Vulnerability, Reflection, and CS Education with Amy Ko

Vulnerability, Reflection, and CS Education with Amy Ko

Jared O'Leary

Download

In this interview with Amy Ko, we discuss the importance of mentorship in education, learning what not to do with teaching, the positive results of being vulnerable, understanding and exploring the limitations and consequences of CS, problematizing grades in education, practicing teaching through mental simulations, the importance of engaging in the CS community, and much more.

• Auto-generated transcript (click to expand)

  Welcome back to another episode of the

  CSK8 podcast my name is jared o'leary

  each week we alternate between an

  interview with a guest and a solo

  episode where i unpack some scholarship

  in this week's episode i'm interviewing

  Amy Ko in our discussion we talk about

  the importance of mentorship and

  education

  learning what not to do with teaching

  the positive results of being vulnerable

  understanding and exploring the

  limitations and consequences of computer

  science

  problematizing grades in education

  practicing teaching through mental

  simulations

  the importance of engaging in the cs

  community and so much more

  we do mention several interviews and

  resources and blog posts and stuff

  in this interview so if you'd like a

  direct link to them make sure you check

  out the show notes

  which you can find by clicking the link

  in your app or by going to jaredlery.com

  and clicking on podcasts with that being

  said we will now start the interview

  with an introduction by amy

  my name is amy koh i'm a professor at

  the university of washington

  and i study programming how people learn

  it how they do it how it affects the

  world

  i teach a lot of different populations

  of people i teach undergraduates i teach

  master's students i teach

  doctoral students and i teach a lot of

  different subjects so

  information design user interfaces

  software engineering

  research methods i also spend every

  summer

  teaching computer science to high school

  students through our upward bound

  program

  and that serves a lot of our higher

  poverty schools in south king county

  can you tell me the story of how you got

  into computer science education

  that one actually goes back quite a ways

  i mean the shorter version of this

  is that professionally my interest in

  computer science really started off back

  in 2010

  when jan cooney at the national science

  foundation had just started funding

  basic research on the topic and so

  when i was looking for funding and

  looking for opportunities to do research

  that was a great example of a way to

  express my interest in cs education

  while still doing research and working

  with doctoral students at the same time

  but really my interest in cs education

  started a lot

  earlier than that i really fell in love

  with programming in

  middle school and seventh grade in my

  pre-algebra class

  we have these ti 82 graphing calculators

  that we had to buy and our

  math teacher taught us the basic

  programming language on it to just

  record a few formulas

  and i just got so obsessed with creating

  things like little text adventures and

  other things

  and so for me cs education what it

  looked like was this very personal

  thing right i spent a lot of time

  reading that calculator manual trying to

  understand the programming language

  in high school i had a lot of random

  informal mentors like there was this

  dutch exchange student who would hang

  out in the computer lab and

  he taught me about variables and arrays

  and data structures and things that

  nobody else was there to teach me since

  we didn't have any computer science

  classes

  and then i had this two-year college

  student who would come

  for some reason i cannot explain to our

  high school and just hang out in our

  computer lab

  and challenge us with his homework

  assignments i think maybe it was to get

  answers to his homework assignments

  but he ended up just being a wonderful

  mentor and like showing me what

  computer science might look like in

  college and inspired me to really study

  it too

  and so a lot of the cs education that i

  encountered when i was younger was

  really just through mentorship through

  people

  passing down knowledge and really

  supporting and encouraging me and

  helping to build some identity

  and i just ended up wanting to pay it

  forward and so that interest in csgo

  lingered that whole time in that same

  way of me wanting to provide mentorship

  too

  okay so that makes a lot of sense one of

  the quotes that i read on your website

  is that you like to quote center

  curiosity

  discovery knowledge learning and

  teaching in work and in life end quote

  and so i'm curious like how do you

  center those things in your own teaching

  and

  learning yeah that's a great question in

  some ways it mirrors my answer to the

  last question

  too which is part of this is just my job

  as a professor

  that's really my responsibility is to

  carry curiosity into the world

  and inspire other people to do discovery

  and fall in love with knowledge in the

  same way so it kind of fits a lot of

  what i do as a professor

  but it's not a coincidence that i'm a

  professor i was always a really curious

  person growing up i remember a lot of

  times when i was a child that my mom

  would take us

  to thrift shops and she would give us

  five dollars my brother and i and just

  say let's go buy something

  and we'll take it apart together and we

  would just spend a whole day going and

  picking out like blenders and microwaves

  and broken computer parts

  from a goodwill store and then taking it

  home and just trying to figure out all

  the different

  pieces that were inside of it and that

  idea that we would learn what was inside

  and then

  tell each other about it and tell our

  friends about it and bring random

  components that we'd found to school and

