Better teaching and learning, one paper at a time...

Giving students fair, justified and consistent feedback on their work is a cornerstone of good teaching practice. So how consistent are humans when they are grading programming assignments?

Giving students fair, justified and consistent feedback on their work is a cornerstone of good teaching practice. So how consistent are humans when they are grading programming assignments? Join us on Monday 3rd November at 2pm GMT (UTC) to discuss a paper [1], abstract below. :  We’ll be joined by the papers lead author Marcus Messer from King’s College London, who’ll give us a lightning talk summary of the research.

Join us on Monday 3rd of November to how consistent humans are when grading programming assignments

We are deeply saddened to hear of Brett Becker‘s tragic passing. Brett has been a regular speaker, supporter and attendee at SIGCSE journal club since we started in 2020 and we’ve have often discussed Brett’s papers at SIGCSE journal club. We’d planned to discuss another one of Brett’s papers at our October meetup but we’ve postponed that to a later date, in light of his passing.

In Memory of Brett Becker

Computing is widely taught in schools in the UK and Ireland, but how does the subject vary across primary and secondary education in Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland? Join us to discuss via a paper published at UKICER.com by Sue Sentance, Diana Kirby, Keith Quille, Elizabeth Cole, Tom Crick and Nicola Looker.

Join us to discuss Computing in school in the UK &amp; Ireland on Monday 5th December at 2pm GMT

The textbook has long been a mainstay of education. Although online textbooks can give students easy (and sometimes free) access to increasingly interactive resources, authors have a bewildering array of tools and publishing models to select from.

Join us on Zoom to dive into open online interactive textbook publishing on Monday 12th June at 2pm BST

Science is a broad church, full of narrow minds, trained to know ever more about even less.

Join us to discuss what counts as Computing Education Research on Monday 5th September at 2pm BST

What do employers want from Computer Science students and how good are Universities in producing graduates with what employers need? Join us to discuss via a paper by Roseanne English and Alan Hayes from UKICER 2022.

Join us to discuss graduate skills for Computer Science students on Monday 3rd October at 2pm BST

It’s all very well getting an AI to write your code for you but neither writing code or reading code are the same as understanding code. So what is going on in novices brains when they learn to actually

 understand

the code they are reading and writing?

Join us to discuss code comprehension on Monday 6th March at 2pm GMT

Employers often love academic group projects while students often loathe them. How can Agile group projects be used to develop students skills, both hard technical skills and softer people skills?

Join us to discuss using agile group projects to develop more employable graduates on Monday 13th May at 2pm BST

Rather than meeting online in January, we’ll be meeting in person. So join us at Durham University for the  annual Computing Education Practice (CEP) conference which takes place on Friday 5th January, with a pre-conference dinner in the evening of Thursday 4th January. Thanks to our program chair Jane Waite, general chair Ryan Crosby and program committee for organising this event.

Join us at Durham University on 5th January 2024 to discuss Computing Education Practice (CEP)

Why should students bother with open source software? Join us to discuss why via a viewpoint piece published by Diomidis Spinellis of Athens University and Delft University of Technology published in the July issue of Communications of the Association for &#8230; <a href="https://sigcse.cs.manchester.ac.uk/2021/08/07/sigman18/">Continue reading &#8594;</a>

Why should students bother with open source software?

Join us to discuss why computing students should contribute to open source software projects on Mon 6th September at 2pm BST

Join us to discuss Identifying Student Misconceptions of Programming by Lisa Kaczmarczyk

 et al

[1] which was voted a top paper from the last 50 years by SIGCSE members in 2019.

Join us to discuss student misconceptions in programming, March 23rd from 1pm to 2pm

Computing is too important to be left to men, but where have all the women gone? While women continue to play a key role in computing they are currently under-represented in Computer Science. How can we change this and what evidence is there for practices that get more women into computing? Join us to discuss the subject via a paper by Briana Morrison

 et al

[1] on Monday 7th February at 2pm GMT.

