Computer Science Education 2.0

1. Computer Science Education 2.0 Chris DiGiano & Marie Bienkowski Center for Technology in Learning SRI International 12 October 2006

2. Computer Science in Crisis? • Students intending to major in CS between 2000 and 2004 dropped by 70% • Women’s interest in CS at its lowest point since 1971 when data was first collected • Mis-Perception of job off-shoring • Dot-com bust • Can no longer “…write a bad idea on the back of a napkin and retire at 23” - Eric Roberts

3. Root Causes Well known educational problems • Lack of role models • Too abstract • Not personally meaningful Other issues • Limited impact

4. Pasteur’s Quadrant Louis Pasteur Niels Bohr Use-inspired basic research Yes Quest for fundamental understanding? Audubon Society Thomas Edison No Yes No Considerations of use? (adapted from Pasteur’s Quadrant: Basic Science and Technological Innovation, Stokes 1997) adapted from "Pasteur's Quadrant", Donald E. Stokes, Brookings Press, 1997

5. Google’s Quadrant in CS Design Algorithms,Languages Yes Quest for fundamental understanding? generality? Programming Contests Prototyping, “Egocoding” No Yes No Considerations of use? (adapted from Pasteur’s Quadrant: Basic Science and Technological Innovation, Stokes 1997)

6. Google’s Quadrant in CS Design Algorithms,Languages Yes Too abstract Quest for fundamental understanding? generality? Not personally meaningful Programming Contests Prototyping, “Egocoding” No Limited impact Yes No Considerations of use? (adapted from Pasteur’s Quadrant: Basic Science and Technological Innovation, Stokes 1997)

7. Focusing on Design in CSE • Early Design • Scaffolded Design • Professional Design • Design as Consulting

8. Early Design: Build-IT After school and summer youth-based curriculum for low-income middle school girls (grades 6-8) to develop IT fluency, interest in mathematics, and knowledge of IT careers. • $900K NSF Grant • Partners: Girls Inc. Girls create their own theme-based, chat-enhanced web sites

9. Results & CSE Implications • “I was thinking about being a teacher… Now I’m not so sure.” • Positive, personal experiences may help students get through non-Google quadrant “gatekeeper” CS courses in college

10. “Scaffolded” Design: Group Scribbles • Part of $1.2M NSF Grant (“Tuplespaces”) • Partners: Virginia Tech, Christopher Newport University

11. Results & CSE Implications • High-quality artifacts without custom coding • Helping college students think about distributed control • Code-free CSE: Toolkits can help students think about Big Ideas in computer science without explicit programming • See • Brecht, John et al. (2006) Coordinating networked learning activities with a general purpose interface. Paper presented at mLearn 2006, the 5th World Conference on Mobile Learning.

12. Professional Design: TRAILS • Training and Resources for Assembling Interactive Learning Systems • $3.2M NSF Grant • Partners: Stanford, Penn State, Drexel, Univ. of Colorado at Boulder

13. Results • Approximately 200 students at 4 university sites • 50 major projects generated, all with feedback with educational “clients” “Working across disciplines, I got to experience a part of what real educational software designers do... In the process, I got to learn a ton about real-life software design, work with teachers and kids on building a great product, and meet lots of cool people to bounce ideas off of and collaborate with.” — Ankur Dalal, Computer Science, Stanford 2004

14. Students Will Build Amazing Things in One Semester! • Cannot stop them from creating working artifacts • Students don’t want to build on others’ design • But they do like to show off

15. Novice / Expert Design Thinking

16. Novice / Expert Design Thinking “Satisficing” Solving Self-containment Scholarship

17. CSE Implications • Challenge is overcoming students’ school-survival strategies • Students are used to “Doing School” (Denise Pope) • Design is about exploring a trade-off space • There is no “right answer” • Good design is research-based • Need to look beyond ready-at-hand resources • See our book on Educating Learning Technology Designers to be published by Springer in 2007

18. Design as Consulting: Cybercollaboration • Cybercollaboration between Scientists and Software Developers • $250K NSF Grant • Partners: Univ. of Colorado at Boulder, Agentsheets, Inc. “Science will continue to surprise us with what it discovers and creates; then it will astound us by devising new methods to surprises us. At the core of science’s self-modification is technology. New tools enable new structures of knowledge and new ways of discovery. The achievement of science is to know new things; the evolution of science is to know them in new ways.” —Kevin Kelly, Speculations on The Future of Science

19. Collaborative Evolution of Scientific Tools Scientist specifies Developer interprets Scientist clarifies Developer formalizes Scientist confirms Developer builds Scientist verifies Developer inquires

20. Research Platform: Computational Wikis • Your browser is your IDE • Procedures are edited and run thru the Web • Everything is inspectable and editable • Everything can be commented on, tagged • An example is the Web service oriented WubHub from SRI’s Cheyer and Levy

21. Participatory Interactive Computation thru the Internet (PIKI) Location bar is your command line PIKI emphasizes data first, procedures later Everything is commentable

22. Incremental Formalization

23. Manual Unit Tests Manual Unit Test #7 The result of applying the method align() on parameters “GAGGTAGTAA, GAGATAGTAA” is 87 and on “GAGGTAGTAA, GAGGTAGTAA” is 95 Is 87 slightly less than 95? Please manually verify this assertion PASS FAIL SKIP

24. CSE Implications • The computer science of requirements gathering • Opportunities for informal participants and dilatants • Service orientation means more human interaction but less control • See DiGiano, C., Kireyev, K., Repenning, A. Evolving Tools Organically With Computational Wikis. Short paper presented at Computer Support for Collaborative Work (CSCW) 2006.

25. Programs in Academia • Connect directly to industry jobs (CMU-West) • Entice students with new content: Introduction to Media Computation • Computing education must be relevant, creative, social, and results-oriented • Start early (UCSC+ETR Associates): project-based, pair programming for middle school girls

26. How should high tech industries respond to the crisis? • Need to go beyond the classic models • Internships • Cheap tools • Projects for capstone courses • Supporting summer camps, after school programs • Not systematic • SRI Workshop on Innovative Outreach in Industry, December 7

27. One radical role for us to play:Educational “Labeling” • Embedding informal learning opportunities into technology products • What if kids could learn about their iPod while listening to music? • How it works • The kinds of teams involved in the design • Behind the Scenes extras on a DVD can inspire new movie makers. Why not inspire new technologists?

28. Educational “Labeling” • Key is connecting these informal experiences with students lives in and out of school • See • DiGiano, C., Kahn, K., Cypher, A., & Smith, D. C. (2001). Integrating learning supports into the design of visual programming systems. Journal of Visual Languages and Computing, 12, 501-524.

29. How Can We Work Together Revitalize CS?