Creating a Disciplinary Commons in
Computer Science
Josh Tenenberg
University of Washington, Tacoma
[email protected]
faculty.washington.edu/jtenenbg
SIGCSE 2006 Special Projects Showcase
March 3, 2006
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Teaching as a private activity
• Privatized teaching
spaces
“Aside from his
syllabi and fading
memories, he had
no real record of
what happened in
those award
winning courses”
• Cross-institutional
border skirmishes
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Deprivatize teaching:
Faculty meet on common
ground, and the practices
and artifacts produced
become “common
property”, available for use
and adaptation by others.
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From private to public: creating a
scholarly community
• ~12 CS teachers meeting face-to-face, monthly
throughout academic year
• Crossing institutional borders: CS faculty from
different institutions engaged in common
practices and common goals but with different
contexts
• Talking about teaching
• Parallel construction and mutual critique of
Course Portfolios (idea from Sally Fincher)
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An Examined Life of the Teaching Self
• The course portfolio, “focuses on the unfolding of a
single course, from conception to results” (Hutchings,
1998). It provides a coherent narrative connecting
course goals to instructional elements to student
learning.
• Constructing a course portfolio is both archeological
dig through self- and student-generated artifacts and
reflective interrogation of taken-for-granted beliefs
about thinking and learning.
“Watch ... any teacher ... and you'll be struck by how much
of what they do is steered by notions of ‘what the children's
minds are like and how to help them learn,’ even though
they may not be able to verbalize their pedagogical
principles.” (Bruner, 1996)
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Sessions & Portfolio Overview
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Sept:
Oct:
Nov:
Dec:
Jan:
Feb:
Mar:
Apr:
May:
June:
Washington Instantiation
Course Objectives
Institutional and Curricular Context
Course Content
Teaching Methods
Rationale (Situated Teaching Philosophy)
Evidence of Student Learning
Grading
Self- and Peer-Observation
Lessons Learned & External P’flio Review
Complete Portfolio
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Two Parallel Instantiations
Washington State
– Leader: Josh Tenenberg
– http://depts.washington.edu/comgrnd/
United Kingdom
– Leader: Sally Fincher
– http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/saf/dc/
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SIGCSE Special Project Funding
• Program Evaluation
– Collaboration between project leaders of both
instantiations and external expert in SoTL
(Jennifer Meta Robinson, Indiana University)
• Generalizing the Model
– To other contexts and disciplines
– Comparative data with parallel instantiations
– Developing a broader Commons in CSEd
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Acknowledgements
• Sally Fincher has been a collaborator
throughout this project
• Funding has been provided by the Washington
State Board of Community and Technical
Colleges, the University of Washington
Tacoma’s Institute of Technology, and the
UWT Founder’s Endowment.
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