Video Welcome, organization, module overview

0:00 Introduction

0:03 Okay, welcome again on the record to COM 335, communicating computer science. I'm Sebastian. Um, just in time. Um, today I just want to give you a brief overview. There's no actual content in these slides. It's just how will this module be run? Uh, what are you doing and maybe what can you get out of it? And then next week we'll start with some some actual topics.

0:32 You can normally find me in the Ashton building the other side of the street. Um, but by normally I mean two years ago. I'm not sure how often I will be in the office at least once a week, but uh probably best if you want to see me to drop me an email and and check or reach me on Teams. Uh Teams is a good point. I set up a team for this for this module where if you're on the officially registered lists, I think we're eight people now. So these probably are the eight people that registered. I hope so. Uh that would be great. In that case, you're already on this team and you can use it to reach me as well or uh direct messages. There's a module website which is uh publicly available. There's um Canvas which didn't make it to the slide.

1:27 We have a Canvas page for the course. that has the assignment information and also this is where you will submit your assignments. So it's basically everything on canvas that needs to be behind the login. Everything that's public is on the website and sometimes duplicated a bit um and MS teams for some informal discussions if you want to briefly reach someone. I've also shown you slido where you can answer questions uh where you can answer polls. You can also ask questions there. So if you feel like uh you have a question then um uh head over there. Now I don't have a good way to switch to this except for making it small. So in case you answer you ask a question it will show up here. Um, which is good for the recording, but probably you have to scream and let me know that you put in a question. I can use a second device for doing that. Then I'll I'll see what you're doing. Good. So, you can answer qu you can ask questions on Slido. You can also just raise your hand and shout. Um, and hopefully I'll think about repeating the question for the recording. Remind me if I don't.

2:47 Um and you will probably care about the last line on the slide. How is the module assessed? Uh this this is basically what you do in the first term. So the bulk of the mark is in the first term, but the bulk of the time you spend with me and other and kids is in the second term.

3:14 We'll first do some uh essay that practices a bit the the theory of of teaching if you like. Uh most of the mark is on on the practice. You will prepare a lesson. We'll talk about that in more detail. Uh and you write a document how this lesson should be and that's the bulk of the mark just because this is more plannable. Uh I can assess this even in case we have to go back into a lockdown. uh hopefully not but who knows and then the idea is that next next term in spring we invite some schools to campus for our taster days and uh you show them what you developed. I would love to give more more marks on this part but I was kind of I even even reduced the percentage for the delivery because I was afraid if we can't really do those then I'm screwed. Uh and I don't want to be screwed. I don't want you to be screwed. So let's put the bulk of the mark on the preparation then we're on the safe side.

4:07 Preparation

4:10 All right. Uh these are the components the same information graphically. Maybe the lectures is where we're currently doing you sit and listen and hopefully talk a bit um in the discussion parts. The ultimate goal is to deliver your session on the taster days. And to get there, you write a lesson plan, you will write an essay, and the final report at the very end is uh just wrapping up uh what were your experiences during your delivery, how did it go, what would you do better, uh things like that. And MS Teams is there just to support the whole thing. Uh this is also roughly ordered by time. So from left to right, if you want, we'll start with the lectures and the essay. Then you will prepare your lesson plan and in the end you'll deliver it. Any questions so far? Please scream interrupt or post it on slido. I'll try to monitor the other screen.

5:04 Goals

5:12 Okay. Um so what is this module about? Uh I'll start with the goals for you. Um how do you become a teacher in the UK? Um this is a question I want to ask you later. Where have you actually been to school? Um, if that was in the UK, maybe you know, if it was outside of the UK, like for me, I first had to look this up. You become a teacher by first studying your subject and then you usually do an an MSE or some some master course in in pedagogy on top of that. Then you can uh go into a teaching role and this module is kind of a way into that. It's not necessary to become a teacher, but it might be a good entrylevel uh module for that and gives you a chance to peak a little into that without committing to doing the the mod the full master program already. So, we'll look at how to structure content to make it accessible for learners, how to create a lesson plan to sketch out how you want to run a certain a certain lesson and how to engage learners.

