Employers often remark that Computer Science graduates do not have the right skills to work on modern software engineering projects where agile practices, continuous integration, test-driven development, git workflows and regular code reviews are commonplace. To address this issue, we designed a course to introduce students to some of the realities of software engineering outside of academia. We describe the journey of building and running an industrial mentoring scheme for this course where students are assigned an experienced engineering mentor from industry who each guide a small team of six through an open source project. This sets the course apart from the more traditional engineering projects, where students build small and simple system from scratch. Instead we ask students to fix bugs and add features in a large and unfamiliar open source codebase, a game called stendhalgame.org. The mentoring scheme is a key part of enabling that, both in terms of motivating the students but also in providing guidance and advice on howto tackle these kinds of software engineering task. We reflect on the program, which has been taken by more than 2000 second year students over a nine year period. The main contribution is the combination of human mentoring with software that facilitates more meaningful discussions between mentors and mentees that would otherwise have not taken place. As far as we can tell, this is novel in the UK in terms of scale and approach.
Motivated by the increasing societal impact of technology and the emphasis on ethics within computing education, this paper presents the development and evaluation of a video-based assessment designed to improve students' understanding of legal, social, ethical, and professional issues while simultaneously developing soft skills such as teamwork, time management, researching information, and communication. Using a mixed-method approach, we explore the impact of this assessment on students' self-reported skill development across both their understanding of ethical issues and soft skills. Findings indicate that the video-based assessment was well received by students and supported not only the understanding of ethical concepts but also improved collaboration and communication skills.
Widening participation in computing science remains a persistent challenge in the UK, with recruitment and retention particularly difficult among underrepresented groups. Traditional school-based outreach often struggles to engage all learners, highlighting the need for innovative, accessible approaches that extend beyond the classroom. Creating engaging and inclusive STEM learning environments is a critical priority for educators, policymakers, and industry, as fostering diverse talent helps address skills shortages and wider societal challenges. The Library of Inspiration (LOI) responds to this challenge by drawing on literacy-based 'story sack' models and participatory design, the project develops take-home STEM kits for pupils aged 11-14 (S1-S3) in Scotland. Each kit combines hands-on activities, narratives, and diverse role models to spark curiosity, foster collaboration, and lower barriers to engagement, particularly for pupils from disadvantaged or underrepresented backgrounds. Designed to complement the computing curriculum, the kits provide flexible, informal learning opportunities that extend into homes and communities. This workshop provides a hands-on forum to explore the LOI model. Participants will (1) examine evidence and insights from early pilot studies, (2) design new kit concepts for their own contexts, and (3) explore opportunities for collaboration and future funding to extend and adapt kit-based learning for inclusive computing education across schools, libraries, and community settings.
The Diverse Computing Pioneers Repository (DCPR) is an online, freely accessible repository of non-Western, lesser-known computing pioneers. The aim of this workshop is to discuss current decolonisation institutional goals with participants, exploring how DCPR can be integrated into their teaching practice and the wider institutional decolonisation efforts.
This hands-on workshop shows how Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL)-structured, online, curriculum-embedded collaboration across countries-supports authentic sustainability briefs in computing education research. Workshop participants explore three key activities: (i) a power-mapping exercise (access, decision-making, knowledge validation); (ii) a COIL checklist covering communication norms, time zones, data stewardship and inclusion; and (iii) an assessment map recognising technical artefacts and intercultural process. Two student ambassadors share what helped and hindered confidence and collaboration; a remote contribution provides a decolonial lens, and an industry partner adds practical insight. Attendees leave with a 2-4-week brief, a first-draft map and a rubric sketch. Materials require whiteboards and/or shared digital boards.
Group coursework in computing often suffers from uneven workload distribution, poor communication, and limited visibility for staff, especially in large cohorts. We present an open-source web application that addresses these challenges through automated team allocation (via genetic algorithms), student skill self-assessment, meeting tracking, peer review, and supervisor tools. The system is embedded in a year-long second-year undergraduate module on software design and development (with 300 students in 2025/26) and is replacing manual, ad-hoc processes with structured, data-driven support. Informal trials suggest it helps staff identify struggling teams early and supports fairer marking. Data collection from the first cohort is ongoing. We share findings, reflect on design choices, and discuss implications for adoption in other computing courses.
The number of people with disabilities in the UK is steadily increasing. At the same time, technology has become an indispensable part of daily life: people connect with each other and complete everyday tasks, such as, manage personal finances, shop and communicate with various service providers, through digital apps. When accessibility is lacking, users with disabilities are systematically excluded. As educators, we have a responsibility to advocate for the integration of accessibility across the Computer Science curriculum. In this workshop, we invite participants to collaboratively engage in a series of activities designed to explore practical, pedagogically informed ways to do this. We advocate moving away from the current paradigm in which accessibility is treated merely as an afterthought and an add-on in Human-Computer Interaction curriculum, towards an intentional praxis brought about through Dialogic Pedagogy.