  show our friends that was just a really

  central part of my childhood

  so a career in research and teaching

  that was about curiosity and discovery

  that was just a really

  clear fit even when i was a computer

  science undergraduate

  i just remember thinking really clearly

  i have no interest in being a software

  engineer when i grow up

  what i want to do is follow my curiosity

  and i'm curious about computing so it

  seems like i should be a cs professor

  in a professorship role being able to

  engage in mentorship

  so i'm curious like obviously with grad

  students it's much easier to

  kind of apply the mentorship model that

  you went through in the informal

  learning that you grew up with

  because you're usually working

  one-on-one or in small group but how do

  you apply that in larger

  context yeah that's a fascinating

  challenge right with a phd student

  there's an expectation that they're

  going to come and be mentored for

  years really what the nature of that

  learning is is a mentorship model

  and so when i teach a class of 20 or 40

  or even 200 250 in some of my larger

  undergraduate classes

  there is this time that it takes to

  really establish

  that that's the kind of relationship

  that i want to have with them it takes a

  few weeks sometimes in a larger course

  for students to recognize that i

  actually

  am just the person that wants to talk

  with them have conversations with them

  chat about interesting ideas and office

  hours and

  usually by week three or four they start

  to trickle into office hours and realize

  that i'm really just a safe resource for

  exploring their curiosities

  right but it takes a month for them to

  not see me as some scary professor

  person that's

  there to destroy their academic career

  and give them a 0.0 in their class

  it's just a big transition to make from

  one role to the next

  yeah it's kind of a shame that that is

  the mindset going into some of these

  classes

  i've had a lot of experiences in

  education where i've learned what not to

  do

  as an educator because they were just

  such bad experiences

  and it kind of sours the taste and i

  just kind of happen to be able to make

  it through long enough

  to get through all my degrees and

  whatnot and become an educator but many

  people don't

  yeah and that's such a horrible story to

  have to tell about your experience

  in college right like surviving college

  is not what anybody that's a professor

  at a university wants the story to be

  and yet you know because a lot of

  professors don't have any preparation

  and teaching

  and we have very little access to

  professional development that's just

  it ends up being what happens as a

  result because we just don't know

  what else to do beyond that and it's

  actually been really empowering

  doing a lot of research in cs education

  and just recognizing this whole

  world of public k-12 education where

  teachers are prepared to be teachers

  and they have resources to continue

  their education

  and they're expected to improve over

  time it's a really different set of

  values than in higher education

  so it sounds like you've had some themes

  that have carried through from

  childhood into today but i'm curious how

  has your

  either teaching or life philosophy kind

  of changed over time yeah

  that's very grounded in my childhood too

  sometimes i think of my first teaching

  role

  as being a sibling i had a younger

  brother who was a year and a half

  younger

  than me and i just loved showing him how

  to do things and patiently giving him

  feedback

  once we got old enough he really

  despised the fact that i was always the

  one teaching him he wanted to be

  teaching me

  too we were so close in age we just

  wanted some reciprocity

  so a lot of that was kind of part of the

  nature of being in my family with just

  being a teacher and then the other piece

  of it was

  my mother was a third grade and fifth

  grade teacher for my entire

  childhood and so it wasn't just i knew

  that she was a teacher it was also just

  a random

  chance of history that our school

  district started two weeks after hers

  so i spent most of my childhood the

  first two weeks of her school year

  in her classroom as her age just seeing

  what she was doing and

  sometimes when i was younger i was the

  younger kid in a fifth grade classroom

  just trying to understand what was

  happening in this weird classroom and

  then later i was the older child and

  there were a lot of ways that

  just me observing her as a teacher

  really shaped my idea of what teaching

  could be

  and i remember this one particular thing

  that she did for several years which was

  trying to create a sense of wonder

  around

  ideas and learning by just situating it

  in context

  so she created this school-wide postal

  service where

  everybody in the school all the students

  including the students in her class had

  a role to play

  sometimes they were delivering mails

  sometimes they were processing it

  sometimes they were

  verifying things like stamps she had

  this little currency system for people

  getting

  payments for fulfilling their roles and

  i remember just seeing that and thinking

  like school's never been like this for

  me but she just made it that way i

  didn't even realize that you could

  create a learning context from scratch

  and just imagine something else

  so i always carried that idea with me

  that learning can be a lot of things and

  it doesn't really have to be

  any particular thing for a group of

  people it's something that a teacher

  really gets to invent

  for whoever it is that they're they're

  trying to connect with and teach

  obviously when i went through my own

  school and

  college i saw a lot of examples of that

  that

  you know just beared no resemblance to

  that kind of courageous teaching that my

  mom did

  but it sort of like you said it made me

  really aware of the things that i didn't