6:15 It gives you a taste of what it's like to be um a school teacher, especially secondary school for computing. And um some less obvious parts is empirical research is something we don't do a lot in computer science, but I think is very very fundamental for effective teaching. If you read what the University of Liverpool writes about our higher education teaching, we want to be researchled in how we teach. And what does that mean? It's a fancy word of saying we don't want to just guess what might work. We want to test and empirically validate which which methods of teaching are effective, what helps you to get things into your brain effectively and efficiently. uh and choose those methods that do and drop the other methods that don't. We'll talk a little bit about this and this is basically what you'll cover in your essay. You will read a bit about some specific educational research and and write a bit about it. Uh but don't be too scared about this. We'll just scratch a little bit.

7:24 Okay. The last one is a is a soft thing. Uh what does it mean to have appreciation for professional values? Uh this is this is a tough one but um it's also easy for you to get there. I think um computer science still has a bit big gender gap. We have many more male than female students even though we have roughly the same proportion in the population. Same goes on for ethnicity. uh um big topic in the UK is is widening participation, inviting students from from areas, local areas that have uh deprived populations uh and traditionally haven't sent many kids to university, increase that. So all these these topics about equality and diversity um we'll touch a little bit on this um maybe also as a point in your essay and to get there um for the lectures it's just five lectures not a lot and one of which is just this one where I'll talk you through uh the setup so we really have just four topics that we test discuss the first one is about the UK educational system and specifically how uh computing is embedded in the national curriculum. This might be something you know about already but um I want to bring everyone to the same page.

8:20 Lectures

8:49 Uh then I want to talk a little bit about pedagogy and the background. Um what have we what have empirical scientists found out about how people learn and how that how does that apply to computer science? Then we'll get to the craft of planning an actual lesson. This will be um a bit more practical. And lastly, I want to talk a little bit about um the statistics that people use in educational research. Again, we'll just little scratch the surface, but I want to enable you to read these papers so that um maybe you're not able after this class uh to design your own empirical uh experiments to evaluate a teaching method, but you should be able to read about what other people did and well maybe hopefully judge this is nonsense. This doesn't tell us anything or yes, this is solid empirical science and I can trust the outcome. Uh that's the goal. There's a few things I will not really touch on.

9:54 Um I don't really touch on what I don't talk about, so not too much. But if you want to go into teaching, you will have to learn about this. Um well, I I can briefly mention everything. So assessment, how how do you design exams or uh tests in school? Uh separate topic that we will not talk about quality assurance. Um there's a lot of national and and school levelwide checks and uh the ratings by uh off if I'm correct like rank schools etc. All these things uh will bother you as a teacher if you go that route or bother you in higher education. Uh we'll skip that. Um yeah, it's just an entry- level thing. Clickers, uh one of my favorite tools to get people a bit awake and engaged. Uh we already done the introduction one. um because you're into education the proper term and the proper way to use these types of system is called peer instruction. Uh the term is a bit in un unlucky I think uh a bit unfortunate because it sounds it sounds different from what it is. There's a specific method how you can use questions to let uh let the audience develop a topic by themselves to some degree. Uh I only do a lightweight version of that because I think the the other one needs very very good questions and coming up with these questions is really tough. Uh but you can judge for yourself. You can look up what's behind this and maybe we maybe some of you use this in an in an essay topic.

10:41 Clickers

11:39 I'm basically using these questions to keep people a bit active. And even just a tiny little click on a multiple choice question is more active than nothing and keeps people engaged. Uh I've tested this over and over again just anecdotally not proper empirical research but um I found it effective uh effective enough to use it even in the lightweight form. So we've done this one and here's the result again So most most of you haven't used this before. using it for you I guess was uh easy enough. Maybe uh you have joined late so you can um go to slido and with that access code you can vote on that question. I'll just leave it open. Um, as I said before, oh yeah, sorry question.

12:43 Pardon? I see. I see. I think you can change your answer maybe. Uh, check it. I think you can edit what you said as long as the poll is still open.

