Learning at Scale with Kristin Stephens-Martinez

Learning at Scale with Kristin Stephens-Martinez
Jared O'Leary
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In this interview with Kristin Stephens-Martinez, we discuss learning CS in large classes (e.g., 200+ students), the winding and challenging journey through education and research, recognizing the importance of representation and providing support for underrepresented identities, the benefits of peer instruction, Kristin’s podcast (CS-Ed Podcast), the disconnect between research on education and practice in the classroom, and much more.

  • Welcome back to another episode of the

    CSK8 podcast my name is jared o'leary

    in this week's episode i'm interviewing

    kristin stevens martinez in our

    discussion we chat about

    learning computer science and large

    classes so for example kristin has

    classes between two and 300 students

    we also discussed the winding and

    challenging journey through education

    and research and how the

    end product looks a lot neater than the

    actual process that was taken

    we discussed recognizing the importance

    of representation and providing support

    for underrepresented identities

    the benefits of peer instruction

    kristen's podcast

    the cs ed podcast the disconnect between

    research on education and practice in

    the classroom

    and so much more in our discussion

    kristin mentions multiple books and

    podcasts and if you go to the show notes

    it has direct links to each one of those

    and you can find those show notes by

    clicking the link in the description or

    by simply going to jaredaler.com and

    clicking on the podcast

    i hope you enjoy this interview and i

    hope you take the time to listen to

    kristin's podcast the cs ed podcast

    so my name is kristen stevens martinez

    and i have a phd from uc berkeley

    and my research is in computer science

    education and so

    the way i define that is i'm interested

    in both

    the learning of computer science as well

    as the using of computer science for

    education

    my interests are mainly in computer

    science introduction so

    the first and second kind of classes

    that you take in computer science

    as well as focusing on how do you

    scale learning and so what i mean by

    that is

    how do you add another student to the

    classroom without affecting the quality

    of the learning that's already happening

    in the classroom a lot of people kind of

    assume small class must equal better

    i want to challenge that assumption by

    actually asking like well

    how do we know like let's actually check

    and let's do some experiments to find

    out

    where this idea of small equals better

    is that actually not true

    and you can potentially take advantage

    of computers take advantage of scale

    to be able to teach more people because

    as a teacher you really want to

    teach as many people that are interested

    in learning and

    we're often feeling so limited by the

    quality of the learning that we want to

    make sure is happening and i just want

    to push

    the envelope a bit more and trying to

    understand how do you help more people

    learn what they want to learn

    so that's my research and then the other

    thing is i am also the host of the csi

    podcast which is a podcast that more

    focuses on higher education computer

    science

    but the main reason why it doesn't cover

    something like csk through 8 or 12 is

    because i don't know anything about that

    space and so i didn't want to step on

    any toes or risk like making claims that

    made no sense so that's why i'm more

    focused

    that podcast on computer science higher

    education in college

    but it's not like i purposely omitted

    that

    area of css so i'm curious

    what are some of the perceived benefits

    of working in small groups

    and how do you incorporate some of those

    in like large scale classes

    so probably the biggest one that people

    always think of

    first i suspect is the personalization

    aspect of things

    the classic two sigma paper where

    if you are in a regular classroom you

    perform a certain amount

    and then if you had like a small group

    or something i think the paper basically

    goes

    if you had a tutor like every single

    person had tutor they would perform two

    sigma like two standard deviations

    better than if they were in a normal

    classroom i think it's the classic paper

    i think the paper is from like

    i don't remember maybe the 80s or

    something it's actually pretty old paper

    at this point

    and i think that's the first thing

    people think of where they're like

    if it's a smaller classroom that means

    that the teacher can get to really get

    to know every single student

    and then on top of that they can

    personalize the learning much more for

    that student

    and in some ways i agree that's true and

    it could be

    that for a specific student they really

    do

    need that personalized attention from a

    specific teacher and they develop that

    relationship with that teacher

    to really be able to get to the learning

    that they want to get at which i think

    is perfectly fine

    the thing that i bulk at is assuming

    that that must be better and is always

    better than any other circumstance

    right i mainly teach introductory

    computer science classes

    at duke university should i mention that

    too i am a

    assistant professor of the practice at

    duke university

    in my introductory computer science

    class the way that i

    try and help my students have more

    personalized interactions

    so the class has two to 300 students

    but they have small labs which are at

    most 25 students

    and those labs are run by two tas so

    it's a pair of tas together

    that run and teach 25 students and so

    that's

    more where some of that one-on-one

    interaction is going to happen

    they are also encouraged to work in

    groups in those labs so they get some

    other personalization

    by talking to their peers in lecture

    which is where i get all of them

    i do a lot of active learning in my

    class and so when i say active learning

    that means things like

    think pair share where i ask a question

    and i ask the students first think about

    what you think the answer is and i want

    you to turn to your neighbor and talk to

    your neighbor what you think the answer

    is

    another one would be peer instruction

    where i pose a question and they have to

    actually answer the question it's the

    google form so they have to go to the

    google form and like

    punch in their username and then

    answer the various questions and hit

    submit and then i take a look at

    the how the students did and usually

    they don't do so

    great on the forum so like clearly

    they've fallen for the

    wrong answers and so they tell the

    students turn to

    your neighbor and discuss the answers

    and since basically all undergrads i

    feel like are competitive i

    sometimes tell them try to convince your

    neighbor you're right

    which usually gets them to start talking

    a bit more and there actually is a bunch

    of literature

    generally in some literature only in

    computer science that shows

    that this discussion will help students

    get to the right answer

    it's more likely to happen if at least

    one person in the group does have the

    right answer

    but it still is beneficial to a certain

    extent even if

    neither of the students have the right

    answer sometimes i try and prompt the

    students by asking like if you already

    come to a conclusion now i want you to

    also discuss why is the right answer

    right why the wrong answer is wrong

    just to try and get them to keep

    discussing and potentially for

    the group that actually are on the wrong

    answer to realize that they're on the

    wrong answer

    and the reason why i call that

    personalization

    is because every single student is

    having a personalized conversation with

    someone else

    in the ideal world of course it would be

    great if they had a conversation

    personalized with me

    but at the same time potentially not

    because

    i am an expert in my field and i suffer

    expert's fallacy just like every expert

    would suffer under an expert's fallacy

    is this idea

    where you have forgotten what it is like

    to be a novice

    if you're an expert and so that means

    you have forgotten

    what a novice is likely to struggle with

    you've forgotten what is it like to

    struggle in a specific way

    when you're trying to master a concept

    and on top of that there are many

    different ways this office can

    struggle with a different concept or a

    difficult concept

    and what is beneficial for having a ta

    which is also an undergrad or a peer

    right in your classroom

    is they are novice with you and so they

    also are more likely to understand

    what you're not getting because they

    just potentially just went through it

    and so that's one way i bring

    personalization into my class despite it

    being a very large class

    by taking advantage of peers to talk to

    each other and that scales as the class

    gets bigger because they're just more

    peers that people can talk to

    well i don't scale because i am one

    person among two to 300 students

    like i tell my students sometimes

    they're like don't rely on me go find a

    friend there are 300 people in this

    class

    i'm sure you can find a friend so

    they're able to share with each other

    their understandings how do you

    personalize the assignments in those

    large classes though this assignments

    unfortunately right now

    those are not very well personalized and

    that honestly is because of

    the logistics of grading most

    personalized one that we have

    is we have an assignment called the

    turtle assignment and so a turtle

    is basically a drawing program where you

    can draw

    whatever you want and you have a little

    turtle that's like the pen you put the

    pen

    down you draw whatever you want you can

    pick the pen up and move it around and

    draw and so for the turtle assignment we

    tell them

    draw whatever you want it just needs to

    have

    two colors and three shapes something

    like that

    and so that gives students a lot more

    creativity that they can do i've seen

    students do super simple things

    and i've seen students do extremely

    complicated things because they just got

    super into the assignment right and it

    just was a case of like

    you can do whatever you want as long as

    you fulfill these simple criteria

    for us it also we have extra pieces to

    so it's like you know

    you have to write this function that

    draws this thing now write the code that

    will call this function 10 times and

    draw it 10 times across the screen like

    trying to get them to get to certain

    aspects and so when we write unit tests

    for that

    it's easy to write unit tests for

    certain parts of that

    and then i have a group of undergrad tas

    whose job basically is just to grade

    those things

    and so they're like downloading code and

    running it locally and like doing this

    over and over again to like check to see

    are there three colors are there two

    shapes okay

    you get full credit for this piece so

    that's kind of unfortunately the closest

    thing i have right now to

    personalization in my

    class and some of the other things that

    i'm toying with

