2010-2011

The 'Sweden Group' has switched focus from Threshold concepts to Informal Learning. Although there are a couple of other

themes showing up here too.

Chris Carol and I in SIGCSE (not on portal yet)

ICER 11 IL

Jürgen Börstler, Mark S. Hall, Marie Nordström, James H. Paterson, Kate Sanders, Carsten Schulte, and Lynda Thomas. 2010. 

An evaluation of object oriented example programs in introductory programming textbooks. SIGCSE Bull. 41, 4 (January 2010), 126-143.

Chris Loftus, Lynda Thomas, and Carol Zander. 2011. Can graduating students design: revisited. 

In Proceedings of the 42nd ACM technical symposium on Computer science education (SIGCSE '11). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 105-110.

Robert McCartney, Anna Eckerdal, Jan Erik Mostrom, Kate Sanders, Lynda Thomas, and Carol Zander. 2010. 

Computing students learning computing informally. In Proceedings of the 10th Koli Calling International 

Conference on Computing Education Research (Koli Calling '10). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 43-48.

2009-2010

Thomas, Lynda; Boustedt, Jonas; Eckerdal, Anna; McCartney, Robert; Mostrom, Jan Erik; Sanders, Kate; Zander, Carol. 2010.

Threshold Concepts in Computer Science: An Ongoing Empirical Investigation. In in Meyer, Jan H.F., Land, Ray and Baillie, Caroline (eds.) 

Threshold Concepts and Transformational Learning. Sense Publishing.

Lynda Thomas, Carol Zander, and Anna Eckerdal. 2010. Harnessing surprise: tales from students' transformational biographies. 

In Proceedings of the 41st ACM technical symposium on Computer science education (SIGCSE '10). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 300-304.

Zander, C., Boustedt, J., McCartney, R., Moström, J. E., Sanders, K., and Thomas, L. 2009.
Student transformations: are they computer scientists yet?. In Proceedings of the Fifth
international Workshop on Computing Education Research Workshop (Berkeley, CA, USA, August 10 - 11, 2009).
ICER '09. ACM, New York, NY, 129-140.

And a Journal article:

Robert McCartney, Jonas Boustedt, Anna Eckerdal, Jan Erik Mostrom, Kate Sanders, Lynda Thomas, and Carol Zander.

Liminal spaces and learning computing. European Journal of Engineering Education. Volume 34, Issue 4, 2009

2008-2009

This has been a pretty productive year.

As usual, for a CS ED Researcher, the year is marked by the various conferences. SIGCSE in February, ITiCSE in June and ICER in September.

I attended ITiCSE in Paris this year and was involved with papers for ITiCSE and ICER.

Zander, C., Thomas, L., Simon, B., Murphy, L., McCauley, R., Hanks, B., and Fitzgerald, S. 2009. 
Learning styles: novices decide. In Proceedings of the 14th Annual ACM SIGCSE Conference 
on innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (Paris, France, July 06 - 09, 2009).
ITiCSE '09. ACM, New York, NY, 223-227.

Moström, J. E., Boustedt, J., Eckerdal, A., McCartney, R., Sanders, K., Thomas, L., and Zander, C. 2009. 
Computer science student transformations: changes and causes. In Proceedings of the 
14th Annual ACM SIGCSE Conference on innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education 
(Paris, France, July 06 - 09, 2009). ITiCSE '09. ACM, New York, NY, 181-185.

Simon, B., Hanks, B., Murphy, L., Fitzgerald, S., McCauley, R., Thomas, L., and Zander, C. 2008. 
Saying isn't necessarily believing: influencing self-theories in computing. 
In Proceeding of the Fourth international Workshop on Computing Education Research 
(Sydney, Australia, September 06 - 07, 2008). ICER '08. ACM, New York, NY, 173-184.

Moström, J. E., Boustedt, J., Eckerdal, A., McCartney, R., Sanders, K., Thomas, L., and Zander, C. 2008. 
Concrete examples of abstraction as manifested in students' transformative experiences. 
In Proceeding of the Fourth international Workshop on Computing Education Research
(Sydney, Australia, September 06 - 07, 2008). ICER '08. ACM, New York, NY, 125-136.