13:06 Yeah, I probably should have explained what clickers are before asking you whether you have used them. [laughter] Uh, is my voice clear enough through the mask or Yeah. Okay. Good. Good.

13:29 Okay. So maybe some more of you have actually seen it. Uh maybe we do one more just for the fun of it. Um um that is this one. Okay. I should have started from the phone. Uh it's basically a question um about other lectures, not necessarily this one. Imagine you're doing one of the other modules that you're doing and if you could just choose for yourself how would you want this lecture to run? That's that's the question. This one is specifically this one is special because it's so such a small group and then things are um it's easier to say face to face is definitely better because you have a small group and can interact. Um but suppose it's a bigger class you probably need a minute to put this in uh some first results.

14:38 So what the ranking question does is uh if you give a certain ranking it assigns points um probably the number of of options for the top rank one and then one less for each and it sums up those points.

15:13 All right. So, we have all all eight votes and the big winner is the traditional lecture. That's interesting enough, which is uh what you don't get at the moment, right? Uh maybe this is also what what makes it appealing. Um, okay. And Zoom is definitely the last one. I think you're you've had enough of Zoom lectures. [snorts] It's it's interesting to me that pre-recorded videos. I've run this many times uh also in my class last year where again they didn't have a chance but uh wishful thinking land. Um, I think uh synchronous synchronous stuff was before pre-recorded ones. Uh, this is this is the opposite order now, but you're a small group.

16:16 I don't know what I mean by website plus media. I guess the distinction between this and and pre-recorded videos is maybe not very very clear.

16:24 So website without videos as opposed to videos. Remember what I said about finding good questions is hard. Finding good questions is hard and formulating them in a way that's unambiguous. But I think we can summarize. You like face to face. So good we're here. Okay, let's see. I should speed up a bit because I want to leave some time for us to uh introduce ourselves to the group a bit. Um, but briefly on the assessments, I've shown the percentages before. There's a roughly 20 to 80 split between theory and essay and practice. The the lesson that you deliver and develop. Uh, I want to I want to involve you a bit with literature research. That's why the essay is important and maybe it serves as inspiration for your topic. Was that a question? Okay, just stretching. Yeah, good idea. Uh the practical part is the taster day lessons. I'll I'll talk more about this in a second.

17:35 Canvas

17:35 Okay. Um the big time plan is on Canvas where you see week by week what we're doing. I hope I um managed to get all the holidays and things properly in included. I'll keep this up to date as as as far as it changes. Uh in the first semester now, we'll meet the first five weeks here uh just for an hour each and I'll talk you through these four topics. Then there's basically two weeks that you have no classes and just work on your essays. You're very welcome to start early on this. I'll I'll talk about the essays in a second. And I think we we might want to talk about the topics for the essay well before week six. So you can start ahead of time. Uh but it's um it's not a massive thing. So uh it can well be done in these two weeks um if you want to. Um the bigger part is your lesson. Uh and this is also the creative part. So you will we will collectively brainstorm a bit what what are good topics. I have some um on a notebook but uh you're well welcome to think about something for yourself and the biggest part so reserve some time in these weeks to really work out the details. Uh I'd say it's uh once you have the the right idea it's maybe not not a lot of work but coming up with a good idea can be challenging. uh you probably want to discuss with a couple of people, maybe test some ideas with some uh some kids you can get hold on [laughter] or or friends. Um yeah, so plan some time for this. I hope this is fun. Um I enjoyed this kind of stuff last year, so we'll see. uh there will be some deadline where we decide the topics just to make sure that you have enough time to really do it and we'll make sure that you have something proper at that stage and then so there's two two more meetings essentially the one is to to um make sure that everyone has a topic that's that's workable and uh then the second one uh I would like you to pitch to the group what you have come up with and then we can get some feedback on whether the other people think this will work well or this needs to be changed and then you still have plenty of time. This is essentially two weeks before Christmas or something like that. So you still have the Christmas break and the the entire January basically to make changes to your lesson. Uh these taste day slots I think they start the first week of teaching in the second semester.

