Attending the Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE) Conference in Toronto in March was truly an eye-opening experience for me. As a student research assistant in the Bridge-Up STEM program, I had the privilege of presenting my work at the conference and gained a new perspective on university-level education.
I attended the conference from March 15-March 18 with Georgia Tech researchers and researchers from the National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT). The Bridge-Up STEM program, a collaborative effort between GT and NCWT, equips women and non-binary people to do computing research under the mentorship of a College of Computing professor while also mentoring high school students. I specifically attended the conference to present about my work as a teaching assistant to a cohort of local high schoolers who had a research fellowship through the program.
During the conference, I had the opportunity to understand the various aspects of planning a computer science education at the university level, as well as reflect on my own experience doing so for a high school audience.
In particular, I realized the importance of the way in which community resources are offered to younger students seeking a foundation in computer science. The panel discussion with other researchers highlighted the challenges of selecting the most suitable students for a research fellowship program aimed at students from marginalized backgrounds. While selecting only straight-A students might exclude those who are interested but haven’t discovered computer science activities yet, identifying students who don’t know much about computer science but have the potential and interest to learn can be challenging during the selection process. Such challenges encouraged me to think outside the box and come up with innovative solutions to better serve students and increase accessibility to computer science education.
Moreover, attending workshops and panels during the conference hosted by other educators allowed me to have a deeper understanding of university-level computer science education from a professor’s perspective. One panel discussion that particularly caught my attention was on the “5 things not to do when teaching.” One of the mistakes which was discussed by a Harvard professor involved their computing college’s initiative to reinvent office hours for computer science undergraduate students.
The new initiative replaced the previous format, which featured rows of desktop computers in the basement, with long dining hall tables, and created a new software program that allowed students to ask TAs for homework help. However, this initiative ultimately did not succeed as planned, as most students waited until the last two days of the weekly assignment’s deadline to come to office hours, and when the software for TA waiting times became overloaded, the students had to raise their hands, and there weren’t enough tables for everyone.
The panel audience mainly consisted of university professors who shared their experiences with implementing various office hours initiatives. However, there was still a gap between the initiatives implemented by professors and the actual learning experiences of the students. This realization prompted me to reflect on my own experience with office hours for different computer science classes. As a student, I have often experienced the issue of an unbalanced TA-to-student ratio, the resulting frustration, and the difficulties that arise when trying to complete my work.
Thinking about different ways to solve this problem, while taking into account both the student’s perspective and the logistics of professors and educators, I realized that one solution could be to have students write down their question next to their name when they come to office hours, allowing students with similar questions to sit next to each other and help each other out. TAs could also rotate every five minutes, giving each student a chance to ask their question and reducing the overall wait time. Additionally, when a TA helps a student with a particular question, all other students with the same question can sit next to the student and learn what to do.
Attending this panel made me realize that there are always new and innovative ways to approach teaching and learning, and it inspired me to think more creatively about how to solve problems in my own computer science academic work.