  like

  and it made me aware of when some

  teacher was doing something that she was

  doing

  really thinking consciously and

  intentionally around

  who is in this room with me what do they

  need how can i connect with them

  how can i connect their identities to

  the ideas that i want to teach them

  and that they might want to know i think

  that's what evolved over time was

  just my repertoire of bad examples but

  also

  further role models around what teaching

  could be

  by the time i became a professor in

  university it just meant that i was much

  more

  confident that i wasn't going to do

  things the way that that i'd seen

  and that i really wanted to just

  experiment even if it meant failure

  this may be a bit of projection on my

  own behalf but reading through

  a lot of the content on your website it

  seems like you

  are constantly engaging in reflection on

  your own teaching practices

  and learning from it yeah i think that's

  true and there's a lot of different

  things behind that

  i mean you can think about all of the

  ways that people are taught

  or learn to reflect probably early on it

  was a lot of my parents just asking me a

  lot of questions about how i felt or

  what i thought about something that

  really promoted a lot of

  self-reflection i was in a district that

  just had wonderful teachers

  like i learned right around the time i

  was graduating

  just how amazing some of the teachers

  were we had so many

  teachers who were recognized by the

  presidential

  teaching award and had gone to the white

  house and it was just one of these

  schools that just was

  this is what every school should be like

  right teachers that are so engaged so

  committed to their practice

  and that's what i saw them doing right

  they would reflect in front of us all

  the time

  they would teach something some way and

  then say you know what i really don't

  like how i did that we're going to try

  that again tomorrow

  let's see if it works better and they

  would involve us in that process of

  really trying to make sure that the

  learning we were doing together was

  something that was collectively working

  and not

  something that just worked for them or

  just worked for us and then you know

  there's lots of other

  sources of reflection too being in

  therapy a lot for example is really good

  practice for reflection

  so again by the time i became a teacher

  it was really clear

  that good teaching is fueled by

  reflection that's just the only

  central way that you can get a lot of

  feedback and that's especially true for

  higher education teachers because

  you don't necessarily have a whole team

  of other people who are

  there with you in your practice at the

  same time you might be the only person

  teaching your subject in the whole

  school

  and there's no context in which to share

  some of that professional learning

  together

  is that what led to writing some of the

  posts on the blog to try and connect

  with people who are outside of the

  buildings that you're working in

  i think there's a couple of different

  things behind that one is

  just i have always written in a diary to

  reflect that's just always been a

  practice that i've had to

  really force myself to engage with what

  my thoughts are and reflect on them and

  so the blog was really just an extension

  of that where it just meant that i was

  suddenly

  sharing my thoughts to myself with other

  people

  and you know in many ways it didn't

  really change much how i was writing or

  what i was writing it was more just

  me working out ideas and trying to

  understand things in the open

  instead of privately it has the nice

  side effect of me connecting with lots

  of people

  right because sometimes those ideas

  resonate sometimes other people are

  grappling with those same challenges and

  then i get to connect with them too

  so that's led to a lot of wonderful

  relationships and encounters with other

  people in the world and i think

  it's just taken a lot of courage to put

  those ideas out there yeah

  what are some ideas that surprised you

  in terms of how they resonated with

  others

  when you're grappling with challenging

  things or you're struggling with

  something

  there's a lot of other emotions wrapped

  up in those right you can imagine that

  you're the only person struggling with

  some teaching challenge you can imagine

  you're the only one that doesn't

  understand something

  so the surprising thing to me always is

  that i'm most likely to share the things

  that i

  don't think i understand and that i

  think are something that

  i'm alone in struggling with and then

  every time i do that i learn that

  there's a whole community of people

  who are struggling with the same thing

  and maybe have some other knowledge that

  they can share with me and so

  it just leads to a kind of reciprocity

  across a community of people where i can

  learn so many things about how other

  people are managing

  struggles and challenges not just in

  teaching but really in anything

  and there are other surprises too i mean

  i think part of my sharing

  is a way of demonstrating a kind of

  vulnerability

  and it's been surprising to me that

  being vulnerable

  with a community has just led other

  people to

  reciprocate in their vulnerability too

  so if i share secrets about myself

  they come and share secrets back with me

  and sometimes with others too

  and i think that there's a just an

  amazing way that that can kind of

  build community in this really simple

  way right if you can muster the courage

  to say something

  that has the potential to lead to harm

  it probably won't and it'll probably

  open things up for other people too

  and we can all sort of grow together

  instead of

  alone yeah i like that that really

  resonates with me one of the things that

  i've been

  working on on my own and through therapy

  went on is being more

  unreserved and empty from a buddhist

