SIGCSE Technical Symposium 2021 – See you there!

This week’s post features Monica McGill (CEO, CSEdResearch.org) and the ongoing work at CSEdResearch.org that will be presented at the 2021 SIGCSE Technical Symposium.

This year’s SIGCSE Tech Symposium will be quite different than last year’s (it will happen!) and prior years (virtual, rather than in person). But that doesn’t mean we will be less active in presenting highlights from some of our work.

If you haven’t heard of the SIGCSE Technical Symposium (TS), let me introduce you. This symposium (or conference, if you prefer) was established over 50 years ago and is a conference for computer science educators who teach Pre-school on up. It’s a great place to meet people and hear about research and experiences of computer science educators.

This is our first official presentation at SIGCSE as an official non-profit organization–and we are happy to share some of our work.

• Workshop – Sign up for Workshop #102 Efficient, Effective, and Ethical Education Research Data Management and Sustainability to hear me, Stacey Sexton (SageFox Consulting Group), Alan Peterfreund (SageFox Consulting Group), and Maria Praetzellis (University of California, Office of the President) discuss data management of your education research data.
• Birds of a Feather – I will be joined by Sloan Davis (Google) for a discussion around Improving K-12 CS Education Research via Tools and Resources for the Community. We’ll cover some known tools, and we’ll have an active discussion with participants to hear your pain points in research and what tools and resources might be useful to you to make your life easier.
• Paper Presentation – Come here about our work Piloting the Air Force JROTC Cyber Academy for High School Students with my co-authors Sarah Lee (University of Southern Mississippi), Litany Lineberry (Mississippi State University), John Sands (Moraine Valley Community College) and Leigh Ann DeLyser (CSforALL). This experience report discusses the United States Air Force Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) piloted a Cyber Academy to teach cybersecurity skills and career awareness to high school JROTC cadets.
• Demonstration – Join Emily Schroeder (Knox College) and me in a demonstration of The REDCap Survey Platform: Using Standardized Instruments on a Single Platform for Collecting Research Study Data.
• Panel – Join Thomas Price (North Carolina State University), Baker Franke (Code.org), Shuchi Grover (Looking Glass Ventures & Stanford University) and me for an engaging discussion on Using Data to Inform Computing Education Research and Practice. This panel brings together four panelists at various stages of work collecting and analyzing large datasets in different fields of computing education. The panelists will each discuss their current work, the unique aspects of their data, and how that data fits into the larger landscape of computing education.
• Google CS-ER supported work – Join me as I discuss a study we are currently involved in with the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) to examine the process of creating teacher practice briefs with teachers and researchers with a focus on equity. This qualitative study will see the production of three teacher practice briefs targeting different problems of practice for middle school teachers and will lay the foundation for creating more briefs in the future.

I’ll also be at the ACM-W booth on Monday afternoon, so if you’re interested in learning more about ACM-W and what we do, feel free to stop by and chat.

Times and dates for each of these talks are provided below. I hope to see you at SIGCSE Technical Symposium 2021!

Monica McGill is the CEO & Founder of CSEdResearch.org. She has worked in industry, for the government, and in academia over the last 30 years and now focuses on computer science education research, mostly at the K-12 level. She is also the Chair of ACM-W North America and a CSTA board member. Learn more about the history of CSEdResearch.org here.