    are things like it's not really on

    maybe the production aspect of what the

    student is doing but i've been thinking

    more about metacognition

    and scaffolding things like time

    management for students

    so i'm just currently reading a paper

    that

    did three different interventions to

    help students with time management

    two did not work and one worked and the

    one that worked

    was the emails that they emailed

    students reminding them

    you should probably get by you should be

    probably at this point in the project

    and if you're not there's a problem and

    you now try and like

    catch up because everyone else in the

    class is like you are here and the class

    is here you probably need to

    to work on things a little bit more i'm

    only about halfway through the paper

    though i don't exactly

    know what they said but they basically

    like the email was the only thing that

    really helped

    students to turn things in sooner and on

    time

    and like actually get stuff done and

    pass more tests and that kind of thing

    so i think that's more what i'm

    currently toying with with

    personalization

    of trying to figure out how to help my

    students

    with getting stuff done on time and

    thinking through how they can learn the

    content

    in a more almost like time effective

    manner

    i'm wondering if you could just kind of

    thinking out loud if you were to work

    with another colleague either at duke or

    somewhere else and be like okay we're

    both or all of us are doing a unit on i

    don't know conditionals

    just throwing it out there i'm going to

    create an assignment

    that requires students to write code

    that's like

    create a game where if you score a point

    this happens if you get hit by an enemy

    you lose a

    point or a colleague could be like okay

    we're going to create a choose your own

    adventure so if the user chooses this

    it goes into this part of the story and

    it branches out otherwise if they choose

    this other thing what is other thing

    or like just different assignment

    variations on

    whatever the topic is in this case

    conditionals if you could all kind of

    like combine that and say

    here are like five assignments that are

    all the same thing

    and it's used across like you and four

    other colleagues

    then is that a way that could be

    personalized so you're like your tas

    like one ta would be assigned to the

    first one and then

    another ta would be assigned to the

    second one and so that way students have

    some sense of choice

    and can kind of pick projects that are

    more relevant to what they want to do

    and then still use and understand the

    concepts

    in your class while not making it so you

    have to develop five different tests and

    whatnot

    so there's a couple of thoughts that

    come to mind for that so besides

    assignments we also have problem sets

    so it's like implement this function and

    usually

    what we do is like we give them six to

    seven

    and they only need to implement five so

    they can kind of choose whichever ones

    they wanna do

    with maybe a couple required to make

    sure they like do at least one set

    problem do this one do at least one

    problem in dictionaries

    the other thought i had is this is very

    much a moment that i feel shows the

    difference between

    higher education and k-12 because

    for us i'm the only one teaching intro

    cs

    no one else is teaching intro cs at my

    university

    like there are other ones who will teach

    it at a different semester

    but i'm the only one teaching it this

    semester and we kind of pass the

    curriculum along

    so it's the same assignment almost

    regardless of what semester and who is

    teaching it

    if i wanted to do this idea of asking

    other people like what

    projects do you do for checking testing

    these concepts

    i'd have to go outside to another

    university and ask them like what

    assignments do you have for

    testing these things asm is taking on

    an existing project and the name is

    escaping me right now

    but brianna morrison and

    michelle craig made this project

    where people could potentially submit

    their assignments like they would submit

    to a conference or something

    and then make those assignments

    available to anyone who wanted them

    after they go through a peer review

    basically i think the purpose of

    michelle and brianna's project

    was to make it so that more people could

    basically do a nifty assignment like

    more people could submit to this and

    it'd be peer-reviewed and

    anyone could use them and that kind of

    thing with a certain like probably level

    of rigor for both unit tests

    and what you kind of get when you

    download the assignment and be able to

    like deploy it in your class

    so that that's one avenue that i could

    think of

    i don't know how many people have

    submitted to that particular website

    though

    yeah and for context when i was in the

    k8 space

    i was the only computer science teacher

    in my school and then when i taught

    general music and band like i was the

    only band director i was the only

    general music person

    at most of my schools so like we had

    this issue

    as well where it's like okay i'm the

    only one doing this thing how do i

    communicate with people across the

    district or elsewhere and then when i

    was teaching like undergrad and graduate

    courses

    is the same thing like i just

    collaborated with somebody in toronto

    about how to create like a coding and

    music unit

    for their music technology class and so

    like

    having to reach out and do that it was

    just kind of like one thing that kind of

    came to mind

    yeah i just like when you said like talk

    to the other teachers for other

    assignments it's like but no one else

    has other assignments

    unless i go outside my university right

    we use the same assignment with like

    mild tweaks every semester

    to prevent cheating though i'm currently

    reading a book on grading

    equitable grading or grading for

    equality i can't remember exactly what

    the title is anymore

    and i'm more and more suspicious of like

    the processes we go through to

    try and prevent cheating and trying to

    like

    think through what would be a better way

    but

    admittedly like i'm only maybe a quarter

    of the book

    so part of me is still cynical about

    the idea of like figuring out ways that

    like students will learn because they

    want to learn and i'm like

    yeah some of them will i was one of them

    but like most students aren't me

    yeah lots of things to consider when

    designing stuff educational experiences

    whatnot

    i'm curious what's the story how did you

    get to computer science education

    if you were to write a book about your

    entire story like what would the chapter

    titles be definitely one would be

    getting into computer science

    and then the next one would be going to

    grad school

    and then probably actually the the cse

    one would be a separate chapter

    just because each of them has a distinct

    kind of reason it happened or

    it would be all be like at least

    subsections within a single chapter

    so i got into computer science purely by

    accident which is one reason why i don't

    think the story is good

    i will get into why i think it's a bad

    story in a minute

    so when i was in high school

    i finished my freshman year my first

    year of high school

    in illinois and then my parents moved to

    maryland

    illinois requires three and a half years

    of physical education

    maryland requires half a year of

    physical education

    and so when i arrived at maryland i

    suddenly had this extra period in high

    school that i had to like fill

    i was like what do i do and my parents

    happened to move

    to one of the richest counties in the

    country

    so that meant that my high school which

    was technically

    the ghetto high school in the county the

    ghetto high school

    air quotes kind of hard to be ghetto

    when you're also in the richest county

    in the country

    had a computer science teacher and so i

    had full-blown computer science classes

    in that high school

    a whole three sequence and when i was

    looking at the options

    for signing up for classes i was like

    well i saw the computer science class

    and i was like well

    i like computers i like programming the

    vcr

    which kind of dates me but you know i

    like programming the views i'll try this

    class

    and then i was like this is awesome i'm

    never looking back

    this is so cool i want to do this and i

    took all of the classes

    i took ap computer science all of it and

    the reason i don't think that's a good

    story is because i got lucky

    i don't like that i don't like the fact

    that i had to get lucky

    to find in computer science i honestly

    have no idea where i would be if my

    parents had not moved

    like i just had no clue what would have

    happened in some ways it's a tragedy

    if someone cannot find what they're

    interested in

    if it wasn't for luck and so i think one

    of the things that kind of drives me

    actually for computer science education

    is i want to help as many people as i

    can

    at least find out if computer science is

    what they want to do

    because if someone would have taken that

    opportunity if they knew it existed

    but they never came across it that's a

    tragedy

    so that's why i don't think my story is

    a good one

    because it required luck and i want to

    try my hardest to try and figure out

    ways

    to make sure that it's not luck that

    gets someone into this field

    or get someone into finding what they

    are interested in doing so is that

    reflection

    on the luck that led to your interest in

    computer science why you went into

    computer science education to try and

    help make it so people didn't have to

    rely on luck to try and like expand it

    in k-12 offerings or university

    offerings

    so i think that's one of my motivators

    but it's not

    the reason why i find computer science

    education interesting

    i've actually always been interested

    in the process of learning and

    psychology and all of that i am

    a learning nerd i am unapologetic about

    that like

    i watch science youtube for fun yep

    like and i will tweet about it and i

    will tell people like

    random things like i just learned this

    cool thing from this comedian

    mathematician

    and it's like what's your favorite mega

    number like i love this

    like that's literally what i'm watching

    right before bed after the baby's gone

    to sleep

    i message a friend by email she's a math

    professor and i like

    messages like this is such a cool note

    video this is so funny

    i'm like oh i'm such a nerd i'm such a

    learning nerd and i'm perfectly fine

    with that distinction

    so the reason i got into csd is more

    because

    the process of learning and all of that

    is very fascinating to me

    which in some ways is hilarious because

    i also like computers because they're

    not messy like humans are

    so i kind of have this like tension in

    myself where i'm like computers are nice

    and logical they do exactly what you

    tell them to do

    not necessarily what you want them to do

    but at least they do exactly what you

    tell them to do

    [Music]

