NCWIT at SIGCSE 2024

Start date: March 20, 2024
End date: March 23, 2024
All-day event
Location: Oregon Convention Center
Conference website
NCWIT On the Road
Graphic design featuring the ncwit.org logo above an aerial photograph of the Portland, OR, skyline and Mount Hood. Text reads: "#NCWITontheroad; Join us at SIGCSE TS 2024; March 20-23 | Portland, OR"

The SIGCSE TS 2024 conference will be held in Portland, Oregon, between March 20th – 23rd, and several NCWIT researchers and leaders with the NCWIT Higher Ed Alliance will be attending! Below, find a comprehensive list of where to connect with NCWIT at the Oregon Convention Center. All times listed reflect the local time zone, Pacific Time. Learn more about registration and lodging options online. Follow NCWIT on social media — Linkedin | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter — for daily reminders, and search #NCWITontheroad for updates, highlights, and more.

Find NCWIT @ SIGCSE

Booth #308

Want to learn more about NCWIT alliances, programs, and get resources to take home? Interested in learning more about how to create systemic culture change via NCWIT’s Tech Inclusion Journey for Undergraduate Programs and Learning Circles? Make sure to stop by the Broadening Participation in Computing (BPC) triple booth to say hello to NCWIT and our BPC Accelerator Alliance partners. Representatives from NCWIT’s staff and collaborative partners can be found during exhibit hours. Organizations represented include:

Presentations

A Town Meeting: SIGCSE Committee on Expanding the Women-in-Computing Community
Thursday, March 21st – 6:30 pm – 7:20 pm | Oregon Ballroom 203 | Birds of a Feather

Join the flock of SIGCSE attendees who are interested in addressing the gender disparity in computing. This forum provides an important annual meeting for a large group of people who work to increase the representation of women in computing in their separate organizations and who do not customarily have an opportunity to share ideas face-to-face. Discussion leaders connect to three of the most important organizations that relate to underrepresentation:

Broadening Participation in Computing Education: Advancing LGBTQIA+ Voices
Friday, March 22nd: 10:45 am – 12 pm |  Oregon Ballroom 203 | Advancing LGBTQIA+ Voices

A panel with Dr. Wendy DuBow, NCWIT Director of Strategies for Education Research & Evaluation and Senior Research Scientist: Broadening Participation in Computing (BPC) has been a key focus of the National Science Foundation (NSF) for over two decades. Its aim is to support students and faculty from historically underrepresented groups, including women, people with disabilities, and racial and ethnic groups. Within these communities, the diverse range of gender and sexual identities remains overlooked in computing education research (CER). To address this invisibility, this panel will discuss the benefits of integrating LGBTQIA+ perspectives. The moderator will provide context, define relevant terms, and set ground rules for discussion. The panelists will offer insights from a variety of perspectives, including: a discussion of the policy landscape impacting LGBTQIA+ students and the importance of incorporating their perspectives as researchers and participants; the erasure of queer history in computer science and advocate for LGBTQIA+ inclusion, considering the humanitarian calling for the field and CS educators in our tech-driven world; the current resistance to supporting LGBTQIA+ scholarship in computing, advocating for an inclusive approach; and finally, the experiences of marginalized individuals in CS education and ways to support them, emphasizing inclusivity through storytelling and personal narratives. The panel aims to increase visibility, understanding, and collaboration between the computing education research community and LGBTQIA+ individuals. By acknowledging and integrating diverse perspectives, we can begin to create a more inclusive, equitable computing landscape. Panelists include:

Papers and Posters

Poster: Hiring, Training, and Managing Undergraduate Teaching Assistants for Large CS1 Classes
Thursday, March 21st: 10 am – 12 pm |  Exhibit Hall E | Posters 1

