SUPERVISING (OR INSTRUCTING) A DOCTORAL THESIS PROJECT is a challenging task. One helps the stude... more SUPERVISING (OR INSTRUCTING) A DOCTORAL THESIS PROJECT is a challenging task. One helps the student by providing appropriate guidance and feedback on defining research goals and questions, as well as selecting research methods and working processes, yet at the same time working in an area that is partially beyond supervisor’s own knowledge. At the same time one should support the student’s growth as an independent researcher. Some interesting discussions about these issues are, for example, found in [1,2,6]. In this column, however, I reflect on some other challenges that may take place when supervising theses in computing education research (CER), challenges that could be interesting for supervisors or doctoral students working in computer science (CS) proper. In this piece I highlight some differences between CS and CER by briefly discussing students, research goals and methods, literature, as well as scoping and evaluating theses. A basic nature of a doctoral thesis in CER is that the problem area covers aspects of teaching and learning. They are, as such, everyday forms of human behavior but they are not very well understood even within social sciences, not to speak about in the domain of learning CS. However, CER is not a subarea of educational sciences, because it also requests deep understanding of CS. CER has similarities with empirical software engineering, information systems research, and human-computer interaction research, where much work deals with humans and human data instead of artificial constructs like algorithms, programs, and theorems that are more in the focus in core CS research.
This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND license. 2 Brief History and Overview of... more This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND license. 2 Brief History and Overview of Computing Education Research (CER) Computer science (CS) is a young discipline compared to natural sciences and many fields of engineering. Consequently, computing education is a younger field than engineering education. Computing education emerged in the mid-1950s as computers started being used in industry. This
In this paper, we present some experiences on using automatic assessment in large scale courses o... more In this paper, we present some experiences on using automatic assessment in large scale courses of introductory programming, data structures, and algorithms over a period of 10 years. Automatic assessment provides an effective method for giving immediate 24/7 feedback service for students of mass courses. A very important factor in the promoting of learning is the possibility to resubmit answers after receiving the feedback. However, our experience shows that the resubmission option is not the only key motivation factor. More important factors include the challenge of exercises and the grading scale or the course assignments. A successful combination of all of these can produce good learning results.
The 14th International Computing Education Research conference was held from 12-16 August 2018 in... more The 14th International Computing Education Research conference was held from 12-16 August 2018 in Espoo, Finland. The conference venue was the Dipoli building at Aalto University. We had the highest attendance for an ICER outside of the US (127) and overall were second only to ICER 2017 in Tacoma. The attendees came from 18 countries, and included 71 first-time attendees and 44 students. We had a record number of paper submissions (125), of which 28 were accepted, for an acceptance rate of 22%.
THE MAIN ELEMENT OF DOCTORAL STUDIES is always original research, which is finally compiled into ... more THE MAIN ELEMENT OF DOCTORAL STUDIES is always original research, which is finally compiled into a doctoral thesis. During this time the student studies literature in her/his field in depth, learns research design, problem solving, data collection and analysis methods, taking a critical view on one’s work, and writing scientific reports and papers. However, becoming an expert in one’s field is not the only goal of doctoral studies. A researcher is never working just alone, but s/he is also a member of the research community of her/his own field. In my case, this means the international computing education research community (or computing education community, whichever definition is preferred). What is the significance of this membership and how can we support students to find and take their own role in the field? I recall well my first conference trip where my supervisor sent me. I had started my PhD studies in database research half a year earlier, and I attended the VLDB conference (Very Large Data Bases) in 1992 in Vancouver, Canada. I was alone and there were some 300 other people whom I had never met. I listened to many presentations, some more and some less interesting to me, and I spoke briefly with several people on coffee breaks and social events. They were working on things quite different from what I was doing. I, however, recognized several familiar names found in relevant papers I had read. Unfortunately, they seemed to be busy people whenever I just happened to notice them passing by. Overall, I learned something about the field but did not feel
