ABSTRACT. When we are designing IT education and degree programs, knowledge about what graduates need to succeed is important. One source of such knowledge are employers. This paper presents a survey of Norwegian employers asking what they are looking for in a recently graduated IT candidate. We confirm that the so called soft skills are highly prized. Among these, we identify a less reported concept of fitting into company or team culture as the most important. Another somewhat unexpected result is that employers do not expect to see a portfolio from graduates. Among technologies mentioned, Java is at the top followed closely by C# and .NET. Python and JavaScript are also mentioned often.

Our study suggests that soft skills should be a focus throughout IT education programs.

ABSTRACT. It is important for universities to track alumni careers after graduation for both program quality improvement and accreditation requirements. The most common way of collecting such data is through alumni surveys, but historically these surveys have a low response rate. LinkedIn, a social network site that targets working professionals, provides a great platform for academic programs to connect with alumni and collect their career information. Current approaches for career analysis using LinkedIn data often require a labor-intensive manual process that is not scalable and sustainable. In this paper, we propose a system for the automated retrieval and classification of LinkedIn job titles for alumni career analysis. Our research prototype and experiment results show that the proposed system can effectively crawl LinkedIn profiles and classify job titles based on Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) job categories [1]. Our approach is first of its kind in career analysis using LinkedIn and can be easily adopted by other universities or programs to develop career analysis systems for their alumni.

ABSTRACT. Cloud computing deployment and demand has increased year over year during the prior decade and has only accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic. The rapid increase in cloud technology has also increased the need for higher education institutions to train students and re-skill or up-skill working professionals. This paper discusses the application of high impact training methodologies and their impact on student learning.

ABSTRACT. Evaluating courses and how well they are taught is an essential task for every educational institution. Evaluations support improvement of instruction and course content. They are also often an important input to annual reviews and tenure and promotion decisions. In spite of these important uses, many institutions do not feel that their course evaluations are meeting these needs as well as they would like. And faculty, students, and administrators all seem to have some level of complaint and frustration related to evaluations.

This panel will focus on course evaluation for computing degree programs. Panelists will identify problems and discuss helpful ideas for making course evaluations more useful.

ABSTRACT. This study attempted to develop a model that characterized the perceived academic performance of computing students (subsequently referred to as students) in an online learning environment. It was hypothesized that students’ academic performance in online learning could be modeled through their online learning capabilities, attitudes towards online learning, and online learning academic self-concept. Toward this goal, 264 students answered a validated survey form. Multinomial logistic regression analyses showed that perceived academic performance in terms of perceived grade attainment and perceived learning achievements had different sets of predictors. This finding indicates that perceived academic performance in an online learning environment has two distinct measures with distinct sets of predictors. Additional analyses revealed that the students can be further distinguished when the predictors were categorized by levels of academic performance. Implications to online teaching and recommendations are also discussed.

ABSTRACT. Misinformation is not new; however, the proliferation of social media has resulted in a much broader reach and instantaneous impact. Results from such proliferation were seen during the 2016 and 2020 elections in the United States. The reach of false information in the context of a U.S. Presidential election would not be the pinnacle of the harm it can cause. In the current context, the spread of false information in the middle of a pandemic and related to causes, cures, and conspiracies, has the potential to do real harm, if it has not already. Now that vaccines are widely available in some countries, this harm may result in lives being lost that did not have to be. In this paper, we explore vaccination status in the context of information sources used by individuals. The results suggest that a lack of trust and engagement in traditional news outlets is associated with lower levels of COVID-19 vaccination initiation or completion. Higher levels of engagement with sources that have been used in the past to propagate conspiracy theories, such as YouTube, are also associated with lower levels of vaccination initiation or completion. Information technology education has an opportunity and role to play with respect to improved levels of information literacy among information technology professionals.

ABSTRACT. The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in instructors in an introductory information technology course teaching the course in a hybrid learning environment in which, during any given lesson, half of the class attended the course in-person while the other half simultaneously participated remotely. We examined whether the remote group understood the material taught on a given day as well as the in-person group and devised a series of quizzes to do so which were administered over six lessons. In addition, we measured the attitudes of the students toward the learning environment.

We found that the students attending classes remotely performed worse on end-of-class assessment quizzes; the difference was small but statistically significant. Students' self-reported assessments of understanding, classroom engagement, and attentiveness were also more favorable for the in-person students. Informing students of a quiz at the end of the lesson did not statistically impact results, suggesting that it is difficult to teach a class to two different audiences, remote and in-person, simultaneously.

ABSTRACT. During peer-led intensive events (such as hackathons and coding camps), students actively assist others to learn and, in turn, benefit from an effective learning environment. In this paper, we present the results of an observational study, having as a working setting a coding camp based on Computational Thinking (CT), to explore how peer-led coding camps can create a seed effect in young students. In particular, we analyze how a practical approach to convey CT skills motivates and effectively prepares student tutors. Moreover, we compare the previous and next edition of the camp to identify the specific contribution of the tutors. We observed that students benefit in particular from CT perspectives and develop the necessary motivation to eventually serve as tutors, creating a multiplier effect that benefits a larger number of students of future cohorts. Moreover, our results show that student tutors contributed positively to the facilitation of the subsequent edition of the coding camp.