With the introduction of AI chatbots and coding assistants, and particularly since the release of ChatGPT in November 2023, there has been significant consideration of the use of Generative AI (GenAI) within education and computing education. Within computing education, considerable attention has focused on the use of GenAI in programming. However, whilst programming is a critical curriculum component, much study of computing at universities and in professional practice also includes writing and secondary research (in the form of essays, reflections, reports, project dissertations, etc). Within the computing education literature, the use of GenAI to support academic writing has been less commonly explored. This paper explores the embedding of GenAI in academic writing for summative assessment in a foundation year of a computing undergraduate programme at a UK university. The approach presented may be extensible and employable in various contexts as a mechanism to encourage students' ethical use of GenAI in academic writing and their appreciation of the related strengths and limitations of this usage.
We aim to explore and develop strategies to help computer science (CS) students gain technical competencies (TCs) that are in line with the recent and rapid advancements in the CS discipline and industry needs. The objectives of the collaborative session are to (i) identify contemporary TCs, (ii) explore the independent learning route to help students gain TCs, (iii) develop actionable roadmaps, and (iv) include further CS departments as collaborative partners. This is an ongoing pilot project led by the Department of Computer Science at the University of Bath, and funded by the CPHC. The project has developed online resources which are offered to 1,600 CS students in the department. We currently have six Computer Science departments in the UK as collaborative partners, and we aim to establish further collaborations with more partners, with the eventual goal of making the developed resources publicly available to all UK/international CS students in the near future.
Designing inclusive assessments in higher education is particularly important for large and diverse student cohorts. This paper reports on a practice implemented in a postgraduate computing science course with approximately 300 students from varied academic backgrounds, assessed through an examination, continuous assessments, and a group coursework project. To promote inclusivity, students were offered limited design choices within the coursework components. For the group project, they selected the elements their written reports would address, while for the continuous assessments, they chose how their final quiz grade would be calculated. These choices did not alter the overall assessment formats but were intended to foster a sense of ownership and ensure that the assessment better reflected diverse strengths and preferences. Although the analysis revealed no significant differences in performance outcomes, student feedback indicated greater positivity toward the assessments and appreciation for being involved in their design. The findings suggest that even small, structured opportunities for student choice can enhance inclusivity and engagement in assessment design.
When learning to program, many novice coders find the transfer from block-based to text-based programming languages very difficult. To bridge this gap we developed an integrated development environment (IDE) for Python that allows users to drag-and-drop programming elements in much the same way as block-based environments allow but in a text-based environment. We empirically tested the IDE on two groups of students aged 13 and 14 years in an English secondary school. The group that had access to the hybrid IDE for the final assessment performed significantly better relative to their baseline compared to the group that used a standard IDE. In this paper, we argue that this approach offers essential scaffolding that can reduce extraneous cognitive load for novice learners and facilitate the transition from block-based to text-based programming environments.
PRIMM (Predict-Run-Investigate-Modify-Make) is an approach to teaching programming that focuses on code comprehension as well as providing a structure for lessons. Little research has investigated how PRIMM can be used in primary education. This paper describes a small-scale practitioner inquiry project whereby PRIMM was used to teach 8-9 year-old students in a school in England. Two teachers implemented the practice using a series of adapted lessons which incorporated actions for the children to help them remember the PRIMM stages. Analysis of qualitative data from pupils and teachers showed that pupils developed a sense of agency from learning the actions and that the teachers were able to readily assess student progress. Further work could explore the use of PRIMM at the primary level in a wider range of schools.
For decades, researchers have pondered the problems of computing education in UK schools, and there has been no shortage of proposals and initiatives for addressing these. More recently, physical computing has become a popular approach to embedding digital education, particularly in the context of the micro:bit, with over half a million of these devices being provided to schools throughout the UK over the past two years. Much research has gone in to how this approach encourages engagement by bringing computing to life for young people. However, the problems of ensuring a high-quality education experience - equitably in all schools throughout the country - persist. In this work, we assess the situation from a teacher perspective, and provide evidence that far more effort is needed to directly support practitioners and to systematically assess their evolving needs.
Managing assessment in large, multi-campus computing cohorts is challenging, especially with reduced contact hours and growing demand for distance learning. We describe a trial of a modified Immediate Feedback Assessment Technique (IFAT), combining automatically marked multiple-choice questions (MCQs) with peer review. This improved consistency, supported professional-style learning, and was well received by staff and students, but required extensive effort to author hundreds of MCQs. We present a classroom trial with a first student cohort, demonstrating technical feasibility and promising engagement. Subsequent reflection on how LLM-assisted assessment design can make innovative practices like IFAT more sustainable and scalable in computing education is also introduced. We then extend this approach with a novel open-source command-line tool that leverages large language models (LLMs) to automatically generate Moodle-ready GIFT files directly from course materials such as PDFs or Powerpoint slides; including images. This approach was trialled with a second student cohort, though outcome data here is still emerging.