    and then humans are super messy but

    they're fascinating and complicated and

    they do weird things

    not what you expect so like after i

    started computer science

    in college i got into computer

    networking

    and so networking was interesting to me

    because

    the internet works shockingly well

    despite the fact that it's kind of held

    together by chewing gum and duct tape

    and so this like simple rules

    complex behavior was very interesting to

    me and so in some ways i'm not surprised

    now that i'm looking back

    that i found that interesting because i

    was like computers being

    simple and straightforward is

    interesting plus you get this complex

    behavior

    and i like complex behavior so i kind of

    like humans at the same time

    it's not surprising to me that that

    progression happened one reason why i

    don't think it's quite a good story is

    because when you look at my cv my resume

    you see like it looks like such a happy

    story where like oh she found cs in high

    school

    and then she got all of her degrees in

    computer science and now she is a

    professor in computer science

    and it looks like such a normal

    transition and flow

    and if a student

    saw just my cv they're like oh she had

    it together from the gekko

    like from the beginning she knew exactly

    what she was doing and i'm like hell no

    i had no idea what i was doing i want to

    make sure that people understand that

    you can start at any point

    and you shouldn't feel impostor syndrome

    like oh i didn't start computer science

    from high school so i must not be good

    at it

    even though i'm starting it now and i'm

    like no no that's not true at all i just

    was lucky

    and even though my cv makes it look like

    i knew exactly what i was doing the

    whole time that's not true

    i started my bachelor's with the full

    intention of just getting a bachelor's

    going into the industry making a lot of

    money

    and then doing whatever i want to do

    afterwards like i didn't actually see

    computer science

    as a means of fulfillment i saw it as a

    means to make enough money than to do

    whatever i wanted to do

    and then i made a sharp right turn into

    grad school

    because i had a professor who basically

    said you need to go to grad school

    and i thought about it for a summer

    while i was interning at google

    at a very boring internship and

    decided that yeah i want to go to grad

    school because i wanted to learn

    how to learn from academia and

    i had the full intention that like if i

    achieved that goal and didn't want to

    stay in grad school after my master's i

    wasn't going to stay

    so applied to grad school got into grad

    school

    started my master's in computer

    networking transitioned between various

    advisors

    had one advisor who in many ways was

    excellent because he basically told me

    you don't want to do computer networking

    research which at the time is horrifying

    to hear as a grad student

    because you had convinced yourself that

    this is what you want to do because

    that's why you're here rather than

    making boatloads of money in industry

    and he basically was like i don't think

    you actually want to do this and i took

    it seriously enough that i then started

    exploring and that also was the year of

    the mooc

    where massive open online courses became

    a huge thing and suddenly i was like

    i didn't know i could do research in

    this like i didn't know this was a thing

    i want to do this and so when i came

    back to that advisor and said like i

    found this thing and he's like

    this is what you want to do like this is

    the first time i've seen you light up

    about this idea and so then it took a

    couple more advisors to figure out

    actually finding someone who resonated

    enough to actually make it make sense so

    by the end of grad school after seven

    years

    i did my master's in computer networking

    and then had to kind of restart

    my phd work completely to do my cse

    research

    it took me five advisors until i finally

    found the advisor that actually made

    sense

    for csv research took a while so i

    i took longer than most people so on my

    cv it looks like i totally knew what i

    was doing but i'm like no

    i was figuring i was going along at the

    time everything was making sense to a

    certain degree

    and it's actually one reason why in grad

    school i made this it's called eek's

    peers

    eecs which is the department's name as a

    support group for grad students so i was

    like i don't want anyone to go through

    what i went through like i had

    a summer of depression i saw a

    professional because i was like

    something is wrong

    yeah one of the episodes that's going to

    release since september is like national

    suicide prevention month is talking

    about like depression suicidality and

    computer science education and whatnot

    so that's like a big

    area and yeah i can relate to that i

    don't know of any

    doc student that i've worked with who

    couldn't have benefited from

    going and seeing a therapist like each

    week because it is

    a lot of pressure it is a lot of

    pressure and it's a lot of pressure

    from both the outside but you also put

    on yourself yeah and i think part of it

    is because not enough

    of us that have gone through it talk

    about how

    bad it was yes there are amazing moments

    but there are also moments where it was

    really bad

    and every student that ever works with

    me

    whenever they first start reading papers

    i tell them first off you are not stupid

    if you take forever to read a paper

    my first paper in undergrad took me in

    the entire day like literally eight

    hours to

    read one paper and i also then tell them

    the paper is not what happened in real

    life like when you read the paper it

    sounds like oh they knew exactly what

    they were doing

    they knew exactly what hypothesis they

    were going to test and they just

    everything flowed naturally that's not

    what happened that never is what happens

    you start out with like idea a you try

    to figure something out

    to test this idea you end up with idea b

    that

    maybe looks kind of like idea a but

    maybe not

    and then you figure other things out and

    you like

    collect data you start analyzing your

    data realize that idea b

    does not make sense anymore so you go

    with idea c yep and then by the time you

    get to the paper you're like

    idea g and then you write it like you

    knew exactly what you were doing the

    whole time

    and we write that way because it is the

    fastest way

    to like explain what you did like you

    only have so many pages you can't go

    into the chronology story of the epic

    hero story of how you did this

    you don't have time for that so we write

    papers in this way

    and so i tell every student what you

    read in that paper is not actually what

    happened

    it's written that way so that you can

    read it quickly do not think that you

    are stupid if you cannot do it this way

    right my chapter six of my dissertation

    has like several pages where i talk

    about how hard it was for me to find a

    framework to make sense of

    what i was looking at and like pointing

    out all these different things that like

    sort of touched on one aspect but then

    left all these big gaps in other areas

    and so i had to kind of combine some

    ideas

    it's it's a very messy process and like

    the page count limit

    makes it seem much nicer when you

    actually publish things

    it's never like the way that the paper

    claims because

    the paper is written in a very different

    style like and it's that way by design

    but like

    yeah i feel like that not enough of us

    are telling students

    what the reality is and i think that's

    partially because we suffer under

    expert's fallacy we forgot

    and we also forget that novices don't

    know

    and so with all of my students i always

    tell them these kinds of things and

    like last summer i think i had two

    undergrad researchers working with me

    and by the end of the summer our project

    was a bust

    and i told them like you have had an

    excellent but at the end of the summer

    they're like obviously a little

    depressing like

    project was kind of a bust and i'm like

    this was an excellent experience

    to find out that research sometimes

    doesn't work you know like we literally

    tried like three or four different ideas

    to analyze our data and every time we

    came back with like

    there's nothing here i don't think so i

    don't think there's anything here and

    we're like okay

    there's a good another attempt to try

    and understand our data

    so in our email exchanges i know that

    representation

    has kind of like had a big impact on

    your journey into cs i'm wondering if

    you could kind of unpack that

    and maybe talk about what are

    recommendations you have for kind of

    improving

    not just representation but like equity

    and inclusion in general

    yeah so i definitely think equity

    inclusion diversity is very important

    and all the stories you hear you should

    believe them you should believe someone

    when they tell you that this has

    happened to them my journey through

    computer science with the diversity like

    right now i'm in the stands like

    diversity is super important that we

    need to be proactive

    about it my journey through it was i

    think very typical in some ways

    where i started out kind of believing

    what i was being told without super

    experiencing some of it

    and then the advantage of being raised

    by white male

    and being half japanese so as part of

    the model minority

    my parents basically raised me as being