ABSTRACT. In this study, we present our findings with regard to the effectiveness of teaching computing concepts online via interactive outreach projects. These outreach activities were facilitated through our service-based learning course, the Technology Ambassador Program (TAP). The goal is to determine how effective these online outreach activities are and how we can improve upon them. The results of this study show that online outreach activities can be effective using already known teaching strategies such as repetition and hands-on activities. Surprisingly, we also found that these strategies work whether the participants are STEM or non-STEM students.

ABSTRACT. Undergraduate research has been shown to enrich education, increase retention and promote critical thinking. Research projects involving extending an already mature and relatively large code base have special value for students, as they mimic industry experience. Students have to understand the existing code structure and figure out where to add their code to extend the functionality of the system. There are obvious challenges for undergraduate students to take on such projects, including lack of knowledge at the onset of the project, limited time span (normally a semester), and limited time availability during a semester. Undergraduate institutions have additional challenges, such as high teaching load for faculty advisors and lack of graduate students who could act as mentors. In this paper, we report our experience with a relatively large project that lasted for several semesters and involved several teams of students. We managed the challenges by being flexible and carving out many mini-projects from this umbrella project, which required that the faculty advisor work closely with students. The project has successfully produced a teaching/learning tool for auto-gradable full tracing exercises. The tool has been prototyped in classrooms and helped students learn various programming constructs. We hope that our experience could encourage larger scale undergraduate projects in teaching-oriented colleges and universities.

ABSTRACT. Aviation training is a rigorous process requiring the student pilot to learn the theoretical underpinnings of multiple subjects, risk management and decision making under stress, and, of course, the skills necessary to fly a plane. The educational process is rooted in learning theory, but it utilizes several approaches more fully than in typical academic classrooms resulting in a significantly greater level of engagement. This paper documents the results of a pilot study to apply three of these approaches in an information technology programming course—the Master/Apprentice approach, a focus on task mastery vs. time on task, and shared responsibility for achieving goals. While these three approaches were implemented to a limited degree during the pilot, the successful results suggest the more complete implementation of these approaches which is also outlined in this paper.

ABSTRACT. Research have shown that introductory programming sequence have a significant impact in the retention of students in computing and engineering majors. There has been extensive research about the CS1 course [1]. Much less has been written about the CS1.5 and CS2 course, which are often gateway courses for computing and engineering majors. CS2 classes often reflect a second semester course in programming, yet when studying this course many universities have different purposes for this course. Currently, there is a wide range of variation in CS courses. Some of these are used to expose students to a wider range of languages; in other cases, a new language is used to introduce concepts such as object-oriented programming, instead of the language used in CS1. However, even though CS2 is one of the fundamental courses in computing or CS major curriculum, the impacts of the different prep pathways leading to CS2 course is not well studied [2, 3]. Due to the critical nature of the CS2 course and its importance in CS major curriculum, in many institutions, CS2 or data structure course is recognized as an attrition point for CS Majors [4]. Understanding the impacts of the different prep pathways in CS2 course performance and the CS2 curriculum itself could give insights into the attrition behaviors. This paper presents a study which is conducted to understand the impact how student performance in CS2 course gets impacted by different programming languages used in CS1.5 course.

ABSTRACT. Gamification, or the use of game mechanics in non-game applications, allows students to learn by doing. In this paper we present our experience in implementing a gamification platform in our entrepreneurship course to encourage students on investing in their peers' projects and provide them with feedback. The platform involved the interaction of 106 undergraduate female students during a semester long entrepreneurship course. We also report the results obtained after using the platform in terms of students' feedback and final remarks.

ABSTRACT. Starting back in 2015, the Information Technology Department undertook a strategic endeavor to have all Information Technology courses, both undergraduate and graduate to be “no-cost, no-textbook” courses. This strategic move was speared on by a University System of Georgia initiative – Affordable Learning Georgia. This initiative paid faculty to develop no-cost or low-cost courses that had no textbook and used faculty generated, and OER (open education resources). Since 2015, the IT department has re-created 30 undergraduate and 30 graduate courses, and 3 supporting major courses with no-cost-to students for textbooks. This effort has been carried out by all tenured, tenure-track, and lecturer/senior lecturer faculty.

Since one of the largest expenses for university students is the cost of their textbooks, this strategic initiative has had great impact on the total cost savings for students in the BSIT, BASIT, and MSIT programs. In looking at statistics at the beginning of the conversion of IT courses, an article from Applied Educational Systems, showed that textbook costs had risen 812% since 1978 and 73% since 2006 – which is four times the rate of inflation in 2013[1]. In 2020, Iowa Watch stated that most students were looking at other ways to save money for their textbooks [2]. Publishing companies are now using renting textbooks, and e-textbooks to help students save money.

It is also true, however, that for many IT and other computing courses, the textbooks are almost out-of-date when they are printed. Thus, the strategic plan to create IT degrees with no-textbook costs goes even further to save students money. This strategic endeavor has been very successful, and this panel will discuss highlights of the process, successes, challenges, and future efforts.