Join us to discuss widening participation for Women in Computing on Monday 7th February at 2pm GMT

All of the posts here now have Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) thanks to a tool called Rogue Scholar. [1] What this means is that details of our meetings are more:

 Findable

— every blog post is searchable via rich metadata and full-text search.

 Citeable

— every blog post is assigned a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), to make them citable and trackable.

SIGCSE journal club posts now have Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs)

What is the most dangerous course to teach in Computing? Join us on Monday 7th August at 2pm BST (UTC+1) to discuss an opinion piece by Tony Clear from Auckland University of Technology on this very subject. Tony argues that introductory programming (aka CS1) is the most dangerous course for educators to teach. Do you agree with him?

Join us to discuss the most dangerous course to teach in Computing on Monday 7th August at 2pm BST

Following on from our discussion of ungrading, this month we’ll be discussing pass/fail rates in introductory programming courses. [1] Here is the abstract:  Anyone is welcome to join us. As usual, we’ll be meeting on zoom, see sigcse.cs.manchester.ac.uk/join-us for details. Thanks to Brett Becker and Joseph Allen for this months #paper-suggestions via our slack channel at uk-acm-sigsce.slack.com.

Join us to discuss failure rates in introductory programming courses on Monday 1st February at 2pm GMT

The UK and Ireland Computing Education Research (UKICER) conference, takes place


on Thursday 4th of September 2025 and Friday 5th of September 2025 in Edinburgh, UK. There are also two free co-located pre-conference events taking place at the same location on Wednesday 3rd of September 2025 at 1-5 pm. UKICER will include keynotes from Keith Quille from TU Dublin, Judy Robertson and Serdar

Early bird registration for UKICER 2025 in Edinburgh now open until Monday 4th August

Teaching Assistants (both undergraduate UTA’s and graduate GTA’s) are crucial to enable teaching and learning in higher education. How can we make their jobs easier using automatic code corrections? Join us on Monday 1st August at 2pm to discuss via a paper recently published at CHI by Yana Malysheva  and Caitlin Kelleher. [1]   All welcome, details at sigcse.cs.manchester.ac.uk/join-us. Thanks to Sarah Clinch for nominating this months paper.

Join us to discuss assisting Teaching Assistants with Automatic Code Corrections on Monday 1st August at 2pm BST

As Universities transition to online teaching during the global coronavirus pandemic, there’s increasing interest in the use of pre-recorded videos to replace traditional lectures in higher education.

Join us to discuss how video production affects student engagement Monday 3rd August at 11am

Large Language Models (LLMs) can help explain programming error messages and these explanations tend to improve as the models they are based on include more source code. However, it is unknown to what extent novice programmers are able to effectively utilise these automatically generated explanations to debug their programs, with tools like GitHub CoPilot and ChatGPT. Join us to discuss a paper on this by Eddie Antonio Santos and Brett Becker.

Join us on to discuss why LLM-enhanced Programming Error Messages are Ineffective in Practice on Monday 2nd December at 2pm GMT (UTC)

Students of programming are often encouraged to use AI assistants with little consideration for their perceptions and preferences. How do students perceptions influence their usage of AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) in undergraduate programming courses? How does the use of tools like ChatGPT and GitHub CoPilot relate to students self-belief in their own programming abilities?

Join us to discuss the use of AI in undergraduate programming courses on Monday 4th Nov at 2pm GMT (UTC)

Spatial skills can be beneficial in engineering and computing, but how are they connected? Why are spatial abilities beneficial in engineering? Join us to discuss this via a paper on spatial skills training by Jack Parkinson and friends at the University of Glasgow. Here is the abstract:  All welcome.

Join us to discuss spatial skills in engineering on Monday 9th May at 2pm BST

Why do we even bother? What (exactly) is the point? In this age of AI why would

 anyone

need to learn about Computing? What value does it add, what skills do students learn and what knowledge do students actually need to develop?

