Prof. Kristin Stephens-Martinez

 ITiCSE 2021 is here! And this year, I’ve got a paper with Anshul Shah , Jonathan Liu , and Susan Rodger . The first two were undergraduate students. They are now both graduated and going on to grad school to study computer science education! Anshul is going to UCSD and Jonathan to Chicago . [Also posted on  medium .] The paper is “ The CS1 Reviewer App: Choose Your Own Adventure or Choose for Me! ” and is a tools paper. The paper introduces an app that Anshul originally developed with a partner in their Fall 2019 database class. We’ve been developing the app ever since with help from other undergraduate students through Duke’s summer CS+ program . Jonathan started helping last Fall. Below is a screenshot, the abstract, and a discussion of changes from the last six months since we submitted the paper. You can also check out the tool yourself at https://cs-reviewer.cs.duke.edu/ Abstract We present the CS1 Reviewer App — an online tool for an introductory Python course that all...

In the pre-covid pandemic times, I introduced a backchannel to my CS1 lecture using our class forum. And I’ve continued this practice ever since, including during the pandemic, remote teaching. This post discusses the why, the how, and what my students think of the backchannel. It also includes considerations if you are thinking of adding the practice to your own class. [Also posted on  medium .] For a little bit of history, I first tried creating a backchannel using a web chat app. This did not work. The students rarely used it. I think it was a combination of the app having some bugs and it being “yet another tool” that was part of the class’s rather large tool ecosystem. After that failed attempt, I switched to our class forum, Piazza . The class forum worked, and I’ve been using it even during the pandemic imposed remote teaching. Why? There are many reasons to add a lecture backchannel. For me, the biggest reason was lowering the barrier to ask a question. Asking a question in...