SUPERVISING (OR INSTRUCTING) A DOCTORAL THESIS PROJECT is a challenging task. One helps the stude... more SUPERVISING (OR INSTRUCTING) A DOCTORAL THESIS PROJECT is a challenging task. One helps the student by providing appropriate guidance and feedback on defining research goals and questions, as well as selecting research methods and working processes, yet at the same time working in an area that is partially beyond supervisor’s own knowledge. At the same time one should support the student’s growth as an independent researcher. Some interesting discussions about these issues are, for example, found in [1,2,6]. In this column, however, I reflect on some other challenges that may take place when supervising theses in computing education research (CER), challenges that could be interesting for supervisors or doctoral students working in computer science (CS) proper. In this piece I highlight some differences between CS and CER by briefly discussing students, research goals and methods, literature, as well as scoping and evaluating theses. A basic nature of a doctoral thesis in CER is that the problem area covers aspects of teaching and learning. They are, as such, everyday forms of human behavior but they are not very well understood even within social sciences, not to speak about in the domain of learning CS. However, CER is not a subarea of educational sciences, because it also requests deep understanding of CS. CER has similarities with empirical software engineering, information systems research, and human-computer interaction research, where much work deals with humans and human data instead of artificial constructs like algorithms, programs, and theorems that are more in the focus in core CS research.
This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND license. 2 Brief History and Overview of... more This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND license. 2 Brief History and Overview of Computing Education Research (CER) Computer science (CS) is a young discipline compared to natural sciences and many fields of engineering. Consequently, computing education is a younger field than engineering education. Computing education emerged in the mid-1950s as computers started being used in industry. This
In this paper, we present some experiences on using automatic assessment in large scale courses o... more In this paper, we present some experiences on using automatic assessment in large scale courses of introductory programming, data structures, and algorithms over a period of 10 years. Automatic assessment provides an effective method for giving immediate 24/7 feedback service for students of mass courses. A very important factor in the promoting of learning is the possibility to resubmit answers after receiving the feedback. However, our experience shows that the resubmission option is not the only key motivation factor. More important factors include the challenge of exercises and the grading scale or the course assignments. A successful combination of all of these can produce good learning results.
The 14th International Computing Education Research conference was held from 12-16 August 2018 in... more The 14th International Computing Education Research conference was held from 12-16 August 2018 in Espoo, Finland. The conference venue was the Dipoli building at Aalto University. We had the highest attendance for an ICER outside of the US (127) and overall were second only to ICER 2017 in Tacoma. The attendees came from 18 countries, and included 71 first-time attendees and 44 students. We had a record number of paper submissions (125), of which 28 were accepted, for an acceptance rate of 22%.
THE MAIN ELEMENT OF DOCTORAL STUDIES is always original research, which is finally compiled into ... more THE MAIN ELEMENT OF DOCTORAL STUDIES is always original research, which is finally compiled into a doctoral thesis. During this time the student studies literature in her/his field in depth, learns research design, problem solving, data collection and analysis methods, taking a critical view on one’s work, and writing scientific reports and papers. However, becoming an expert in one’s field is not the only goal of doctoral studies. A researcher is never working just alone, but s/he is also a member of the research community of her/his own field. In my case, this means the international computing education research community (or computing education community, whichever definition is preferred). What is the significance of this membership and how can we support students to find and take their own role in the field? I recall well my first conference trip where my supervisor sent me. I had started my PhD studies in database research half a year earlier, and I attended the VLDB conference (Very Large Data Bases) in 1992 in Vancouver, Canada. I was alone and there were some 300 other people whom I had never met. I listened to many presentations, some more and some less interesting to me, and I spoke briefly with several people on coffee breaks and social events. They were working on things quite different from what I was doing. I, however, recognized several familiar names found in relevant papers I had read. Unfortunately, they seemed to be busy people whenever I just happened to notice them passing by. Overall, I learned something about the field but did not feel
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