Join us to discuss why we teach Computing at School (and University) on Monday 7th April at 2pm BST

Teamwork makes the dream work, or so the cliché goes. So how do you assess students ability to work together towards shared goals? Teaching students to collaborate in teams (agile or otherwise) is notoriously problematic. Dream work can rapidly descend into a nightmare struggle to motivate the free-riders while restraining the self-appointed dictators. Who gets the credit for what? What did the team agree on exactly?

Join us to discuss teaching team collaboration to engineers on Monday 10th June at 2pm BST

“

 See one, do one, teach one

” is a popular technique for teaching surgery to medical students.

Join us to discuss ten things engineers should learn about learning on Monday 5th February at 2pm GMT

Journal club is taking a break for August, we’ll be back in September for the United Kingdom &amp; Ireland Computing Education Research conference (UKICER.com), 5th &amp; 6th of September in Manchester.

Join us on 5th &amp; 6th September for UKICER.com in Manchester

Cognitive Load Theory provides a basis for understanding the learning process. It has been widely used to improve the teaching and learning of many subjects including Computer Science. But how can it help us build better

 collaborative

learning experiences? Join us to discuss via a paper by Paul Kirschner, John Sweller, Femke Kirschner &amp;

Join us to discuss cognitive load on Monday 7th June at 2pm

How good is generative AI at passing exams? What does this tell us about how we could design better assessments? Join us on Monday 4th December at 2pm GMT (UTC) to discuss a paper on this by Joyce Mahon, Brian Mac Namee and Brett Becker at University College Dublin published at UKICER earlier this year.

Join us to discuss the ability of generative AI to pass exams on 4th December at 2pm GMT

All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances. And one teacher in their time plays many parts. As students watch academic actors enter and exit their lecture theatres on University campuses around the world, what role can drama play in their teaching and learning? How can theatre and storytelling facilitate students understanding of whatever is they are supposed to be learning?

Join us to discuss the role of storytelling and drama in the lecture theatre on Monday 6th November at 2pm UTC

Learning can be an emotional process and we often don’t realise when we are actually learning. When you’re listening to an expert explain something well, it’s easy to mistake the speaker’s smooth delivery for your own understanding. You might

 feel

like you’re learning, but

 actual

learning is often hard work and feels uncomfortable.

Join us to discuss  the feeling of learning ❤️ (vs. actual learning) on Monday 4th April at 2pm BST

Java is widely used as a teaching language in Universities around the world, but what wider problems does it present for novice programmers? Join us to discuss via a paper published in TOCE by Neil Brown, Pierre Weill-Tessier, Maksymilian Sekula, Alexandra-Lucia Costache and Michael Kölling.

Join us to discuss novice use of Java on Monday 7th November at 2pm GMT

Our next meeting will be at Computing Education Practice (CEP) in Durham on 7th January, if you’re joining us, we’ll see you there. cepconference.webspace.durham.ac.uk If you can’t make it to Durham this year (registration closed last week), our next UK ACM SIGCSE journal club meeting is on the first Monday in February, that’s

 Monday 3rd February at 2pm GMT

(UTC+1). What paper should we discuss?

Send us your SIGCSE journal club paper suggestions by 10th January 2025

Both graduate and undergraduate teaching assistants (TAs) are crucial to facilitating students learning. What goes on inside the mind of a teaching assistant? How can understanding this help us train TA’s better for the roles they play in education? Join us to discuss via a paper by Julia M. Markel and Philip Guo.

Join us to discuss what goes on in the mind of Teaching Assistants on Monday 10th May at 2pm BST

Join us on Monday 7th September to discuss using theory in Computing Education Research at 11am. We’ll be talking about a paper [1] by Greg L. Nelson and Amy Ko at the University of Washington:   Details of the zoom meeting will be posted on our slack workspace at uk-acm-sigsce.slack.com. If you don’t have access to the workspace, send me (Duncan Hull) an email to request an invite to join the workspace.

