The CS-Ed Podcast

03/02/2025

Here’s a nice concrete example of how a 300-student probability and statistics course for CS does alternative grading in the Netherlands!

How we used competency-based grading for 300 computer science students at a Dutch university

27/01/2025

Here's a great podcast episode talking about classroom assessment techniques organized into different categories and with concrete examples.

Todd Zakrajsek shares about Classroom Assessment Techniques on episode 554 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast

20/01/2025

To continue our series on GenAI posts, here’s a more practical, concrete one explaining how a math course is handling GenAI.

It's not ideal and I have a lot of questions.

13/01/2025

Here is a podcast episode on AI and cheating. We enjoyed it because it encouraged us to think about why students cheat, acknowledged that AI has changed things, and discussed potential ways to make things better.

In a new book, a long-time expert on academic integrity argues that understating why students cheat is key to making adjustments in teaching to prevent ...

06/01/2025

Dr. Luther Tychonievich from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign shares with us his multi-step Q&A process where he solicits questions from his students to get more diverse questions and strongly signals to them that he wants questions. Dr. Tychonievich goes into detail about how to shorten the exercise if you have less time, as well as considerations and ways to respond to the questions when an answer is not necessarily appropriate.

A way to get more questions from students.

16/12/2024

Our host wrote a blog post on her thoughts about generative AI and teaching. The focus is on the ideas/terms/theories that drove her thinking and what she is currently doing about it. Perhaps something useful to help structure your thinking!

Generative AI (GenAI) exploded into the academic teaching landscape in 2021, and we have been coping ever since. I’ve been quietly thinking…

02/12/2024

The beginning of December means many in academia are starting to plan for final exams. Do you have a sense of how long your exam is? Here's a blog post by our host on how to find out! Ask someone to time themselves as they take your exam, then multiply. Though, how much you multiply depends on the course and who tested the exam.

A blog on teaching computer science and being a professor by Prof. Kristin Stephens-Martinez at Duke University.

25/11/2024

This season has us thinking about gratitude and what we value, reminding us of this digital well-being workbook that we posted about before. It talks about aligning digital behavior with our values, which seems an excellent thing to think about this time of year. Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

18/11/2024

Here is a blog post by Grading for Growth on Robert Talbert’s four-level grading rubric, along with useful details on how to collapse it into three or two levels. It also has concrete examples!

As approaches to alternative grading evolve, so do the tools we use

11/11/2024

Audience survey! What did you think of the paired peer instruction episodes? Tell us in this super short survey.

Audience survey! Hello all, this is a quick audience survey to better understand what you all like about the podcast!

04/11/2024

In this episode, we got to continue talking to Dr. Beth Simon about peer instruction from the prior episode’s peer instruction Teaching Practice Byte. Our host, Kristin Stephens-Martinez, shares her experience with peer instruction and asks Beth for help to improve. The episode ends with three main takeaways that Kristin has since used in her course.

Our host shares her use of peer instruction and consults with Dr. Simon on how to make them better.

28/10/2024

Turing Award winner David Patterson shares 16 life lessons. And we especially appreciate that half are personal/people-focused! https://cacm.acm.org/opinion/life-lessons-from-the-first-half-century-of-my-career/ from ACM - Association for Computing Machinery

Membership in ACM includes a subscription to Communications of the ACM (CACM), the computing industry's most trusted source for staying connected to the world of advanced computing.

21/10/2024

Want to better understand what your students understand? Consider formative assessments! "5 Conditions for Getting Formative Assessment Right" https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/effective-formative-assessment/ via Cult of Pedagogy

Checking for understanding in the middle of instruction is essential for student success. Let's make sure we're doing it effectively.

14/10/2024

CS Teaching Tips has an excellent tips sheet on Peer Instructions! It includes ideas of what to assess in peer instructions, how to frame them to students, and what to go over after doing the peer instruction. There are even sentences you can directly say to students if you aren't sure how to start!

Below are the tip sheet about the active learning technique Peer Instruction. If you'd like to print all the tip sheets together, you can do so here. Printable Tip Sheet

07/10/2024

Here's a podcast on assessment reform now that AI is here. https://teachinginhighered.com/podcast/assessment-reform-for-the-age-of-artificial-intelligence/

In the episode, at Teaching in Higher Ed they discuss with Jason Lodge Australia's resource on assessment reform given AI https://www.teqsa.gov.au/guides-resources/resources/corporate-publications/assessment-reform-age-artificial-intelligence

Assessment reform for the age of artificial intelligence The emergence of generative artificial intelligence (AI), while creating new possibilities for learning and teaching, has exacerbated existing assessment challenges within higher education. However, there is considerable expertise, based on ev...

30/09/2024

We've got teaching assistants on our mind today, so here's a paper about a TA training program that includes a link to their curriculum. The paper discusses how and what they teach and details how it was adjusted for different time constraints.

Felix Muzny and Michael D. Shah. 2023. Teaching Assistant Training: An Adjustable Curriculum for Computing Disciplines. In Proceedings of the 54th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 1 (SIGCSE 2023). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 430–436. https://doi.org/10.1145/3545945.3569866

23/09/2024

Here's an interesting podcast on grades. Halfway through, a takeaway that lit up my brain was that grades are a way to bring a student into the learning environment. While being in the learning environment doesn't guarantee learning, I think it's important to acknowledge that grades could help students learn when they are not intrinsically motivated.

Josh Eyler shares even more problems with grades on episode 533 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast

16/09/2024

Academic job ads are starting to pop up, so for all the job seekers out there, here's a reminder from our archives that there are many kinds of faculty jobs, including ones at primarily undergraduate institutions.

All the ins and outs of working at primarily undergraduate institutions (PUIs).