Building community and sense of belonging in computing departments is notoriously challenging - with early-year classes that are frequently very large, students who often complete much of the work online, and significant differences in prior experience with the subject. In this paper, we describe how partnership with our main student society to create a student-led peer-support scheme, where incoming students are put in families of 8-10, with 2-3 returning students acting as parents, has helped to address this situation. We describe the challenges and impact of the scheme from both a student and department point of view, and present the research we have done with three categories of students - academic students, academic parents, and students who chose not to participate in the scheme - to explore the value students see in such a scheme, the barriers to engagement and how we can co-design plans to improve the scheme in the future. Our research suggests that many students are keen to engage in a peer-support scheme, but adequate organisational support from the school, early relationship building, and effective, broad communication are crucial for success.
It is challenging to teach students new programming languages by lecturing while retaining interest and student engagement - direct lectures on syntax are inherently dry, and the benefits of more hands-on approaches to allow learners to make mistakes and experiment are well documented. This paper is based on a year teaching two languages, C and Haskell, inspired by the concepts of both cognitive apprenticeship and team teaching. Both of these languages are widely considered to be difficult for new users to learn, and the classes in question have in the past been deemed as challenging and unpopular by students. We describe our approach, then demonstrate that the application of these methods led to these previously unpopular classes becoming well-regarded by students. We support this by way of a survey, and provide some analysis of the source of this improvement and give some qualitative insights and other incidental benefits.
This paper explores how Generative AI (GenAI) can be introduced within summative assessment components in software engineering education. We present an example of an assessment which allows learners to use GenAI in a freeform, constructionist manner, as part of a large, software development project. This work is inspired by previously executed AI-focused assessments and surveys, which explicitly indicate that learners on an Applied Software Engineering Degree Apprenticeship Programme want to formally learn how to use GenAI tools when programming and their employers want to see these skills from graduates. The learning outcome of the assignment was for learners to explore a typical developmental pipeline as a solo developer, moving from design to development to finished product. Learners were marked exclusively on their end product and understanding of application components, not the written code itself, resulting in an assessment where the end product and project were prioritised over foundational code (which was adequately assessed in other components). The results show that all learners used GenAI to some extent during their project, and in all cases, they found it beneficial for large programming tasks. Learners were generally able to produce a larger, more comprehensive and more ambitious project, compared to previous years. It is proposed that removing the barrier to GenAI - and demystifying it - can encourage a constructionist approach to its use, and normalise it as a potential tool for programming.
The IT industry nowadays puts a lot of focus on teamwork. Therefore, helping Computer Science (CS) Higher Education (HE) degree students develop teamwork skills should be seen as essential for their future employability. One way of doing this is by getting students to practice teamwork through group assignments. However, this poses challenges in ensuring fairness and student equality. Moreover, a negative student attitude towards teamwork can lead to discontent and resistance to contributing to team activities. This paper presents efforts towards developing an approach to group assignments, and associated support, that aim to tackle the above issues. These were applied in an introductory undergraduate second year Software Engineering course in the School of Informatics of the University of Edinburgh. They were evaluated with students using four questionnaires and course feedback. Results were varied and some unexpected. They showcase that, on one hand, bringing teamwork into teaching can enhance students’ teamwork skills and improve their attitude towards teamwork. On the other, efforts to offer equal chances of success in the assignment can lead to feelings of inequality and unfairness amongst high achievers, and fear of discussions with peers can lead to unfair marks for students who do not pull their weight.
INTRODUCTION Traditional grading often fails to capture the full spectrum of skills required in creative industries, focusing too heavily on individual achievement. This study introduces the ’trunk and branch’ approach, a hybrid assessment model designed to enhance student learning in collaborative programming environments. METHODS The ’trunk’ represents collaborative group work where students work collaboratively and the ’branch’ is individual expansion on that work allowing for independent exploration. Thus, the approach reinforces both independent problem-solving and teamwork in a simulated industrial environment. RESULTS Trunk and Branch was used during a first-year games programming module. Student engagement and learning outcomes were evaluated through student survey and staff observation. Survey results showed that students learned significantly from teamwork, 72% agreed it helped develop professional skills. The approach appeared to foster an interdependent collaborative learning community. CONCLUSION The trunk and branch approach successfully integrates collaborative and individual learning, better preparing students for professional practice in creative industries. It reduces the grading burden on educators while maintaining high levels of student engagement and creativity. This model offers a promising framework for similar courses.
Computer science (CS) education has been progressively introduced in compulsory curriculums worldwide. In younger children (5-8 years old) it is especially relevant to explore developmentally appropriate teaching methods. Despite a wide variety of applications and interfaces being developed to introduce computing to young children, evidence as to which are the best pedagogical approaches that capitalise on young children’s cognitive and affective capacities remains under-explored. Grounded cognition (GC) is a theory of cognition and learning which emphasises the role of bodily experiences and our interaction with the environment in shaping thought and understanding. The present paper presents preliminary results of an empirical experience using the EIFFEL model to promote young students’ conceptual understanding. An ethnographic approach is used to explore the model’s implications for teaching and learning a fundamental concept in computing science: sequencing.