Join us to discuss using theory in Computing Education Research, 7th September at 11am

Students sense of belonging has been shown to be associated with many attributes such as motivation and persistence. But what makes people feel like they belong in Computer Science? Join us on Monday 6th December at 2pm GMT to discuss belonging via a paper by Catherine Mooney and Brett Becker. [1] This won a best paper award at SIGCSE 2021.

Join us to discuss sense of belonging in Computer Science on Mon 6th Dec at 2pm GMT

Learning sciences aims to improve our theoretical understanding of how people learn while computing education investigates with how people learn to compute. Historically, these fields existed independently, although attempts have been made to merge them. Where do these disciplines overlap and how can they be integrated further?

Join us to discuss learning sciences for computing education on Monday 12th April at 2pm BST

The pandemic has accelerated changes to the way we teach and learn. Join us to discuss the Covid-19 shutdown:

 when studying turns digital, students want more structure

: a paper by Vegard Gjerde, Robert Gray, Bodil Holst and Stein Dankert Kolstø on the effects of the pandemic on Physics Education at a Norwegian University. [1] All welcome, as usual, we’ll be meeting on Zoom see sigcse.cs.manchester.ac.uk/join-us for details.

Join us to discuss when study turns digital on Monday 2nd August at 2pm BST

The use of git is widespread in software engineering, however many novices struggle to get to grips with its complex distributed information model, challenging command line syntax and leaky abstractions. To investigate these pitfalls, we’ll be talking about a paper published by Santiago Perez De Rosso and Daniel Jackson on

 Purposes, Concepts, Misfits, and a Redesign of Git

at OOPSLA. [1] From the abstract: So what’s wrong with git?

Join us to discuss learning git on Monday 5th October at 2pm

Is generative AI making students more wise and productive or is it encouraging lazy learners to cut too many corners? Join us on Monday 7th July at 2pm BST (UTC+1) to discuss a recently published review paper investigating the effect of ChatGPT on students’ learning by Jin Wang and Wenxiang Fan at Hangzhou Normal University in China [1]. From the abstract:  The authors of the paper have been invited to join us to give a lightning talk summary.

Join us to discuss the effect of&nbsp;ChatGPT on students’ learning on Monday July 7th at 2pm BST

There is no “I” in Team, but there is an “I” in University. Teamwork is a core skill taught in many Computing degrees. How can instructors help students improve their teamwork skills though collaborative projects?

Join us to discuss team based capstone projects on Monday 3rd February at 2pm UTC

Many employers struggle to recruit and retain software engineers with the skills needed to contribute to the modern workplace. What do employers and educators need to do to address this wicked problem? Join us to discuss the broken pipeline problem and its potential solutions in cybersecurity and beyond on Monday 1st July at 2pm BST.

Join us to discuss the broken software engineering pipeline on Monday 1st of July at 2pm BST

Some competencies in software engineering are either difficult to teach and/or hard to measure, especially in a purely academic environment. Professional competencies in software engineering are often easier to learn in the workplace, rather than taught in a University lab, workshop or lecture theatre. What evidence can students provide of the professional competencies they develop while employed in a, workplace?

Join us to discuss developing students professional competencies in software engineering on Monday 8th April at 2pm BST (UTC +1)

How can we increase participation of women in computing? How can we recruit and retain more women to study computing? Curricula are an obvious place to start. Understanding student motivations for their learning choices can help educators develop more effective programs of study.

Join us to discuss women’s elective choices in Computing on Monday 4th March at 2pm GMT

Why do some students achieve more than others? Students goals, their belief in their ability to reach those goals and their prior experience are key factors. But how do they interplay? Join us for our monthly ACM SIGCSE journal club meetup on Zoom to discuss a prize-winning paper [1] on this topic by Hannu Pesonen, Juho Leinonen, Lassi Haaranen and Arto Hellas from Aalto University in Finland and the University of Auckland.

