2016;396-397. doi: 10.1145/2839509.2844660.
CS10K teachers by 2017? Try CS1K+ students NOW! Coping with the largest CS1 courses in history.
D D Garcia, J Campbell, J DeNero, M L Dorf, S Reges
UIID-AD: 4182
DOI: 10.1145/2839509.2844660
Abstract
"Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it."- Proverb In 2005, computing education was experiencing a crisis. Enrollments had "fallen to such an extent that some academic computing programs were facing significant reductions in staffing levels or even elimination" [1]. The community responded, with panels to investigate and highlight ways to infuse "passion, beauty, joy and awe" into the introductory experiences [2], the CS10K project to bring computing to 10,000 teachers and 100,000 students [3], and better messaging of career opportunities [4], to name a few of the initiatives to bring students back into our seats. Well, by golly, it worked! It certainly didn't hurt our cause that Wall Street almost collapsed [5], young whiz kids were becoming TECH billionaires, an inspiring video and an interactive website led millions of people to code for an hour every December, or smart devices put computing into the hands of young people, and social media became the killer app. Whatever it was, CS became hot again [6]. And we mean HOT. There are now several institutions around the world that have well over a thousand students taking CS1 in the Fall of 2015. There's just so much lemonade one can make [7] before the seams start to burst, and the wheels come off the bus, as many shared at SIGCSE 2015 at the Birds of the Feather session [8]. The goal of this panel is to bring together educators who were charged with delivering face-to-face CS1 on the grandest scale the field has ever seen. How did they cope? Does it become all people management with an army of Teaching Assistants? What were the differences and common themes in their survival plans? What is working? What mistakes were made? How are they supporting differential learning for the students who don't have the same experience as others? How is diversity being affected? Finally, what advice would they have for others interested in venturing into the tsunami, and broaden participation at a massive scale?
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