Renee McCauley, Sue Fitzgerald, Gary Lewandowski, Laurie Murphy, Beth Simon, Lynda Thomas, Carol Zander
Debugging: a review of the literature from an educational perspective
Computer Science Education, Volume 18, Issue 2 June 2008 , pages 67 - 92

Sue Fitzgerald, Gary Lewandowski, Renee McCauley, Laurie Murphy, Beth Simon, Lynda Thomas, Carol Zander
Debugging: finding, fixing and flailing, a multi-institutional study of novice debuggers
Computer Science Education, Volume 18, Issue 2 June 2008 , pages 93 - 116

2007-2008

• I was involved in 2 papers (the phicer and sweden papers below) at ICER in September 07 in Atlanta - unfortunately couldn't attend.
• In March I attended SIGCSE in Portland. What a great city! The Sweden group had a paper on concepts maps and the DEBUG group on strategies.
• I also attended ITiCSE in Madrid this year. The first year I didn't attend a working group. I missed that experience. Presented a paper on mindsets written with Laurie Murphy.
• This summer I am working on learning styles, Kate's OO checklist, and more on Threshold concepts.

2006-2007

• At the start of the year I went to Canterbury for Phicer06 (The phenomenography workshop). Great fun! Paivi Kinnunen, Robert McCartney, Laurie Murphy and I wrote up our phicer work from this and it will be presented at ICER in September 07.
• At the end of the year, went to ITiCSE07 in Dundee where Kate Sanders presented the paper that we wrote last summer, and
• I also participated in a working group on debugging.
• I have joined the 'Sweden group' in addition to the 'Debugging group', as a result of which I helped write another sweden paper on student transformation that will be presented at ICER.
• Spent 5 days visiting Anna Eckerdal in Uppsala in June with these folk. Had a great time and we are set to write something up for SIGCSE.

2005-2006

• Sue Fitzgerald, Beth Simon and I continued the tracing work with a paper that we presented at ICER the first conference on CS Ed research. This was held in Seattle in October 2005 and was a great conference.
• Mark and I have been working on turning Benjy Thomasson's thesis into papers.
  • The first of these has been sent to ITiCSE for June 2006 in Bologna.
• I'm participating in a reading group in which we are looking at student debugging behaviour.

2004-2005

• Working more on models for tracing code and how students do multiple choice questions of this type. Several of the Bootstrapping people organised a working group on this at ITiCSE 2004. There is now a paper about this work in SIGCSE bulletin.

2003-2004

• This past summer was the final Bootstrapping Year. It has been an amazing experience. We completed a paper that I am sure will soon be appearing someplace.
• At Bootstrapping I got lots of encouragement and advice for work on object diagrams. This resulted in paper that has been accepted for SIGCSE 2004
• Also presented a variation on this to Diagrams 2004
• Mark Ratcliffe and I have now written a summary paper of various experiments and their impact on Vortex. I presented this at the PPIG workshop in Ireland.
• Gave an invited talk on lots of these issues at Marquette University in August.

2002-2003

• Finally wrote up the pair-programming work and submitted to SIGCSE where it was accepted.
• Mark and his band of merry students have been real busy this summer. As a result we have a few other papers in the works.
• I presented a paper at the Engineering Education 2003 conference on the Aberdyfi and Gregynog experiences.
• Was invited up to Napier University to talk about our research
• I'm thinking a lot about interaction diagrams. This has resulted in research proposal to be discussed at Bootstrapping 2003.

2001-2002

• I'm on the program committee for CSEET 2002 and also leading a workshop on how people present Software Engineering concepts to first years students. In addition Mark is presenting a paper on the Aberdyfi/Gregynog experience.
• Right after CSEET is SIGCSE and we have a had a paper accepted for that too on Learning Styles and performance in the first year.
• I have been accepted to an NSF funded workshop this summer on Bootstrapping Computer Science Research. This is really exciting!

2000-2001

• Attended DIAGRAMS 2000. This was fantastic - I learnt a lot - still trying to figure out what to do with it.
• Mark Ratcliffe, John Woodbury and I have had a paper accepted for CSEET 2001 about the work on objective testing and modelling.
• In June I went to Canterbury to ITICSE where I participated in a working group on assessment of first year programming skills. Here is a rough draft. This paper has ended up being pretty influential and is often referred to as the 'McCracken group report'.