    half is awesome

    and so i was like i am an awesome person

    i am a hybrid it is cool

    and then i had enough self-awareness

    also in college when i got to college

    i remember my intro cs class looking

    around and like counting i'm like oh

    there's not many of us i stood up

    scooted over to the closest girl and sat

    down with like hi my name is kristen

    i was self-aware enough to know that

    like i needed friends i needed to make

    friends so i had a community

    so i think that for

    representation it's important

    and i think i'm still going through

    that journey of figuring out how best i

    can support it

    to be honest in undergrad i was part of

    the women's group

    in grad school i was also part of the

    women's computer science group

    and after being co-president of that

    group

    is when i founded my ex-paris group

    which is the

    grad student support group i made it by

    recognizing

    that people needed support but i hadn't

    at even at that point

    recognized that one reason why you

    needed that

    support was because someone who is a

    minority doesn't necessarily have that

    network easily at hand like i made that

    group because i recognized this deficit

    but i didn't recognize that it might

    have been stratified by racial

    or gender lines i just recognized like

    this is important more people need this

    so i'm going to make form this group

    and the group exists to this day and

    basically the idea of that group is that

    there is a group of more senior grad

    students

    who basically are willing to put their

    name and faces on a website that says

    if you email me i will give you the time

    of day and i don't have to know who you

    are

    you have you can be a complete grad

    student a completely different lab than

    me but i'm willing to talk to you

    and go out to coffee with you to talk

    about whatever troubles you

    now that i'm a professor i'm definitely

    having moments of like

    wondering how i can help people more

    and this is when i wish my classes

    actually weren't so big

    because i can't get to know my minority

    students

    without making it potentially feel weird

    and your classes are like two to three

    hundred right

    two to three hundred students i ran the

    numbers and i did find at least

    that the interesting class that i may be

    focused on teaching the past couple

    semesters

    racially matches the duke university

    racial

    proportions but unfortunately the

    non-asian white

    or the minorities in computer science

    are very small

    even at duke university right which is

    basically everyone who's not white or

    asian

    and i'm now kind of wrestling with

    trying to figure out like what can i do

    to support the students

    at the very least if a student emails me

    and tries to contact me or comes to my

    office hours i definitely try and like

    get to know them better

    but unfortunately that requires them to

    start the interaction

    there's a clear power dynamic there and

    that's also

    kind of puts aside all of the students

    who to them it wouldn't even occur to

    them to talk to the professor

    right i recently read an excellent book

    called the privileged poor excellent

    book

    and the privileged poor was an

    interesting book because it basically

    looked

    at two groups of students

    that would be classified as poor one

    group

    was privileged because even though

    they were from a lower social economic

    background they

    were able to access

    higher quality at schools so they got a

    scholarship to go to a private school or

    something like that

    and then you have the poor students who

    are basically underprivileged

    and they didn't have access to those

    tools and so

    these two groups of students demographic

    wise

    look the same but in actuality

    they are very different in how they

    potentially handle school

    handle college especially the ones that

    were had access to private schools who

    were privileged poor

    already went through culture shock

    because of the

    of like how they are poor and punching

    many of their peers or not they already

    went through that culture shock in high

    school

    and so it doesn't bother them as much

    that their peers do not understand what

    it's like

    to be in a lower social academic bracket

    and on top of that

    they also have learned all the soft

    skills and the soft

    rules about how to interact with adults

    how to interact with professors how to

    access certain resources

    while a underprivileged poor student

    is going through culture shock during

    college and has no idea how to access

    any of those resources potentially until

    their third or fourth year

    when learning that is kind of too late

    to a certain extent

    assuming they make it that far so like

    that is an excellent book that really

    kind of

    helps me realize like i cannot wait for

    students to come to me

    like the students i most want to help

    are not going to come to me

    because they're scared right small

    little asian girl

    they're still going to be scared of me

    just because i have all the power in

    their minds

    yeah and so i'm kind of currently

    wrestling with like how do i

    get students to reach out to me more or

    to to reach out to students in some way

    i don't have answers to that

    unfortunately

    i'm excited that we hired nikki

    washington

    she is a amazing african-american woman

    she got hired as a full professor of the

    practice and she has this class

    called cultural competency and she had

    this excellent paper that i feel like

    everyone is right at this point about

    that

    i think having her will help a lot

    but i want to be careful of also the

    minority tax

    i don't want her to have all the burden

    of all of these things

    it's definitely a case of like i want to

    do everything i can to help myself first

    before asking her what else i can do

    just because i don't want to put that

    extra burden on her

    i've already felt some of that burden as

    being one of the women in the room like

    i was recently on a committee where i

    was the most senior female in the room

    and i'm like i'm an assistant professor

    of the practice

    why am i the most senior woman in this

    room and the the other women in the room

    were the grad student in the undergrad

    and so i found myself basically

    dessert and amplifying their voices to

    make sure their voices were being heard

    in that committee

    like it's great that they were there

    like i think duke is great in the sense

    that they often

    will have a grad student and an

    undergrad student on committees to give

    that voice

    but in some ways i'm not surprised it

    was a woman they're women students

    because women are more willing to

    volunteer

    for services but yeah it was interesting

    being in that committee because i was

    like ah

    i'm not only going to voice my opinion

    i'm also going to amplify

    their opinions and there was one moment

    where i literally had to go

    well as a woman i don't think we should

    do x y

    and z for abc reasons and only after i

    highlighted that did the other men in

    them go like oh yeah yeah

    well as a man i wouldn't want that to

    happen either and i'm like yeah okay

    so kind of picking backing off of what

    you're talking about

    like thinking of learning at scale and

    some of the questions that you're

    raising like how to help

    students individually and whatnot and

    get the ones who are not willing to

    speak up like what do you wish there was

    more research on that could inform

    what you do with adults i wish that

    some research was more practical

    where it's easier to interpret what

    needs to happen

    and that you can implement it but at the

    same time like theory is also important

    like this semester i'm not teaching

    because i'm on parental leave because i

    have a five month old so i'm going

    through

    a phase of well i have the semester off

    but the summer was really my like not

    working period

    she's five months old now and so i

    should behave like a privileged white

    man

    who has a spouse taking care of the

    child and do something academically

    productive

    so i'm like one of my current goals is

    like maybe i'll try and write a grant

    this semester

    and so that requires me now to like go

    through a whole bunch of literature

    and research and like try and come up

    with a decent idea for a grant

    and i'm finding that for myself my

    theory is not

    as strong as i'd like it to be i have a

    bad habit of like going

    this is an interesting research question

    what does the data say and like just

    running into the data without really

    like pausing

    and thinking about the theory behind it

    and so then i end up spending like way

    too long just swimming in data for no

    good reason

    and theory is important because theory

    helps inform the research question is a

    useful lens

    to help you be more deliberate in your

    data analysis and your like

    experimental design the problem is if

    you get too stuck in theory

    those of us who don't have as much

    theory background are like i don't

    understand what i'm supposed to do with

    this information

    right and i think computer science

    education itself we're still a very

    young field and so we're still figuring

    out our theory we're still figuring out

    like how to do any of this so a good

    chunk of our papers actually still are

    pretty practical

    but unfortunately they don't have a lot

    of theory behind them so the cohesive

    whole is not there so

    we're still figuring ourselves out so

    for research questions on