20:14 Uh but I also have to find schools who come and sometimes the first or last days are not so popular. We'll we'll see. I put down up to 10 taster day slots. Yeah. Do you know how many students will teach?

20:30 Uh yes, that'll come later. It's is year eight and nine basically. So, uh just before they choose commit to their GCSE subjects because that's a that's a key topic. Um we want to convince them to continue with computing. That's one of the key goals of the taster days. Yeah. Uh I'll give some more details later. Um, I put down up to 10 slots. I don't know if we fill all if we're eight people, maybe eight slots is more natural and you each deliver your lesson three times. That that would work out. Um, uh, we'll see. Yeah, this might be changed a bit.

21:07 What if

21:13 All right. Yeah. What what if uh the university plans that the second semester is is back to normal. everything like we never had any viruses. Um that would mean everything can go as in the past. We invite schools for essentially a full day and they do four workshops with us and explore the campus a bit, have something to eat here and then go home again. Um the schools really love this. So uh I think we're I don't want to change much um if not necessary.

21:44 Well, if if that doesn't work, um ideally your lesson could also be turned into something that can be delivered over Zoom. This is quite challenging, but for some things it works quite well and you will have the teacher in the school. So my assumption is we never go back into a full lockdown that everyone stays home. I think this is very very unlikely. Um so I don't even plan for this. If that really happens, then we'll probably have different different problems anyways. Then I mean a coursework based assessment will not be possible. So you will have the teachers in schools. It might just not be possible for school classes to come to campus. Um yeah, I'll discuss this with you once you have your topics and then we can think about what is what is possible just in case. Uh basically this slide is is for you to show that I spent some thoughts about this and I think it can be done either way. Um worst case scenario for me would be we um we do some fake taster days just with with the nine of us and we pretend to be kids and play through your lesson. Let's uh yeah, hopefully we don't need that.

22:59 Essay

23:06 Okay, some details about the essay. Um, an important date is I fixed this. Uh, it sounds like a good date because there's not a lot of other assessment deadlines apparently. I don't know. I don't know all your um modules. Uh, this is quite some time away, but it's also well before you have to do the lesson. So, I want to keep that time the second half of the term free for the lesson plan.

23:31 The topic is up to you. Um, in the past it was it was a fixed topic when my predecessor did the did the module and I thought that's that's kind of um I don't want to read eight identical essays really. I'd rather see what you're interested in. Um, but I'll probably set up an assessment on Canvas where you submit your topic and I'll have to okay it before you go ahead just to make sure that it's not something inappropriate that doesn't really uh reach the learning outcomes. Other than that, I don't want to restrict you. You should work on something that's interesting for you. It should touch on on CS education because that's our our goals. Um, and it should involve some sort of um, literature research even if it might not only be on research articles. Maybe there's other sources that are that are also interesting. Uh, that's fine, but it should should have some substance.

24:31 Uh, there's some examples listed here and so maybe that gives you some flavor. So this has this is a discussion that the UK is basically beyond we have decided yes in a sense um maybe here the the stress is program as opposed to computing. Um we'll we'll maybe discuss this question a bit further. Uh the second one is something you can definitely find a lot about is is technology helpful or should we ban smartphones in class during during lessons? Um yeah, diversity as I said I think there is there is some problem but it's not so clear how to address it and yeah this this is um a topic from the the previous iterations specifically for the age group that we target and specifically for the topics they're supposed to cover in the curriculum. What can we do to make this more engaging?

25:32 Uh the last thing on this the marking scheme roughly probably not very surprising. Um the the only thing I want to mention the structure is really important because I think this helps structuring your thoughts. So I want to reward this if you do it well. Uh any questions on the essays?

26:00 Yeah, you have to scream. I'm I'm getting just getting the cars. What kind of how long? Uh yeah, good question. Um I haven't thought about it very deeply as long as you need to properly address the topic. Yeah, I should have anticipated the question that you want to know how long it should be. I would say four to five up to 10 pages something like that. Uh you want to explain the topic a little bit and then you want to discuss your opinion on it. Uh you can go crazy on this but yeah I think below four pages you can't really discuss a topic something like this. Um yeah, probably I'll I should think about some more more concrete guidance.

