SIGCSE 2016, the flagship conference on computer science education, took place in Memphis TN in March, with a big\u00a0collection of Virginia Tech students, faculty, and alumni taking on a variety of important roles. My grad student Mohammed Seyam and I presented a paper on teaching mobile software development with Pair Programming. Cliff Shaffer and his students and alums had multiple papers and exhibits.\u00a0Greg Kulczycki served on a panel. \u00a0And, most notably, Steve Edwards\u00a0was program co-chair this year!<\/p>\n
Mohammed Seyam\u2019s paper and talk focused on Teaching Mobile Development with Pair Programming<\/a>. It explored his investigation\u00a0of Pair Programming (PP) when teaching mobile software design in an upper level CS course. PP has been shown to be useful in some teaching situations, but Mohammed is the first to look at it in\u00a0teaching mobile. He also had an entry in the graduate\u00a0Student Research Competition that took a broader look\u00a0at the balance between PP, hands-on activities, and traditional lectures when teaching mobile software design, for which he was named a finalist.<\/p>\n As always, SIGCSE featured interesting and engaging keynotes. John Sweller talked about the impacts of cognitive load theory on CS education. Barbara Boucher Owens and Jan Cuny received service awards from SIGCSE and gave keynotes that reflected their life experiences. It was particularly good to see Jan Cuny receive an award given her contributions to diversity in leading broadening participation in computing programs at the NSF. Karen Lee Ashcraft talked about breaking the glass slipper, and how organizations historically (and continually) have crafted jobs and workplaces\u00a0that encourage stereotypes. This was a bolder and more developed version of a talk she gave at NCWIT\u00a02015<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n