Project Summary

Project Goal: The goal of this project is to document and disseminate effective computer science teaching practices. We have interviewed over 150 CS teachers, developed over 1300 tips, and made 11 best-of tip-sheets.

Funding: This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1339404 and 1821136. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Team

Colleen Lewis
Colleen Lewis (PI) – Harvey Mudd College (lewis@cs.hmc.edu)

Colleen Lewis is the McGregor-Girand Associate Professor of CS at Harvey Mudd College. Her PhD is from UC Berkeley in education. Her other research investigates students’ access or lack of access to computer science by exploring students’ attitudes, students’ use of out-of-domain knowledge, classroom practices, and social interaction.

Tom McKlin
Tom McKlin (Co-PI) – SageFox Consulting Group

Dr. McKlin has over a decade of experience conducting research and evaluation of federal programs for the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Education, and the Department of Defense. Before launching is own research firm, Dr. McKlin formerly directed evaluation activity for Georgia Tech’s Center for Education Integrating Science, Mathematics, and Computing (CEISMC) and has served as guest lecturer at Georgia State University, University of Georgia, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Tiffany Berry
Tiffany Berry (Evaluator) – Claremont Graduate University

Tiffany Berry is a Research Associate Professor in the Division of Behavioral and Organizational Sciences. She is a Core Faculty member in Positive Developmental Psychology, regularly teaching and providing research supervision to masters and doctoral developmental students. In addition, she is an active educational program evaluator at the Claremont Evaluation Center (CEC) at CGU. Dr. Berry’s research focuses primarily on evaluating educational programs, including K-12 educational curricula, early childhood education programs, after school programs, and comprehensive school reform initiatives.

Ari Schlesinger
Ari Schlesinger (Research Project Manager) – Georgia Institute of Technology

Ari Schlesinger is the Research Project Manager for CSTeachingTips at Harvey Mudd College and a PhD Student a Georgia Institute of Technology in Human-Centered Computing. Her research focuses on social change and human factors in HCI (human computer interaction) and social computing. Previously, she worked on the DOCC (Distributive Open Collaborative Course) with FemTechNet, a network of scholars whose focus is on feminism, science, media, and technology.

Leslie Aaronson
Leslie Aaronson – Foshay Learning Center's Technology Academy

Leslie Aaronson is the Lead Teacher and Coordinator of Foshay Learning Center’s Technology Academy. In 2012 she was awarded Teacher of the Year by LAUSD for her work. She has written several articles and given keynote addresses about how she prepares her students for the careers of the future. Leslie sits on the advisory board for NCWIT’s K-12 Alliance, the Computer Science Department of El Camino College, and the Girls Academic Leadership Academy.

Mackenzie Leake

Mackenzie Leake - Stanford University
Mackenzie Leake is a researcher on the CSTeachingTips team and a PhD student at Stanford University. Mackenzie is working with Maneesh Agrawala a computer Graphics Professor at Stanford University.

Summer Researchers

Photo of Isaiah Fujii Bresnihan, Mary Celestin Yeabtsega Birhane, Jill Cardamon, and Kaitlyn Zeichick

2018 - Isaiah Fujii Bresnihan, Mary Celestin Yeabtsega Birhane, Jill Cardamon, and Kaitlyn Zeichick

Photo of Jonathan Raygoza, Julia Wang, Marco Valdez, Katie Erickson, Yu (Steve) Zhong, Carolina Valencia, Colleen Lewis, Eleanor Rackoff, Emily Cao

2017 - Back: Jonathan Raygoza, Julia Wang, Marco Valdez, Katie Erickson, Yu (Steve) Zhong;
Front: Carolina Valencia, Colleen Lewis, Eleanor Rackoff, Emily Cao

Photo of Mimi Kome, Laurel Schy, Kofi Sekyi-Appiah, Nicholas Draper, Nathan Justin, Ana Maria Flores, Angela Zhao, Jason Dwyer, Colleen Lewis, Emily Cao, Nathaniel Diamant, Erica Goodwin

2016 - Back: Mimi Kome, Laurel Schy, Kofi Sekyi-Appiah, Nicholas Draper;
Middle: Nathan Justin, Ana Maria Flores, Angela Zhao, Jason Dwyer, Colleen Lewis;
Front: Emily Cao, Nathaniel Diamant, Erica Goodwin

