the risk of human detection of changes. The systems evaluated are variously susceptible to sufficient numbers of small alterations to characters or words in the text Our results suggest, at minimum, to use at least 2 such systems in combination to reduce the likelihood of failed detection and increase the difficulty for the determined, and yet somehow lazy, plagiarist – otherwise, the discovery and dissemination of simple defeats for plagiarism detection software may mean that we may as well just “Turnitoff”."

Abstract: "This paper describes an ongoing research work to investigate novel ways of organising and storing resources for academic writing and referencing in order to address the accessibility needs of students at the undergraduate, diploma and pre-university levels. So far, most research in e-learning has focused on resources for the teaching of various courses of study often targeted at distance and adult learning, while the area of academic writing has received comparatively very little attention in spite of its important role as the bedrock of academic creativity across disciplines. We report the results of the initial stage of our experiment in applying Second Life as an interactive environment for teaching academic writing to students at the undergraduate, diploma and pre-university levels. Our approach is to codify existing academic and reference materials in the area of computer science using technologies, such as online databases and electronic archives, in a way that will enable interactive access to them by students learning academic writing through such entertaining and social media as Second Life. We suggest that exposing students to academic writing using such emerging innovative and interactive multimedia technologies will lead to cross-disciplinary improvement in learning among young students."

Abstract: "Second Life is currently one of the most sought after 3D online virtual worlds on the Internet. One of the reasons attributed to this is the fact that Second Life, unlike most virtual environments before it, is able to integrate the technology of online gaming, the concept of avatars, social networking and e-learning into a single framework for the purpose of education, entertainment and social networking. As a result, Second Life has, in the last few years, led to the development of systems and tools for teaching and structuring our networked learning environments. However, existing research and e-learning applications based on Second Life tend to focus on subject-based learning, i.e. the teaching of various courses of study often targeted at distance and adult learning, whereas the area of academic writing has received comparatively very little attention in spite of its important role as the bedrock of academic writing across disciplines. In this paper, we present the preliminary research and the conceptual design of a prototype interactive e-learning environment aimed at exposing students in the pre-university, diploma and undergraduate levels to academic writing and referencing using Second Life. We suggest that exposing students to academic writing using emerging innovative and interactive multimedia technologies, such as Second Life, will lead to cross-disciplinary improvement in learning among young students."

Abstract: "Higher Education institutions in the UK rely on mentoring programs as one of the ways to support students at different stages of their training. The reality is that, good as this resource could be, it is not available to students all the time. Students can contact their advisers, and support resources like Career Development Centres, at scheduled times, but sometimes the problems motivating the students to seek advice may require an immediate answer. Anytime-anywhere student support is an emerging area of development as indicated by its inclusion in a range of University policies. This article proposes a holistic approach which blends emerging technologies into a ‘Virtual Mentor’. This paper provides the motivation for our work, technical details of the software system, and initial validation exercises."

Abstract: "We describe a series of resources and practical exercises supporting the teaching of introductory topics in Artificial Intelligence using the metaphor of the well-known arcade game “Pac Man”. They are aimed at level one students from a range of disciplines and motivated by a view of Artificial Intelligence as a means of automating the problem solving process. The first set of exercises start with search strategies and gradually build up via rule-based and expert-system approaches to create a Pac-Man player based on “traditional AI”. Subsequent apply computational approaches such as artificial neural networks and evolutionary computation provide a radically different approach to generating and improving controllers"

Abstract: "Student retention, engagement, the first year experience, and transition from secondary to higher education are global issues on which much research has been undertaken in many countries. This paper presents the results from a detailed analysis of these issues with 106 first year (including foundation year) computing students in semester 1 of the 2009-10 academic year. In an effort to fully understand the first year student psyche, an “inside” approach was adopted where a graduate Research Assistant (RA) was employed to integrate with the first year cohort throughout semester 1 both inside and outside class time. Data on student backgrounds (social and educational), entry qualifications, attendance and progression (in terms of semester 1 results), and student opinions on all aspects of the teaching and learning environment was collected and analysed. Some surprising results, which challenged our initial assumptions about first year computing students and retention issues, were found which highlight a clear need for a dynamic approach to initiatives to ensure that they address the specific needs of any new student cohort based on social, educational, and subject-specific factors. "

Abstract: "The paper will report on a two year project to radically re-design our approach to student induction.While we recognise that student induction is a process that occurs throughout the student life-cycle, our original approach to the early induction of new udergraduate students was largely lecture-based and involved key staff giving presentations on our expectations of the student cohort in terms of dilligence, work ethic and time keeping etc. Student feedback on this approach tended to be poor. Worse we found it to be ineffective in preparing our students for the work ahead and we believe contributed to poor retention figures in the first year.

We believe, a key short coming was that we wasted the high levels of enthusiasm and motivation most students have directly prior to arriving at university and this lowered their expectations not only of the content of the degree but also of what we expected them to achieve in their first year. Therefore we redesigned our early induction to consist of a full week prior to the start of term (week 0) which we called "Welcome Week." This week consisted of a series of intensive activities centred around teamwork and enquiry-based learning. Student feedback after the first year of "Welcome Week" was extremely positive.

Our approach to Welcome Week has been widely disseminated across campus and is now the "standard model" for facilitating the early academic and social engagement of students at our institution. In particular it has been adopted by other science and engineering disciplines. Therefore we will also discuss some issues concerning adapting our programme of computer science-based activities to other disciplines."