Presented by Dr. Lecia Barker, NCWIT Senior Research Scientist: As undergraduate computer science enrollments continue to grow, individualized instructor attention becomes increasingly scarce. The impact of social distance between students and their teachers is particularly apparent in large introductory classes, and exacerbated by students’ lack of common prior experience in computer science. Some institutions remedy class size and experience gaps by hiring advanced undergraduate students as teaching assistants for their introductory courses. However, without the resources to carefully hire, train, and manage undergraduate teaching assistants (uTAs) during the semester, their potential as trustworthy peer mentors and helpful tutors often goes unrealized. This poster presents details of the uTA hiring process, training course, and management strategies used during the 2022-2023 academic year for introductory computer science courses. This system was designed for introductory CS classes, with the goals of low instructor overhead, long-term scalability, and development of a staff of empathetic teaching assistants who could motivate students toward successful learning. Highlights of the system include a hiring process that considers candidates’ personality and enthusiasm alongside their technical skills, asynchronous training provided through the university’s learning management system, and the use of a head uTA to manage other staff members. Following the implementation of these policies, instructors and uTAs alike reported positive experiences compared to previous semesters with a statistically significant increase in average student grades (p=.01).

Paper: Putting the Service into Service Learning: A Report on a Survey of CS Faculty
Thursday, March 21st: 1:45 – 2:10 pm | Meeting Rooms B117-119 | Active Learning

Presented by Dr. Lecia Barker, NCWIT Senior Research Scientist: Service learning is an experiential pedagogy in which students learn through providing services or products for community partners. Computer and information science students can develop valuable products for community organizations. However, while service learning is shown to serve students and has potential to serve the field’s diversity goals, community partners’ needs are often not served. We explored this asymmetry using an exploratory survey. Faculty from across the U.S. described intended outcomes for students, including how outcomes were assessed. In contrast, fewer than half of respondents described a product that served the partner’s needs and partner outcomes were often not assessed. Two-thirds of respondents judged reaching student goals as more important than partner goals, with only 9% privileging partners. A quarter of respondents considered partner benefits to be only a bonus. Faculty justified their choices by appealing to their mission as educators: to provide learning experiences for students. Yet for a nontrivial partnership commitment under condition of scarce resources, the community partner may be seen as being taken advantage of, which may explain why some respondents have difficulty finding or keeping partners. Further, faculty may not accomplish civic duty goals, since students may tacitly learn that community organizations’ needs are secondary. To aid faculty in making decisions and better integrating community partners’ needs, we offer advice from survey respondents.

Paper: Bite-Sized Experiential Education for Computer and Information Science
Friday, March 22nd: 2:30 pm – 3 pm | Meeting Rooms B117-119 | Active Learning

Presented by Dr. Lecia Barker, NCWIT Senior Research Scientist: Many computer and information science educators wish to incorporate experiential education pedagogies such as study abroad, service learning and internships into their courses because of the profound benefits they can provide for students. However, some experiential approaches come with costs, whether temporal or financial. In this paper, we present the results of a literature review of different experiential pedagogies in computer and information science – including service learning, study abroad, educational work experiences, and hackathons –and provide an overview of the benefits and costs of each pedagogy. We then turn to better understand what strategies have been used to minimize the costs to both students and faculty. Our analysis uncovers a variety of ways that faculty have experimented with “bite-sized” experiential pedagogies to make them more accessible for both students and faculty. Finally, we provide examples of these strategies as inspiration for faculty to sample these high-impact pedagogies, but highlight the gap in empirical evaluation that is needed to fully understand the cost-benefit tradeoffs.

Reception with NCWIT

NCWIT Reception
Friday, March 22nd: 6 – 7 pm | Oregon Ballroom 201 | SIGCSE TS 2024 Affiliated Events

Join NCWIT representatives for a social wrap up as SIGSCE TS 2024 comes to a close. Learn more about our Higher Ed Alliance activities and how to join a 2024 – 25 Higher Ed Learning Circle. Win a $150 Amazon gift card while hanging out with old friends and meeting new friends! 

About the conference

The Technical Symposium organized by the Association for Computing Machinery‘s (ACM) Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE) is the organization’s flagship annual conference. Each year, the SIGCSE Technical Symposium addresses problems which are common among educators working to develop, implement and/or evaluate computing programs, curricula, and courses. The hybrid symposium provides a forum for sharing new ideas for syllabi, laboratories, and other elements of teaching and pedagogy, at all levels of instruction. The symposium also provides a diverse selection of technical sessions and opportunities for learning and interaction.

Scroll to Top