2020 SIGCSE Reviews

Nifty Web Apps: Build a Web App for Any Programming Assignment

Kevin Lin, Sumant Guha, Joe Spaniac and Andy Zheng

The proposed tutorial session would focus on supporting culturally-relevant nifty assignments by wrapping student-written code in an instructor-provided graphical user interface / web app framework, so that the product of student work is a more recognizable cultural artifact than a command-line experience.

The proposed session would closely-align with audience interest, as many attendees teach CS courses with assignments similar to those addressed here.

The proposed structure is very clear and likely to be engaging. The authors acknowledge that supporting virtual collaboration will be a challenge; my intuition as a teacher is that the proposed timeline is a bit too ambitious, particularly since it is likely that some attendees will need individual help with setup and debugging; I would suggest the authors make a plan for providing this support.

The instructors have substantial experience teaching the content of this course.

The one suggestion I would offer is to elaborate more on the pedagogical motivation for wrapping nifty assignments in web apps. The proposal argues that, in comparison to command-line interfaces, web-based GUIs provide a “much more modern app experience.” But is this better for learning? The proposal, and the proposed session, would be stronger with some consideration of the affordances of each approach and arguments for the new approach grounded in what we know and believe about learning.

Perspectives on Allyship in Academia

Adam Blank, Jamie Payton, Melissa Hovik, Kevin Lin, Christian Murphy and Rachel Rodney

The proposed special session is a panel of teachers and students who have various experiences with allyship to support inclusion in computing. The panelists position themselves not as experts informing the audience but as facilitating “an exchange of ideas, the strengthening of our community, and progress toward our common goal of inclusion in computing.”

Diversity and inclusion in computing has been an urgent topic at SIGCSE for some time, and it will be interesting to put together this panel of speakers with various experiences with allyship. However, the proposal only provides a loose definition of “allyship,” which misses opportunities to build on recent work in the SIGCSE community and potentially contributes to erasure of the underlying problems. The proposal writes, “Addressing the lack of representation and marginalization of various minority groups in computing is not solely in the purview of members of those groups: those who hold power and influence in our field have a responsibility to actively participate in solving these problems.” Without any mention of race, gender, power or privilege beyond that sentence, the proposal risks valorizing allyship and avoiding exploration of how the privileged positions from which allyship is performed contribute to oppression.

The proposed introduction, panel discussion, and moderated audience participation makes sense for the panel.

The panelists represent a variety of viewpoints with respect to their experiences and structural positions (e.g. teacher, student, industry, academia). The proposal does not address panelist diversity with respect to race, gender, class, sexuality, ability, or other categories; I felt it was beyond the scope of the proposal to research how the panelists identify themselves in other contexts.