research-article

What Is Your Biggest Pain Point?: An Investigation of CS Instructor Obstacles, Workarounds, and Desires

Authors:

Samim Mirhosseini,

Austin Z. Henley,

Chris ParninAuthors Info & Claims

SIGCSE 2023: Proceedings of the 54th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 1

Pages 291 - 297

https://doi.org/10.1145/3545945.3569816

Published: 03 March 2023 Publication History

Abstract

Computer science instructors have one of the most crucial roles in training and making educational materials. However, they face many challenges everyday that make it difficult to provide a high-quality learning experience to their students. Additionally, demand for computer science training is rapidly increasing, and to meet this demand, classrooms need to run on a larger scale, which may exacerbate instructor pain points further. While many of the previous studies in the computer science education community have focused on improving the students' learning experience, in this study we investigate computer science instructors. It is paramount to understand how instructors can be supported more effectively while continuing to improve the material they use in their courses and allow them to focus on student needs. To understand these instructor challenges, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 32 computer science instructors at universities and community colleges to ask about their experiences in preparing course material, lecturing, grading, providing feedback to students, and what they wished they could change. In this paper, we summarize our findings as themes of challenges and pain points for instructors, the consequences of not solving them, and suggested guidelines that may help resolve or reduce these pain points.

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Cited By

Poitras ECrane BDempsey DBragg TSiegel ALin M(2024)Cognitive Apprenticeship and Artificial Intelligence Coding AssistantsNavigating Computer Science Education in the 21st Century10.4018/979-8-3693-1066-3.ch013(261-281)Online publication date: 26-Feb-2024
https://doi.org/10.4018/979-8-3693-1066-3.ch013
del Carpio Gutierrez ADenny PLuxton-Reilly AMonga MLonati VBarendsen ESheard JPaterson J(2024)Automating Personalized Parsons Problems with Customized Contexts and ConceptsProceedings of the 2024 on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3649217.3653568(688-694)Online publication date: 3-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3649217.3653568
Del Carpio Gutierrez ADenny PLuxton-Reilly AStephenson BStone JBattestilli LRebelsky SShoop L(2024)Evaluating Automatically Generated Contextualised Programming ExercisesProceedings of the 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3626252.3630863(289-295)Online publication date: 7-Mar-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3626252.3630863
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Index Terms

What Is Your Biggest Pain Point?: An Investigation of CS Instructor Obstacles, Workarounds, and Desires
1. Applied computing
  1. Education
2. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)
    1. Interactive systems and tools

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

SIGCSE 2023: Proceedings of the 54th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 1

March 2023

1481 pages

ISBN:9781450394314

DOI:10.1145/3545945

General Chairs:
Maureen Doyle
Northern Kentucky University, USA
,
Ben Stephenson
University of Calgary, Canada
,
Program Chairs:
Brian Dorn
University of Nebraska at Omaha, USA
,
Leen-Kiat Soh
University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA
,
Lina Battestilli
North Carolina State University, USA

Copyright © 2023 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Published: 03 March 2023

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SIGCSE 2023: The 54th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

March 15 - 18, 2023

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Cited By

Poitras ECrane BDempsey DBragg TSiegel ALin M(2024)Cognitive Apprenticeship and Artificial Intelligence Coding AssistantsNavigating Computer Science Education in the 21st Century10.4018/979-8-3693-1066-3.ch013(261-281)Online publication date: 26-Feb-2024
https://doi.org/10.4018/979-8-3693-1066-3.ch013
del Carpio Gutierrez ADenny PLuxton-Reilly AMonga MLonati VBarendsen ESheard JPaterson J(2024)Automating Personalized Parsons Problems with Customized Contexts and ConceptsProceedings of the 2024 on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3649217.3653568(688-694)Online publication date: 3-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3649217.3653568
Del Carpio Gutierrez ADenny PLuxton-Reilly AStephenson BStone JBattestilli LRebelsky SShoop L(2024)Evaluating Automatically Generated Contextualised Programming ExercisesProceedings of the 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3626252.3630863(289-295)Online publication date: 7-Mar-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3626252.3630863
Lau SGuo P(2023)From "Ban It Till We Understand It" to "Resistance is Futile": How University Programming Instructors Plan to Adapt as More Students Use AI Code Generation and Explanation Tools such as ChatGPT and GitHub CopilotProceedings of the 2023 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research - Volume 110.1145/3568813.3600138(106-121)Online publication date: 7-Aug-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3568813.3600138
Zastudil CRogalska MKapp CVaughn JMacNeil S(2023)Generative AI in Computing Education: Perspectives of Students and Instructors2023 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)10.1109/FIE58773.2023.10343467(1-9)Online publication date: 18-Oct-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE58773.2023.10343467

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