    what what kind of research questions i

    want people to answer if i had a magic

    wand

    i think one that would be what can i do

    to get my students to talk to me if they

    need help

    and i don't mean like help with the

    content necessarily i mean

    help with whatever they need help with

    to master the material

    every semester i probably develop a

    relationship with a handful of students

    who would then trust me enough to tell

    me about things

    that would help them that aren't

    directly connected to the content

    like one student in some ways i was

    heartbroken he had to drop the class

    because kobit 19 happened and he had to

    go home

    and he he was struggling with the class

    beforehand and then suddenly

    being home meant he had to take care of

    an elderly relative

    younger siblings and like two dogs and

    i'm like yeah you cannot

    in this circumstance i strongly believe

    that if you put enough time and effort

    into it you can kind of master anything

    barring physical limitations some of you

    just might take more effort than others

    i strongly believe you can learn

    computer science if you want to but

    he was in a position in circumstances

    where he could not do that

    i fully accepted he's like yeah i agree

    you cannot succeed in this class in your

    current circumstances which broke my

    heart because i was kind of like

    this is one reason why we have

    universities to be able to help you

    kind of get out of that to be put into

    an environment to set you up for success

    not only do i advise computer science

    majors but i also

    at duke we have this extra thing where

    you don't declare in your second year

    until your fourth semester and so before

    that you have a college advisor which is

    more like a generic person that could be

    like a staff member or professor or

    somebody

    and so i advised six first and second

    years as a college advisor

    and every single one of them i was like

    let's meet up like two or three weeks

    into the semester and talk about the

    fact that online learning is not the

    same as in person learning and it takes

    a different skill set

    and let me i just want to check in to

    see like is everything okay

    and for like half of them they were fine

    the other half were like yeah this is

    not the same

    i'm like yeah let's talk about ways to

    succeed in an online learning

    environment

    when you don't have a desk in your room

    and you're stuck working at the dining

    room table

    and like one with one student i was like

    here's an idea buy

    a very obvious headphones and tell your

    family when i'm wearing these headphones

    don't bother me i'm working on school

    those kinds of things just to kind of

    help them

    figure out how to succeed because like

    yeah online is different than in person

    and i think

    at least half my students didn't quite

    recognize that and i wanted to make sure

    i talked to them about that

    like if i had a magic wand that's what i

    would want to know how to get

    every student who needed help to talk to

    me like that if i had a magic wand

    that's what i would want to know

    but i have no idea how to even start

    that

    research or even identify who those

    students would be

    like i have no clue but i if i had a

    magic wand that's what i think i would

    want the most

    yeah that makes sense it's definitely

    hard to do that especially

    at scale with two to three hundred

    students i'm curious though like

    if we kind of flip it what's something

    that works really well two to three

    hundred students that could also work

    really well

    for like small class sizes that teachers

    might not be aware of

    my favorite is peer instruction and

    think per share like those are my active

    learning is my favorites

    peer instruction especially i think is

    useful because it is immediate feedback

    from the entire class of whether or not

    they understood the thing that you just

    told them

    and my dissertation actually focused on

    how students get questions wrong

    so i know a lot about how students screw

    up

    it's fascinating so that means also

    i can come up with really good

    distractors

    really good wrong answers for multiple

    choice questions sometimes i even fool

    myself

    when i was lecturing when i was still

    like i think it was the second or

    third time i was teaching the class and

    i didn't yet have the correct answer in

    my notes

    like i fooled myself a couple times

    where like i see what the students did

    i'm like yeah that's the right answer

    i'm like oh wait no wait no that's not

    the

    answer like because the majority of

    students chose the wrong answer and i

    was like i didn't pause and go

    wait a minute something's wrong

    and what does pure learning look like so

    you mentioned like that as being a

    strategy

    if it's a novice teaching a novice how

    does that look

    in a learning space so in a learning

    space the way that i do peer instruction

    is i pose the question to the class via

    some way that i can collect an answer

    from every single student

    my main way to do is google forms but

    there's clickers and there's other ways

    to do it

    and then you look at the results and if

    of the students did not get their

    question right you're going to want them

    to discuss

    with their neighbor what the answer is

    and if

    not even 35 percent of the students got

    it right and obviously these are fudge

    numbers you can kind of go up and down

    if you want

    less than 35 got it right then you need

    to give them a hint

    because clearly they don't understand

    what's going on and so after you have

    them discussed

    usually there's some extra things you

    can do like you tell the group like they

    have to come to a consensus they have to

    agree

    before we do the second round and so

    then you do round two

    and round two is you ask them the exact

    same question it's like there's no

    change like exactly the same

    and then you see how the students did

    and so if the students

    usually at that point the students will

    where 75

    will have found the right answer and so

    at that point then you kind of you go

    over the answer because clearly some

    students still didn't get it right so

    you go over the answer and you can move

    on

    if they don't that's a clear sign you

    did not

    teach this thing right and you need to

    try again

    that i think can work in any classroom

    and like watching academic twitter

    like part of me is kind of annoyed and

    part of me is like yes you have found

    peer instruction

    because like a lot of them are like oh

    zoom is great because i can do poles i'm

    like you could do poles in the real

    world

    you don't have to do poles and zoom only

    that mildly frustrates me it's like you

    could have done polls at any time

    but you've just discovered them in zoom

    but like at least you found them now but

    peer instruction has been a thing for a

    long time

    i hope you take this into the real world

    and like i think some of academic

    twitter

    basically said like this is what i'll

    miss when i go when we go back to the

    real world i'll miss polling and zoom

    and like you can do that in the real

    world

    yeah and peer instruction is one of

    those things that i

    personally when i was asked to teach my

    peers and i was learning content i

    learned

    so much from doing that like it is such

    a great learning tool not only for the

    person who's

    receiving instruction but also the

    person who's like having to do

    essentially the teaching of it thinking

    of new ways to

    reframe oh how do i think of this

    concept in a different way and whatnot

    like it's

    very beneficial for everyone when you're

    first doing it students are not going to

    want to do it so you gotta like

    you gotta nudge them to do it so like i

    guess for anyone who's doing wants to

    try this for the first time

    like i will tell you now students will

    not want to do it at first and

    you just got to first set up the

    expectations that you want them to do

    this and then you got to be kind of

    obnoxious about it so the way that i did

    it

    is that i will wander around the room

    looking for people who are not talking

    to anyone

    and i will literally sit down and go hi

    what's your name

    and it's like my name is bob okay then

    turn to another student who's not

    talking hi what's your name

    my name is kate kate i'd like you to

    meet bob bob i'd like you to be kate

    i have made this awkward but now you

    could talk about the question

    and then i go to the next and i keep

    going

    and i don't know if this made it into so

    mark gosdale and i talked about this i

    think

    in his podcast on the csi podcast and

    i don't know if this made the cut but he

    also does something similar but instead

    what he does

    and he can only do it because he's an

    old white man

    and he he said this first i did not say

    that first he walks up to the student

    and starts singing

    that's like the soon that's all he's

    like you are all alone

    and i'm like yeah you can only do that

    because you're a white man who also like

    does amazing work on the ukulele he

    plays the ukulele

    so he can actually sing but yeah he like

    slowly walks towards the student and

    starts like singing you're all alone

    and then student like eventually like

    scoots over and goes talk to someone

    and then after i think a couple rounds

    of this the students kind of get the

    message and they start when they see him

    coming they'll like start scooting over

    to talk to somebody

    yeah i like that i like the idea of like