Join us to discuss the goals and self-efficacy of students on Monday 2nd October at 2pm BST (UTC+1)

Microcredentials are mini-qualifications that allow learners to provide evidence of their broader skills alongside their traditional academic awards. How can these awards be integrated into existing educational qualifications?

Join us on Monday 4th September at 2pm BST to discuss microcredentials in Higher Education

A good theory can be the most concentrated form of knowledge. By encapsulating an infinite number of cases, a theory can make predictions rather than just describing a finite number of disjointed facts. So how does theory feature in research about assessment and feedback? Join us on Monday 3rd July at 2pm BST (UTC+1) to discuss a paper investigating this question by Juuso Henrik Nieminen, Margaret Bearman &amp;

Join us to discuss how theory is used in assessment and feedback on  Monday 3rd July at 2pm BST

Programming is hard, or at least it used to be. AI code generators like Amazon’s CodeWhisperer, DeepMind’s AlphaCode, GitHub’s CoPilot, Replit’s Ghostwriter and many others now make programming easier, at least for

 some

people,

 some

of the time. What opportunities and challenges do these new tools present for educators?

Join us on zoom to discuss the implications of programming getting easier,  Monday 15th May at 2pm BST

Maybe you wrote that code and maybe you didn’t. If AI helped you, such as the OpenAI Codex in GitHub Copilot, how did it solve your problem? How much did Artificial Intelligence help or hinder your solution? Join us to discuss a paper by Michel Wermelinger from the Open University published in the SIGCSE technical symposium earlier this month on this very topic.

Join us to discuss using AI to solve simple programming problems on Monday 3rd April at 2pm BST

More and more software development tools are available in the cloud, with tools like Replit, CodingRooms, GitHub Codespaces, Amazon Web Services Cloud9, JetBrains and Eclipse all offering online tools for developers to code collaboratively in the cloud. Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) which have traditionally been available as “fatter” clients are increasingly available as “thinner” web-based clients running in a browser.

Join us to discuss Collaborative Coding in the Cloud on Monday 6th February at 2pm GMT

Automatic code generators have been with us a while, but how do modern AI powered bots perform on introductory programming assignments? Join us to discuss the implications of the OpenAI Codex on introductory programming courses on Monday 4th July at 2pm BST. We’ll be discussing a paper by James Finnie-Ansley, Paul Denny, Brett A. Becker, Andrew Luxton-Reilly and James Prather [1] for our monthly SIGCSE journal club meetup on zoom.

Join us to discuss the implications of the Open AI codex on introductory programming Monday 4th July at 2pm BST

print(’Hello World!’) is all very well but it doesn’t help physics students solve the Schrödinger equation. Join us for our next journal club meeting on Monday 13th June at 2pm BST where we’ll be discussing a paper by Lloyd Cawthorne from the Department of Physics and Astronomy on teaching programming to undergraduate Physics students. From the abstract:   All welcome, physicists, non-physicists, programmers and non-programmers alike.

Join us to discuss teaching programming to Physics students on Monday 13th June at 2pm BST

It’s no secret that both Computer Science and engineering have inequalities in their participation. Join us to re-examine and discuss these inequalities via a paper by Maria Kallia and Quintin Cutts [1] on Monday 4th October at 2pm BST. This won a best paper award at ICER 2021. From the abstract:   All welcome. As usual, we’ll be meeting on zoom. Thanks to Steven Bradley for suggesting this months paper.

Join us to re-examine inequalities in Computer Science participation on Monday 4th October at 2pm BST

Somewhere between the traditional division of non-programmers and programmers, there is a third category of

 conversational programmers

. These are people who can (or want) to learn programming so that they can speak in the “programmer’s language” and work better with software engineers. Join us to discuss conversational programming via paper by Katie Cunningham et al. [1] This won a best paper award at SIGCSE 2022: All welcome.