Photo of Ari Schlesinger, Kim Tran, Rilke Griffin, Christine Goins, Colleen Lewis, M Sangheetha Naidu, Mackenzie Leake, Marina Knittel

2015 - Back: Ari Schlesinger, Kim Tran, Rilke Griffin, Christine Goins, Colleen Lewis;
Front: M Sangheetha Naidu, Mackenzie Leake, Marina Knittel

Photo of Dylan Baker, Marisol Beck, Linnea Nelson, Ari Schlesinger, Neftali Dominguez, Justis Allen, Vidushi Ojha, Colleen Lewis, Samantha Stilson, Nava Dallal

2014 - Back: Dylan Baker, Marisol Beck, Linnea Nelson, Ari Schlesinger, Neftali Dominguez, Justis Allen;
Front: Vidushi Ojha, Colleen Lewis, Samantha Stilson, Nava Dallal

Advisory Board and Expert Coordinators

Lecia Barker
Lecia Barker - University of Texas at Austin, NCWIT

Lecia Barker is a Senior Research Scientist for the National Center for Women & IT and a Research Associate Professor in the School of Information at the University of Texas at Austin.

Ben Chun
Ben Chun – Steve and Kate’s Camp

Ben Chun is a former high school teacher in the city of San Francisco and has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Mike Clancy
Mike Clancy – University of California, Berkeley

Mike Clancy is Senior Lecturer Emeritus in the EECS Department at the University of California, Berkeley. Clancy is one of the leading CS education researchers in the U.S., and his experience over 35 years spans a wide variety of pedagogy: self-paced instruction, activities to support broadening participation, case studies, pair programming, peer instruction, and learning in a supervised lab environment. He won ACM SIGCSE’s award for "Lifetime Contributions to Computer Science Education" in 2009.

Suzy Crowe
Suzy Crowe – Milton High School

Suzy Crowe is a National Board Certified teacher with an Ed.S. in Teaching and Learning, has taught CS for 13 years, and co-founded the Georgia Chapter of the Computer Science Teacher Association.

Joanna Goode
Joanna Goode – University of Oregon

Joanna Goode is an assistant professor of education at the University of Oregon. For the past decade, Dr. Goode has studied, written and presented extensively about how teachers can create opportunities for more underrepresented students, particularly girls and students of color, to explore computing topics in school.

Barbara Ericson
Barbara Ericson – Georgia Institute of Technology

Barbara Ericson is the Director of Computing Outreach for the Institute for Computing Education at Georgia Tech, has provided professional learning to over 500 high school computer science teachers, co-authored four computing textbooks, and serves as an Advanced Placement Computer Science A exam reader.

Michelle Friend
Michelle Friend – Stanford University

Michelle Friend Hutton is the Board Vice President for the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) and a graduate student at Stanford University. Before beginning graduate school at Stanford she taught CS at the pre-college level for ten years.

Ria Galanos
Ria Galanos – Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology

Ria Galanos teaches computer science full time at the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, serves on the Board of Directors of the National Consortium of Specialized Secondary Schools for Math, Science, and Technology, is an educational consultant with Google, and serves as a reader for the Advanced Placement Computer Science A exam.

Dan Garcia
Dan Garcia – University of California, Berkeley

Dan Garcia is a Senior Lecturer S.O.E. in the EECS Department at the University of California, Berkeley. He serves as the PI for "The Beauty and Joy of Computing" AP Principles course pilot, is an advisor to the College Board’s AP CS Principles project, an ACM distinguished educator, and is project personnel at the Ensemble Computing Portal, an NSF sponsored website for computing educators.

Mike Guzdial
Mark Guzdial – Georgia Institute of Technology

Mark Guzdial has a joint Ph.D. in computer science and education, is a Professor in the College of Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology, is the former director of Undergraduate Programs, and invented the Media Computation approach to teaching introductory computing.

Maria Klawe
Maria Klawe – Harvey Mudd College

Maria Klawe is the President of Harvey Mudd College (HMC), former Dean of Engineering and Professor of Computer Science at Princeton University, and has led the work to increase the percentage of women in CS at HMC from 12% to 40%.

Beth Simon
Beth Simon – University of California, San Diego

Beth Simon is the Director for the Center for Teaching Development and a Lecturer S.O.E. in the Computer Science and Engineering department at the University of California San Diego. She serves as Co-PI on Computing Principles for All Students’ Success (ComPASS), and is revising the curriculum for lower-division CS courses to attract and retain a broader spectrum of students.