    i'm gonna do something awkward that

    makes it so it's less awkward to

    actually just engage in a conversation

    with your peer and whatnot another thing

    that i've

    often had to do is kind of like model

    and even practice here's how you can

    help somebody

    like don't just get frustrated with them

    because they don't understand it the

    same way as you like here are some

    questions you can ask or

    and whatnot so you mentioned your

    podcast the cse podcast i'm wondering

    what do you hope other cs educators

    learn from your podcast

    for my podcast i made it because i

    listened to a lot of podcasts and i

    realized that there weren't many

    computer science podcasts out there

    i found it hilarious that you started

    releasing yours i think

    soon after or maybe you started

    releasing before i did i can't remember

    we kind of started releasing our podcast

    around the same time

    and i've actually always been interested

    in science communication

    i watch a lot of science youtube so in

    some ways that's not surprising and

    for the podcast what i wanted was a mix

    of a couple things one

    was i wanted people to learn

    more about the research-backed methods

    to teach computer science like i wanted

    to get the word out there more

    because because especially in higher

    education like at least k through 12

    like there's so much regulation to make

    sure that you all are educated enough to

    like teach

    kids properly and trained like

    professors

    no one trains professors really the only

    times professors are trained how to

    teach is if they're interested in

    learning how to teach

    right and so one kind of thing that i

    want to happen with my podcast for

    example would be like one goal

    or like use case would be that like i

    have my core

    listeners who are kind of like the sig c

    community and

    the hope would be that i'd have an

    episode that someone in that audience

    thought was really useful

    that they could then tell someone who's

    not in the sixth community

    this is a good episode you should listen

    to this one which is why the first

    season was very

    targeted towards like tools how to write

    a good exam like it was very like

    practical these are like things that

    maybe

    a non-sexy person who teaches computer

    science would also be interested in

    listening to

    and now this season's theme

    is where should we go from here to

    really start thinking about like given

    covid

    and the racial craziness that's

    happening eventually

    some form of normal will come back

    after covet but where should we make

    that normal rather than just sliding

    into whatever normal

    comes let's be deliberate about it so

    that this this season is more

    thinking in those terms of like where

    should we try to aim to be

    rather than let whatever we wherever we

    land be wherever we land

    so the goals of the podcast are very

    much this combination of telling people

    about research

    in computer science education getting

    the audience to think about these things

    more deliberately

    and at the same time also be super

    practical because i am an extremely

    practical person

    and so all the episodes i'm hoping

    for this season will also include like

    extremely practical tips that you could

    start

    that day like right after listening to

    the episode you know an action item that

    you could do

    immediately is kind of the goals of the

    podcast at this point i think

    and what has surprised you so far while

    interviewing people on the podcast

    so one thing that i learned during my

    recording with colleen

    and at this point i don't remember what

    whether or not this made it into the

    podcast episode or not

    but during my conversation with colleen

    she made an interesting comment

    saying you should be embarrassed by how

    you taught three years ago

    admittedly she tells me this when i've

    only been

    like a year and a half into teaching so

    like

    i have to remind myself sometimes that

    like even though i taught a lot in grad

    school and actually was a ta in

    undergrad

    like in some ways i've only really been

    teaching like two and a half years

    at the time at like year and a half baby

    professor me

    was a little bit like that hurts i don't

    know if that should be true

    at two and a half year old professor me

    i'm like yeah yeah that should be true

    hopefully in half a year i will be

    embarrassed by how i taught three years

    ago

    very much this is a marathon and not a

    race or maybe it's not even that it's

    it's a journey and your goal should

    always be to continue

    improving your craft and getting better

    at what you're doing

    knowing that you're never going to be

    perfect at it but

    at least right now you're good enough

    because you know the students are still

    alive by the end of the semester

    and they've hopefully learned something

    they're still making it through the

    school and the world

    and you just need to get better and

    better what you're doing over time

    because then you will serve the students

    that you are teaching in the future even

    better

    yeah i like that and that definitely

    resonates i used to have students who'd

    come back

    to classes or ensembles and be like why

    didn't we do it this way when i was in

    it well because i'm continuing to

    iterate every single year

    yeah it's like i didn't know how to do

    it when i was teaching you

    yeah i'm a bit of like a practice and

    productivity nerd

    in that like i'm always trying to refine

    what i do

    and to just like be more efficient

    whether it be like with my playing or my

    writing of code or like how i teach or

    facilitate

    i'm curious like what do you do in order

    to like iterate on those abilities

    whether it be as an educator

    as somebody who can do computer science

    or a researcher in any area

    so i'll answer that in a couple of

    pieces first i also am a productivity

    nerd i love doing that kind of thing

    it's kind of fun to pause and ask myself

    how could i have done this better

    and then coming up with experiments on

    myself like this is the few times where

    n equals one

    is okay because all i'm doing is

    experimenting on myself to see if i can

    get myself to be more productive

    and so i do a lot of things there so for

    iterating

    on teaching i really actually liked

    the episode that you just released i

    don't remember the name of the person

    you interviewed was it dan schneider

    yeah so i really liked how he framed

    your teaching where like the first thing

    you have to do is master the content

    and master like the class management and

    then after you do that then you can

    start thinking about like class

    deliveries like it's phases that you go

    through yeah

    and it kind of helped me actually give

    myself a bit more grace

    because i'm like i am a baby professor

    i'm an assistant

    baby professor like i've only done this

    for two and a half years

    and making me feel like okay so i don't

    have to do everything perfectly all at

    once from get go

    so in terms of improving teaching i

    think at this point

    i only have one class that i've really

    mastered the content

    and the class management of and i'm only

    just now thinking about

    the content delivery part and how to

    improve those things

    like i recently had someone ask how do

    you work on

    class community like how do you help

    their students build a community and i

    tell them it's like i don't know

    like i i'm going pure on instinct and

    like a combination of

    instinct what i experienced as a student

    and like what i wish happened to me as a

    student like that's kind of what i'm

    going on right now

    because i i just i'm not at that stage

    of being able to do that

    this is partially i'm working on a blog

    post sequence of how i organize the ta

    team for my 200 plus student class i

    did a small release to some people i

    know and one of those people asked me

    that question

    because i was asking for feedback on

    those blog posts and i was like yeah i

    don't know

    i wish i knew how to like think through

    how to build community in my class but

    right now

    i'm not at that part but i think for me

    constantly improving

    part of it is reading doing a lot of

    reading and reading broadly like i'm not

    just reading

    the latest research that's out there

    because in some ways it's kind of harder

    to translate the latest research that's

    out there but also reading like

    i'm currently reading a book called

    small teaching which is an excellent

    book i would recommend it to anyone

    i'm also reading a book called range

    why generalists triumph in a specialized

    world

    and by david epstein and

    this book has been really interesting

    because it's it's making an argument

    that

    you should not specialize too soon and

    if you think about college in general

    college really wants you to specialize

    as fast as possible

    like that's what how you have a major

    and

    every major basically wants to pack in

    as many

    of their classes required compared to

    anything else

    and reading that book has gotten me

    really thinking more like oh

    actually maybe we should be thinking

    more in terms of breath like trying to

    help people

    explore more what they're interested in

    and so for me

    i'm not just interested in computer

    science i'm also interested in data

    science like

    how do you teach people data science and

    like what does that process look like

    and data science thankfully has

    built into it more a requirement for

    breath

    because data science outside of any