Join us to discuss conversational programming on Monday 7th March at 2pm GMT

If content is king, then his rule is tyrannical. Bill Gates once remarked that “Content is King” but In the kingdom of education, how much do educators oppressively inflict content on their learners? What can be done to reduce the tyranny of content? We’ll be discussing this via a paper by Christina I. Petersen et al, here’s the abstract:  All welcome.

Join us to discuss the tyranny of content on Monday 5th July at 2pm BST

The more time students spend thinking about their grades, the less time they spend thinking about their learning. Ungraded  (pass or fail) assessment provides an alternative to letter grading (A, B, C etc) which can address this issue.

Join us to discuss ungraded assessment on Monday 4th January at 2pm GMT

With great power comes great responsibility. [1] Given their growing power in the twenty-first century, computer scientists have a duty to society to use that power responsibly and justly. How can we teach this kind of social responsibility and ethics to engineering students?

Join us to discuss teaching social responsibility and justice in Computer Science on Monday 1st March at 2pm GMT

Peer instruction is a tried and tested technique for teaching popularised by the Harvard physicist Eric Mazur. Join us to discuss the use of peer instruction in introductory computing via a paper by Leo Porter and his collaborators,  [1] which  won an award from the ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium Top Ten Papers of All Time.

Join us to discuss peer instruction on Monday 7th December at 2pm GMT

Minimal guidance is a popular approach to teaching and learning. This technique advocates teachers taking a back seat to facilitate learning by letting their students

 get on with it

. Minimal guidance comes in many guises including constructivism, discovery learning, problem-based learning, experiential learning, active learning, inquiry-based learning and even lazy teaching.

Join us to discuss why minimal guidance doesn’t work on Monday 2nd November at 2pm GMT

At our next journal club, on Monday 1st June at 11am, we’ll be discussing blended learning. We’ve picked a paper from “paper suggestions” channel at  uk-acm-sigsce.slack.com. The paper is Preparing for the Digital University, a review commissioned by the Gates Foundation. If you’ve not got access to the workspace yet, ping me or Alcywn Parker and we’ll add you to the group.

Join us to discuss blended learning, Monday 1st June at 11am on Zoom

Join us for our next journal club meeting on Monday 6th July at 3pm, the papers we’ll be discussing below come from the #paper-suggestions channel of our slack workspace at uk-acm-sigsce.slack.com. Show me the pedagogy!

Join us to discuss blended learning &amp; pedagogy in Computer Science on Monday 6th July at 3pm

ACM SIGCSE&#160;Journal Club&#160;returns Monday 4th May at 11am. The paper we’re discussing this month is “Relating Natural Language Aptitude to Individual Differences in Learning Programming Languages” by Chantel Prat et al published in&#160;Scientific Reports. [1] Here’s the abstract: This experiment &#8230; <a href="https://sigcse.cs.manchester.ac.uk/2020/04/28/sigman2/">Continue reading &#8594;</a>

ACM SIGCSE Journal Club returns Monday 4th May at 11am.

Join us to discuss learning programming languages: Monday 4th May at 11am

What do your students

 know

? What can they actually

 do

and what

 approaches

can students develop to solve challenging problems? The KSA framework from arm.com aims to map out the knowledge, skills and abilities that students (and employees) require to succeed as technical professionals. Join us on Monday 6th October at 2pm GMT to discuss this framework its authors.

Join us on Monday 6th of October to discuss Knowledge, Skills &amp; Abilities (KSAs) with arm.com

What can students learn from Generative AI chatbots like ChatGPT? What roles can chatbots play in collaborative engineering? Tutor? Facilitator? Pair programmer? Task master? Vibe coder? Coursework cheater? Or something else?

What can students learn from Generative AI chatbots like ChatGPT? What roles can chatbots play in collaborative engineering? Tutor? Facilitator? Pair programmer? Task master? Vibe coder? Coursework cheater? Or something else? Join us at 2pm GMT on Monday 1st December to discuss a position paper on this published at ITiCSE earlier this year.