The 13th CCSC Southwest Region Conference March 20-21, 2020

Tutorial: Leo Porter, University of California, San Diego

Abstract

Validated assessments of student knowledge are valuable both to instructors as they evaluate outcomes for their students and for education researchers seeking a common instrument with which to compare learning outcomes in experiments. Despite significant value to the community, there are only a few such instruments in computer science. Part of the reason for the lack of such assessments is that creating such an instrument is both a significant undertaking and one that requires specialized knowledge of assessment design. A member of the team of researchers who recently completed the Concept Inventory for Basic Data Structures (BDSI) will host this tutorial, in which the validation process will be described for those who are interested in designing such assessments. In addition, the tutorial will go over how to obtain validated instruments and how one can use them in your classes or your research.

Speaker Bio

Leo Porter is an Associate Teaching Professor in the Computer Science and Engineering Department at UC San Diego. He is best known for his research on the impact of Peer Instruction in computing courses, the use of clicker data to predict student outcomes, and the development of the Basic Data Structures Concept Inventory. He co-teaches the popular Coursera Specialization “Object-Oriented Java Programming: Data Structures and Beyond” with over 300,000 enrolled learners and the first course in the edX MicroMasters in Data Science, “Python for Data Science”, with over 200,000 enrolled learners. Dedicated to helping faculty adopt best practices in teaching, he co-leads the annual "New Computer Science Faculty Teaching Workshop". He has received multiple Best Paper Awards, SIGCSEs 50th Year Anniversary Top Ten Symposium Papers of All Time Award, and the Outstanding Teaching Award from Warren College (2019). He currently serves as Secretary of the SIGCSE Board.

Tutorial: Wesley Chun, Google

Hands-on with Cloud Computing

Abstract

*BRING YOUR LAPTOPS!* Cloud computing has taken the industry by storm, yet there aren't enough college grads who know about it. Faculty are the key to getting cloud into the hands of the next generation. "Learning" cloud is time-consuming, so let's give faculty hands-on experience with one of the 3 major cloud vendors (Google) keeping in mind that this knowledge translates to the others... a VM is a VM regardless of whose data center it runs in. In the primary part of this hands-on workshop (60 mins), attendees create & deploy a VM, a web app, a function, and time-permitting, a container followed by a pair of scripts: the first reads an address out of a spreadsheet, creates a map for it, then emails it to you, all in 4 lines of code. The other is a short script that accesses machine learning APIs, a much easier on-ramp to AI/ML for those completely new to the field. Now that you've got stuff running in the cloud and working code to take with you, we conclude with a short presentation (30 mins) reviewing cloud computing to ensure everyone's using the same shared vocabulary as well as the specific Google Cloud features used. We also cover the education grants providing free access to GCP for higher ed. Whether you're a professor, researcher, university IT staff, grad student, or lecturer, you'll be ready to enable the next-generation cloud-ready workforce.

Speaker Bio

Wesley Chun (@wescpy) is the author of Prentice Hall's bestselling "Core Python" (corepython.com) series, co-author of "Python Web Development with Django" (withdjango.com), and has written for Linux Journal, CNET, and InformIT. In addition to being an engineer & Developer Advocate at Google Cloud focused on higher education and a host of the G Suite Dev Show (goo.gl/JpBQ40), he runs CyberWeb (cyberwebconsulting.com), a consultancy specializing in Python training. Wesley has over 25 years of programming, teaching, and writing experience, and was one of the original Yahoo!Mail engineers. He holds degrees in CS, Math, and Music from the University of California, is a Fellow of the Python Software Foundation, and Adjunct Computer Science faculty at Foothill College in Silicon Valley.

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