    context does not make a whole lot of

    sense

    like you need to deeply understand

    biology cancer economics

    to be able to understand the data

    science that you do on top of it

    and anyone who says otherwise is kidding

    themselves if you don't do

    if you do not understand your data

    garbage in garbage outlet if you don't

    understand your data going in you're not

    going to understand the data going out

    regardless of what

    your analysis is you're not going to

    recognize a bad result when you see it

    if you do not understand the context

    your data is coming from right

    education i feel is one of those fields

    unfortunately that has more

    trouble with people believing you when

    you say that because

    i call this the educated fallacy i have

    been educated therefore i know how to

    educate

    yeah and i'm like nah no no that's like

    me saying i can brush my teeth therefore

    i

    am a dental hygienist like

    in teacher education research that's

    called the apprenticeship of observation

    so you go through like your

    and you think that

    you have become this master because

    you've sat through it and so you're

    learning from people and

    it seems like oh this is an

    apprenticeship well no you don't

    understand

    why they're doing what they're doing the

    choices behind that or the theories that

    informs what they're doing

    and so like you're making assumptions

    without being able to actually like

    verify

    if those assumptions are correct and so

    it's an interesting line of research

    apprenticeship of observation i'm going

    to remember this now that i know there's

    actually there's a proper term for it

    because literally i've been making it up

    i've been calling it the educated

    fallacy

    especially when i first got into cs ed

    i came at it weird because like i was in

    a computer science department

    surrounded by computer scientists and

    then i went

    across the aisle to the education school

    and was like talking to

    education professors but there's there

    was no computer science education

    person right to mentor me and so like my

    background is weird because like my

    background is this combination of

    computer science

    with human computer interaction and

    design

    and then k-12 education like i went

    through

    the literature boot camp of like let's

    read all the seminal works

    of k-12 education which has nothing to

    do with my context of higher education

    but like that's what i went through

    when moocs happened though it was very

    interesting being in that position

    because i felt like i was straddling two

    worlds on one side as the computer

    scientists

    who also suffer from the eye of a hammer

    everything looks like a nail

    problem because software engineers

    especially love to solve everyone's

    problem with computers

    and on the other side i had the

    education people who are like you don't

    know what the hell you're talking about

    and you're trying to tell me what to do

    so i don't want to talk to you and

    that's why we have

    terrible education technology in some

    ways because the education people

    rightly did not want to talk to soft

    engineers and so that they built their

    own things which weren't so great

    because they weren't taking advantage of

    all the knowledge that software

    engineers have

    and the soft engineers are building all

    these things that are horrible for

    education

    because they're like they're suffering

    under the apprenticeship of observation

    because they're like i have been

    educated therefore i know how to teach

    people and you're like no you know how

    to teach yourself

    maybe maybe you know how to teach

    yourself but you don't know how to teach

    anyone else

    so stop yeah no i like that

    and it also relates to some of the

    issues that i see with education in

    general

    and research so like the k-12 what

    people do

    the practices are often disconnected

    from research and so

    the podcast like the unpacking

    scholarship episodes try and like bridge

    that gap

    and like allow the two spaces to kind of

    connect with each other a little bit

    yeah i really i do like those episodes

    in some ways i'm tempted to

    steal or riff it for the csv podcast if

    i can get

    more consistent funding right i don't

    have the skills or the inclination to

    learn the skills to edit my own podcast

    so i have to pay a producer to do it and

    i also want to pay myself

    for doing it so the reason there's a

    season two is i found a benefactor who

    was willing to pay for it

    so i have another idea also where i know

    of someone else who is starting

    a cs education for grad students podcast

    and she is planning to pick like some of

    the top papers that like seminal works

    in our fields

    and interview those authors and also ask

    them what really happened

    i like that what was the chronology of

    like what happened when you wrote this

    paper and i was like yes i want those

    podcast episodes

    yeah if she doesn't do it maybe i'll do

    that i don't know yeah and like tying

    that back together

    so i did that unpacking scholarship

    episode of nikki washington's paper that

    you mentioned

    and when i tweeted it out she responded

    saying that that

    paper was actually in response to her

    not getting tenure at her formal place

    and like knowing that what really

    happened was like oh that's fascinating

    like this came out of that so like

    a good thing came out of the negative

    thing and yeah

    i saw that tweet from her and i was like

    oh interesting i'm glad you're a duke

    now i like you here

    you are awesome nikki is amazing

    so one of the questions that i love to

    ask and there's a super cut episode

    that's going to release

    a couple weeks from now on this

    particular topic but how do you take

    care of yourself to kind of stave off

    the burnout of what

    tends to happen with a lot of educators

    and professors

    so for me the biggest thing

    was facultydiversity.org so

    it is the national center for faculty

    development and diversity

    and i found this resource

    i think after faculty orientation maybe

    which for me was

    after a semester of being a duke because

    i started in the spring semester

    and so i went to orientation like a

    semester late which actually in some

    ways is more useful like going to

    orientation after you've been there a

    semester is

    you have you actually know what

    questions you want answered

    and it's a resource intended to help you

    figure out how to make

    being a faculty makes sense without

    burning yourself

    out so they have extremely practical

    webinars

    where it's like go through this hour and

    a half webinar and by the end of it

    you'll have a plan for your semester

    and go through this one and now you will

    start learning the process of

    planning your week every single week and

    there's a lot of like tips and tricks

    and those kinds of things that you can

    do in there

    and when i found this resource i was

    like this is this seems very useful to

    help me start

    figuring stuff out and

    i was horrible at the beginning of

    following their advice

    like it took time to figure it out and i

    was working

    evenings and i was working weekends and

    i was like i hate this

    one reason actually i decided to be a

    professor of the practice and i guess i

    we should define what that is so

    professor of the practice is someone who

    focuses more on teaching

    rather than research at duke university

    and

    there is some expectations of scholarly

    work

    but what's nice at duke is that we can

    kind of define what that means

    to ourselves and so for myself my

    scholarly work is going to focus more on

    research with some outreach like my

    podcast

    but like some people define it in other

    ways and

    so i chose to be a professor of the

    practice

    because i looked at the professors

    at berkeley which was my main way of

    comparing my main yardstick because

    that's where i went to grad school

    and admittedly it's not the most

    calibrated yardstick

    now that i've been away for a while but

    i look at them and i'm like i don't want

    your life

    i was like i don't want to work 60 hours

    a week i don't want to have this huge

    pressure of finding grants and

    publishing i don't want

    any of that i want to have the weekends

    to myself i want the weekends to my i

    want the evenings for my family

    and so that's one reason why i chose

    professor the practice because i was

    like

    i know at least i can do teaching well

    and

    as long as i do that well they're not

    going to fire me

    and so if i have to like do

    less of other things to get that work

    life balance

    no one is going to fire me over it and

    anything else i want to do on top of

    that

    like my podcast on my research i will do

    because i want to

    and it fits into my life obviously

    though i did not know what i was doing

    in the beginning

    and so i was still working weekends and

    all of that and then adding the

    practices

    that i was learning from this resource

    was great because it started

    making certain things more visible and

    more real and helped give me the tools

    to figure out how to

    tweak that so for example the weekly

    planning meeting is where

    you list out all the things you have to

    do and then you match those things to

    your calendar like you literally block

    out time on your calendar like this is

    when i'm going to work on x

    another thing where they have you track

    your time like how long does it take you

    to actually

    actually do things because everyone

    suffers the planning fallacy of