26:57 taster day

27:03 Okay, the other big chunk is the taster day lesson. Um the goals for for running the taster days uh I didn't put this explicitly here but the the goal for targeting the age group as I said is because this is the the age where they can decide if computing is part of their GCSEs or not. I think um is to some degree it has to be part of the GCSEs. Um, but if you go for the full computing or not is still an option and fewer people take it now as opposed to the ICT that it was in the past because it's supposedly tougher. Um, well, so we definitely want to convince as many people as possible to consider this. Uh, so we want to show that the computer science can be approachable for everyone and is fun and this will influence what topics make good topics for the lessons.

27:58 Um, and yeah, make a connection to everyone's life and the universe around us. Um, it's usually quite easy to find that connection, but making that explicit and picking it up in a specific, uh, lesson, um, it's just something you should do. Uh, okay.

28:19 Roughly the coordinates, your lesson will be one school hour. So, uh, give or take 45 minutes. I think we can we have some slack in the schedule. We can definitely make sure that everything is set up and prepared and the 45 minutes are really for for doing something and not everyone gets in the room and this first 10 minutes are lost till everyone finds their seat etc. It'll be one class of roughly 30 uh students. Um I yet have to talk to our safety and advisors what the rules are. I hope they will relax till then. At the moment, we wouldn't be able to run it with 30 people because we have this one meter distance rule. I don't think it will last that long, but okay. Um, let's plan for 30 30 kids. Uh, year groups age to nine. So, uh, somehow between 12 and 14 years old. And we should get our robotics lab because the last lesson will be programming Lego robots. That's where we need this. But this also means you can use um things that are there. We'll probably arrange a a slot to go there and see what we have that might make sense.

29:36 Okay. So the topic again I I want to have your creativity in these. So think about what what you find engaging and fusing. Ideally, it should be approachable even if uh the kids don't really got much out of their computing classes so far or other school classes. What we don't want is them turning up and then they're lost. That would be that would be not great. Uh especially because some of the schools we invite are from from tougher areas and some of the kids are struggling with life anyways. So, we don't want to add to the struggle. We want something that's approachable without dumbing things down. This is the tough challenge.

30:18 Uh I like I like activities where afterwards you understood some certain fundamental thing that you didn't understand before. Um I don't know if you can relate to this aha moment idea. Uh but yeah, once you see it, maybe it's clear. Uh we can we can discuss some examples later in the in the module.

30:41 Um yeah this this is uh we should after next week you can say more about this. The national curriculum means that they have done some things. They might not have done it in very much depth. Um but it would be good to pick a topic that is not already completely exhausted.

31:03 Okay. And the last one is for the contingency plan. Um good. I think that's all I want to say about this for now. Does that answer your question about the age group at least? Um, any other questions about the the taster days for now?

31:24 All right. Yeah. Okay. To wake you up, one more question that doesn't have to do much with the rest. I'm just curious. I want to know this.

31:44 So you can you can submit several answers. So you can put in uh one one tag for each language. Why do people uppercase Java? Is it uppercase? I've seen it many times, but also many times without uppercase. Thank you.

32:01 H I wonder if it's an abbreviation for something. I thought it's just coffee, right? It's an American term for c cup of coffee because Java is where a lot of coffee grows. Very creative, but yeah, at least explains the logo, right? Okay. Java is the big thing.

32:25 Yeah, I would have expected Python to be more prominent as well. Yeah. Yeah, I think Python is Aha. [laughter] I I was just not not patient enough is what? Scratch. I'm gonna guess. Yeah. Is Isn't it ching complete? So, why not? Yeah. Okay, cool. Uh nice variety, too. Um yeah so we'll we'll probably not use a lot of programming in itself right and if for the schools so in theory they have seen some textbased programming language at that age I'm not sure how much they really program or how much the average or weaker students can program so I wouldn't rely on much okay I I think maybe.

33:40 Yeah. Well, we we'll see with the national career