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Introduction to DEERS

Welcome to the Designing Empirical Education Research Studies (DEERS) online coursepack!

Our goal is to support educators in conducting high-quality empirical Computing Education Research (CER) studies in their classrooms, summer camps, professional developments, or other computing education activities.

Our review of CER literature from 2014 and 2015 found that while over 80% of papers contained some level of empirical work, the current state of the literature is lacking information needed for replication. Our DEERS coursepack can support the computing education researcher in designing a high-quality, replicable, study that can contribute to the community.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the DEERS Workshop, you will…

  • Develop research questions(s) around teaching and learning;
  • Differentiate between various methodologies and research designs:
  • Design a study to implement in your course;
  • Recognize the value in conducting Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) in CS

Literature Reviews

We have conducted two CER literature reviews on the norms of reporting empirical work.

  • Ahmed Al-Zubidy, Jeffrey C. Carver, Sarah Heckman, and Mark Sherriff. 2016. A (Updated) Review of Empiricism at the SIGCSE Technical Symposium. In Proceedings of the 47th ACM Technical Symposium on Computing Science Education (SIGCSE ‘16). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 120–125. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/2839509.2844601
  • Sarah Heckman, Jeffrey C. Carver, Mark Sherriff, Ahmed Al-Zubidy. A Systematic Literature Review of Empiricism and Norms of Reporting in Computing Education Research Literature. To appear in Transactions on Computing Education. Preprint: https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.01984

CER from DEERS Alumni

The following provides a listing of papers published on projects that were developed in DEERS workshops.

Papers

  • Kristin Stephens-Martinez. 2021. A Study of the Relationship Between a CS1 Student’s Gender and Performance Versus Gauging Understanding and Study Tactics. Proceedings of the 52nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 679–685. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3408877.3432365
  • Marion Neumann and Robin Linzmayer. 2021. Capturing Student Feedback and Emotions in Large Computing Courses: A Sentiment Analysis Approach. Proceedings of the 52nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 541–547. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3408877.3432403
  • Debarati Basu, Sarah Heckman, and Mary Lou Maher. 2021. Online Vs Face-to-face Web-development Course: Course Strategies, Learning, and Engagement. Proceedings of the 52nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1191–1197. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3408877.3432438
  • Diba Mirza, Phillip T. Conrad, Christian Lloyd, Ziad Matni, and Arthur Gatin. 2019. Undergraduate Teaching Assistants in Computer Science: A Systematic Literature Review. In Proceedings of the 2019 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research (ICER ‘19). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 31–40. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3291279.3339422
  • Yeajin Ham and Brandon Myers. 2019. Supporting Guided Inquiry with Cooperative Learning in Computer Organization. In Proceedings of the 50th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE ‘19). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 273–279. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3287324.3287355
  • James Prather, Raymond Pettit, Brett A. Becker, Paul Denny, Dastyni Loksa, Alani Peters, Zachary Albrecht, and Krista Masci. 2019. First Things First: Providing Metacognitive Scaffolding for Interpreting Problem Prompts. In Proceedings of the 50th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE ‘19). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 531–537. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3287324.3287374
  • J. Vanderhyde, “Scaffolding Assignments: How Much is Just Enough?,” The Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges, vol. 34, no. 3, January 2019, pp. 55-63.
  • J. M. Edwards, E. K. Fulton, J. D. Holmes, J. L. Valentin, D. V. Beard and K. R. Parker, “Separation of syntax and problem solving in Introductory Computer Programming,” 2018 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE), San Jose, CA, USA, 2018, pp. 1-5. doi: https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE.2018.8658852
  • A. Chattopadhyay and B. Chindaphone, “A Nifty Inter-Class Peer Learning Model for Enhancing Student-Centered Computing Education, and for Generating Student Interests in Co-Curricular Professional Development,” 2018 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE), 2018, pp. 1-5, doi: https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE.2018.8658454
  • Lina Battestilli, Apeksha Awasthi, and Yingjun Cao. 2018. Two-Stage Programming Projects: Individual Work Followed by Peer Collaboration. In Proceedings of the 49th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE ‘18). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 479–484. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3159450.3159486

Posters

  • Debarati Basu and Niveditha Gopalkrishna. 2020. Evaluation of Course Strategies: Face-to-Face vs. Online. In Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research (ICER ‘20). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 313. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3372782.3408121
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