    it always takes longer than you expected

    to right and so happening you track your

    time helps you figure that out i am a

    data nerd because you know i'm a

    computer scientist and a data scientist

    so i still collect my time like i know

    exactly how long i spend on everything

    to the 15-minute increment for work and

    i did this in grad school before

    even learning about doing this as a

    faculty so

    picking up that habit again was very

    easy for me so knowing that information

    i am better at estimating how long it

    takes me new things i still screw up

    like

    i estimated for reviewing for 60. it was

    going to take me an hour and a half per

    paper no it took me like two hours per

    paper or like two and a half hours per

    paper

    so i was still off but i was not as off

    as i could have been

    and so like blocking out my calendar and

    then in the beginning

    it made it very real to me to realize

    that i was underestimating how long

    things were taking me because i had to

    drag those blocks to like the weekend

    like i didn't finish this thing so now i

    have to put this in the weekend and now

    i'm spending weekend time

    and i feel this pain i'm going to

    remember this pain so i will fix

    what i'm doing to stop doing this it

    took me like a year

    before i stopped like working on

    weekends

    and working in the evenings like we had

    one kid at the times like after the kid

    was in bed like pulling up my laptop and

    doing extra like email and that kind of

    thing it took me a long time

    but that's kind of probably the biggest

    things for me which was like accessing

    that resource and a lot of universities

    have yet university memberships there so

    just check your university

    and see if it's in the list because if

    it is then you have free access to all

    this stuff

    planning out my semester i go a little

    crazy

    in how i plan my semester i plan it kind

    of to the hour

    how many hours i'm due on various things

    for various weeks but like no one has to

    be as nuts as i am

    [Music]

    i do weekly planning i make deadlines

    feel real

    and so the way i do that is that the act

    of planning out when i'm going to do

    what

    makes deadlines feel very real to me

    because if i don't get it done in that

    time

    i have moved everything else over and

    that to me at least the deadline is

    feels very real at that point because

    i'm like well if i don't get this done

    now i'm not going to get it done later

    right or i have to shove something else

    over so clearly this is the this

    deadline is real even though technically

    i don't have to do this for two weeks 60

    technically we're all reviewing for 60

    now and that due date is next week

    i'm already done because i was like no

    if i don't do this now i'm not going to

    get it done later i've got other things

    to do other things are tracking my time

    so i know how long things take

    and then i kind of mentioned this before

    i was like making

    underestimating how long something takes

    you feel the pain like make you feel

    that pain so that you'll reassess how to

    do better next time

    i think it's still a balance i still

    plan out my days

    and technically my day is supposed to

    end at five but it never ends at five it

    always end at like 5 30 or 6

    and that's partially because i'm a bit

    of a workaholic like i like

    to do this stuff and i have the

    advantage

    of we live in a place where we can live

    on one income and so my husband

    he's technically a stay-at-home parent

    he supported me a lot in grad school

    so i feel like this is like the

    reciprocal i now hold

    the breadwinner bucket and he had it

    before

    but then what that means is like i can

    continue working my office until

    he goes to daycare picks up the

    three-year-old and brings him home

    and i don't really have to go downstairs

    as soon as they the three-year-old is

    home

    i can like you know three-year-old can

    play with his dominoes or whatever and i

    will continue like

    getting rid of like finishing some last

    email that's how i kind of

    avoid burnout and right now also as

    since i'm on parental leave i'm

    currently going through a process now of

    kind of

    rediscovering how to recharge because of

    this combination of being a workaholic

    and having two kids now and trying to

    manage two kids

    that's that's something that i'm also

    have been working on

    since i finished my dissertation is okay

    now

    how do i have more appropriate balances

    in my life because like i'd finish my

    day job and then at night i'd work on my

    dissertation and on the weekend i'd work

    on my dissertation

    and then i go back to the day job and

    it's like well where's the time for me

    to relax and me to spend time with my

    wife and dogs and whatnot

    grad school encourages very bad habits

    yeah

    i'm still figuring out what does what

    does vacation mean to me

    yeah me too like i know i should do it

    but

    what do i do during vacation that is

    rejuvenating

    i don't know yet to be quite honest and

    i've been trying for two and a half

    years to figure it out

    like i still don't know yeah my

    therapist recommended i take

    a few days off so i took like five days

    off and it wasn't until the fourth day

    when i actually stopped thinking about

    work

    and i realized just how much i think

    about work even when i'm not working

    and i'll just like write down oh i need

    to make sure i do this or oh

    like here's a new idea for this thing or

    whatever and it took multiple days to

    stop doing that

    at this point at least between a couple

    days before christmas

    and a couple days after new year's i

    don't work during that period

    because that seems like a very natural

    like this is sacred we shouldn't work

    between christmas and new year's

    if we can at all but like over the

    summer i'm still bad like i'm like

    i should probably take two weeks off in

    the summer i haven't yet

    i'm still trying to like what do i do

    for vacation

    so now i've actually made a pact with my

    younger sister

    and a bunch of other friends like when

    this whole thing is over

    let's try and meet in hawaii let's just

    plan to try and find a place

    and hang out in hawaii for a week or two

    yeah

    well yeah don't do it the way i did it i

    when i was in hawaii with

    family i was working on my dissertation

    proposal so like there's a picture where

    i'm sitting on the beach

    typing on my laptop i'm on the beach

    like

    don't do that yeah don't do that the

    reason i started in spring action was

    because i had not finished writing my

    dissertation

    like i went on the job market the spring

    before got the job offer from duke and

    then i was like i don't want to start in

    the fall i want to start in the spring

    i'm going to finish writing my

    dissertation before i take this job

    and that made it actually a lot less of

    a stressful time to write my

    dissertation because i also

    i had had my first child right after the

    job hunting season

    and so i was like i'm going to take a

    month off and then i'm going to finish

    my dissertation

    while taking care of a newborn which

    obviously didn't work so my husband

    actually took parental leave to take

    care of the kid

    yes but it worked in the end i got done

    before it was due that's good

    so where might people go to connect with

    you and

    to listen to your podcast so for my

    podcast

    we are the csa podcast on basically

    every platform unfortunately

    sometimes the the is required which i

    think is very silly for a search engine

    but if you search for the cse podcast

    you should find it

    and we have a website sites.duke.edu

    podcast i also have the csv podcast on

    twitter

    and on facebook so all of it is the css

    podcast

    no the unless you're searching for it in

    some

    podcasting app then you might need the

    the

    which is frustrating twitter is probably

    another way of contacting me

    i am at ksm underscore csed

    and i tweet a lot of random stuff i feel

    like on there like sometimes it's like

    fun stuff sometimes it's interesting

    things that i've found on the internet

    or conversations with like a fellow cs

    people

    i think one of my better tweets was

    actually calling amy co

    and mark gosdell and saying like when

    should i publish at a journal i have no

    idea and that was a very nice

    conversation on twitter

    and as always as a friendly reminder i

    include links to all of those

    in the show notes as well as many of the

    other topics books resources etc that

    were discussed throughout this episode

    you can find that clicking the link in

    the description or going to

    jaredaleri.com

    thank you so much for listening i hope

    you stay tuned next week for another

    unpacking scholarship episode where i

    talk about

    implications of scholarship in the

    classroom and two weeks from now for

    another interview

    i hope you're all having a wonderful

    week and are staying safe

Guest Bio

Kristin Stephens-Martinez is an Assistant Professor of the Practice at Duke University in the Computer Science Department. She received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from UC Berkeley. Kristin's research lies at the intersection of education and computer science focusing on using data available in large classrooms. Her research goal is to find ways to allow class sizes to grow without affecting the quality of the learning. She created EECS Peers at Berkeley, a group dedicated to supporting fellow graduate students with grad school life. Kristin is also the host of The CS-Ed Podcast.

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