Working group reports from ITiCSE on Innovation and technology in computer science education
Michael E. Caspersen, Dan Joyce, Don Goelman, Ian Utting · 2002
Working Groups have been a key part of the annual ITiCSE conference from its beginning. The concept is to bring together a small number of people interested in a topic for intense interaction over the week of ITiCSE. The work actually begins long before the conference via email and continues afterwards. Arriving early, Working Groups work through the conference, taking some time out for presentations and a few talks. The coordinator tries to get the participants to take a few breaks in thee work, but it is quite intense. It is also very rewarding.Many of the groups have been meeting at ITiCSE and elsewhere for a number of years and established working communities have formed.After the conference the groups have some time to polish their reports. The reports have been commented on by referees, and have been then rewritten again in light of these comments. The reports here are the results of this long process.Five Groups met in Aarhus in 2002, and, as usual, they cover a wide range of important topics;Tom Naps and Guido Roessling continue a long lived group working on visualization. The focus this year was on improving the educational impact of visualization.John Dougherty formed a new group on Fluency in Information Technology. The starting premise is that literacy is no longer sufficient for today's students.Martin Dick and Judy led a group on academic honesty covering many aspects of this vital topic. They were seeking practical solutions for educators.Peter Henderson's group continues to work on the mathematical element of computing, this year focusing on developing materials for mathematical thinking.Pam Lawhead and Constance Bland formed a group to bring together resources on using Lego Mindstorms to teach programming and problem solving.Vicki Almstrum at Austin, Texas, has ably documented the activities of Working Groups over the years. See http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/csed/iticse/ for full specifications of the Groups' original stated purpose, and full details (including pictures) of the participants. Equivalent information is available going back to the first ITiCSE conference in 1996.