www.kent.ac.uk opening the door of the computer science classroom: the disciplinary commons josh...

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Opening the door of the Computer Science classroom: the Disciplinary Commons

Josh Tenenberg, Sally Fincher

SIGCSE Symposium, Covington, KY

March 10, 2007

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There’s something scary and strange happening

It was a complete unknown, and that was quite scary, so … it was a bit of a push from [the] deputy head of the department … I did get a bit of a kick in the backside to go and do this. [Frank]

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And so it starts

But during my sort of research activity, I would perhaps travel if not to London, to somewhere else at least once a month. Talking to people in the field, networking. And I’m getting off the plane, and all of a sudden, I sort of stopped and thought, “Wait a minute. I’m here for teaching. I haven’t done this before.” [Daniel]

•To document and share knowledge about student learning on courses in Computer Science in two- and four-year institutions within a single geographic region.•To improve the quality of teaching in Computer Science (CS) by establishing practices for the scholarship of teaching by making it public, peer-reviewed, and amenable for future use and development by other CS educators.

•To document and share knowledge about teaching and student learning on introductory programming courses in the UK.•To establish practices for the scholarship of teaching by making it public, peer-reviewed, and amenable for future use and development by other educators: creating a teaching-appropriate document of practice equivalent to the research-appropriate journal paper.

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The importance of discipline

It's hard to do. You have to work at it. And to do it on a continued basis, like once a month, was great. Whereas otherwise it might be once or twice a year at a conference. [Albert]

US Commons UK Commons

SeptemberCourse Objectives

October

Institutional & Curricular Context Institutional Context & personal trajectory into teaching

NovemberCourse Content & Structure Curricular Context of itp course

December Teaching Methods Course Content

January Rationale/Teaching Philosophy Instructional Design

February Evidence of Student Learning Student Assessment

March Grading Evaluation (for improvement)

AprilSelf and peer observation Delivery (including debrief of peer

observation)

MayConference Presentation & External Review

Complete “first draft” overview

June Portfolio Presentations Portfolio Presentations

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So what did you actually DO?

I think the need to produce a portfolio meant that I was forced to look at different areas of how I teach, the context and the content and assessment and all these kind of things. So that forced me through a process of reflection, what do I do, why do I do it, is there a need for change in these areas. So that whole process I found really helpful. [Henry]

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What is the genre?

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What do they have in common?

• The purposeful selection of artefacts to achieve an end• Selection is not random: you choose the contents to

reflect the parts that are most important to you (and/or your theme)

• What end? This requires consideration of audience and purpose

• Course portfolios comprise a set of documents that "focuses on the unfolding of a single course, from conception to results" (Hutchins, 1998, p.13).

• The purpose of the course portfolio "is in revealing how teaching practice and student performance are connected with each other" (Bernstein, 1998, p77).

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Why is this different from any workshop, or series of workshops?

• Disciplinary importance• Reflective practice• New degrees of freedom • People I trust• Externality

• Legitimation of scholarship

• Validation of my own practice (“confidence”)

• Reference group

• You can’t get this any other way

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• Reference group


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• Reference group


… there's a teaching and learning group that has meetings roughly every other week, and I've attended a few. Several of my colleagues … have done presentations, but many of the topics don't seem immediately relevant to CS. That was the beauty of the Commons group -- all CS, all the time!

[Samuel]

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• Reference group


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• Reference group


In general, I now reflect more on the way I teach the course. This means that also the way of discussing it with colleagues has changed. [Daisy]

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• Reference group


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it's one of those things where it's a good idea because it's so blooming obvious now. Daniel … started talking about the way his labs were laid out and started talking about his physical environment, the space in which … his students learned. … But [he] talks about … tearing walls out and… then he had … created a new environment where he could talk a bit, they could do stuff, they could go back to the board to discuss it and do some more. … so now I'm trying to break out of that and encourage other things. [Frank]




• Reference group


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• Reference group


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I mean there's this shared knowledge now that we don't have to repeat, everybody knows the outlines of everybody else's situation and their experiences and, you know, I would I would trust information from any of these people

[Samuel]




• Reference group


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• Reference group


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• Reference group


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My participation in the Commons changed how I think about almost every aspect of teaching. I gained confidence in some of my approaches, I learned techniques for being introspective, I've become a peer in a wider circle of faculty, I have discovered new avenues for improving my teaching, and I have a new vehicle for sharing my own thoughts about teaching. [Albert]




• Reference group


I see teaching much more as a community craft. I've always thought that, but never had worked like this with other kindred spirits. I appreciate the diversity of great teachers. I have gained confidence, and subsequently, I feel bolder to share what I've learned with others. I'm not a great teacher yet, but I'm starting to see what my version of being such a teacher will look like, in large part a result of this project. [Minnie]

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A last thing to think about …

Why isn't the Commons more common? It's similar to meeting the same people at conferences, but at conferences people are interested in themselves, their presentations. Here we're interested in each other. [Herbert]

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References

http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/~saf/dc

http://depts.washington.edu/comgrnd/

• Daniel Bernstein, Putting the focus on student learning, in The Course Portfolio, Pat Hutchings (ed.), American Association for Higher Education, 1998.

• Pat Hutchings (ed.), The Course Portfolio: How Faculty Can Examine Their Teaching to Advance Practice and Improve Student Learning, American Association for Higher Education, 1998

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AcknowledgementsAcknowledgements (i)

• The US Disciplinary Commons was made possible by funding from the Washington State Board of Community and Technical Colleges, the University of Washington, Tacoma.

• The itp Disciplinary Commons was made possible through the award of a National Teaching Fellowship 2005 to Sally Fincher.

• This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

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Acknowledgements (ii)

• Funding for project evaluation was provided by a grant from the SIGCSE Special Projects fund.

• The authors also acknowledge the Helen Whiteley Center of the University of Washington for providing a quiet and conducive space for undertaking the project evaluation.

www.kent.ac.uk opening the door of the computer science classroom: the disciplinary commons josh...

Documents

teaching practice

scholarship of teaching

quality of teaching

student performance

peer observationdelivery

single course

computer science cs

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