  perspective in terms of

  open to be filled and whatnot so it has

  been interesting

  opening up and just sharing here's how

  i'm honestly feeling whether it's good

  or bad

  and getting responses from people and

  allows for more

  points of connection and that

  vulnerability has honestly been

  a good thing for some of the

  relationships that i've had so that

  makes a lot of sense what you just

  described getting to that place of

  vulnerability can

  be challenging too right when i really

  think about how i got to a place where i

  was willing to share a lot of ideas even

  just

  intellectual ideas or more personal

  experiences

  half of it was things like protection of

  tenure

  right where there wasn't necessarily

  going to be

  career consequence to me sharing my

  ideas that's a really powerful kind of

  privilege that i have as a tenured

  professor

  it's not that there are no consequences

  to sharing but if people don't like my

  ideas i can harm my reputation

  people can change their mind about my

  expertise so there's

  certainly consequences but then other

  parts of it too are kind of a

  desperation

  like especially with a lot of the

  personal things that i've shared on my

  blog

  not sharing them for so long has just

  led to a lot of really pent-up desire

  to share them and me pushing out all of

  these personal stories is really just

  making it for a lifetime of hiding them

  from people yeah one of the things that

  i've mentioned in the podcast

  multiple times is i was suicidal for

  almost a decade like most of my high

  school and undergrad career

  it was one of those things that i didn't

  want people to know about and felt alone

  with and when i started opening up about

  it

  i was able to identify students who were

  suicidal get them to

  get some support like every time i just

  opened up

  more with things like that it helped me

  it also helped other people

  and so i recently in september released

  a podcast on suicidality and just

  read a paper that i wrote on it and it

  is the kind of topic where

  reading that paper like i get choked up

  if not just flat out start bawling

  through it because it's so personal but

  it's scary trying to share

  stuff like that publicly thinking out

  loud and being as vulnerable as it is

  with stuff like that

  yeah so it definitely takes a lot of

  courage to do that so

  i want to thank you as somebody who's

  read your works like for your

  vulnerability

  and the many different topics that

  you've talked about and what you're

  talking about with tenure that makes a

  lot of sense like one of them

  you were talking about some of the

  administrative stuff that goes on in

  higher education and

  the problems with it and being able to

  have tenure and to be able to talk about

  those real problems that somebody who

  doesn't have 10 years

  also struggling through it can really

  help them so thank you

  yeah and a lot of this applies to

  classrooms too right like how do you

  create a space for students to feel like

  they can share their whole selves

  you can't do that for them so trying to

  think about that kind of reciprocity

  in teaching is really challenging and i

  think one of the biggest things that i

  see

  many teachers struggling with and i've

  certainly struggled with myself

  is we might see ourselves as an

  authority figure

  and that's not a role that's really

  predisposed to vulnerability

  you're fearful of not looking like you

  have enough expertise

  not going to be open to vulnerability

  and then how do students make space for

  themselves in that room

  and so i think there's a lot of

  challenges here where even just teaching

  strictly technical topics really well

  sometimes requires that vulnerability so

  that there's room for students to make

  mistakes and for them to see that you

  don't know everything either

  and that there's an exchange happening

  rather than a

  transmission of knowledge this question

  is intentionally broad so feel free to

  take it in whatever direction that you

  want to go with but what do you wish

  more people within the field

  discussed or were more vulnerable with

  yeah

  it is a broad question there's also a

  broad field

  too right i think one of the things i

  learned most over the past 10 years of

  doing cs education stuff

  is that the world let's say of higher

  education cs is just

  so dramatically different than the world

  of k-12 and

  even in k-12 thinking about primary and

  secondary as a really different context

  is really important

  and so there are different things that i

  wish each of those communities would

  think about and wonder about

  and really interrogate in higher

  education for example

  i like to think of academia and higher

  education as a place where

  we develop as much confidence as

  possible in what we're talking about and

  have as much certainty

  as possible in what we're talking about

  we want to be the source of

  what cs is and what it can be and what

  it's not

  but it has this really negative

  consequence of

  just making us resistant to any other

  conceptions of what computer science is

  or can be

  especially in how we teach it and what

  we teach about it so

  you know your typical computer scientist

  has a pretty strong idea around

  what a programming language is how it

  shall be taught what people should

  use them for and that doesn't leave a

  lot of room for innovation

  or connecting with students identities

  or their interests

  and that's really different than in

  secondary for example

  middle school and high school where i

  think a lot of our cs teachers

  many of them are coming from backgrounds

  either in computer science and they're

  bringing that same idea from higher

  education

  down into k-12 which is problematic for

  entirely different reasons

  right in middle school and high school

  we want to inspire

  and cultivate and develop identity and

  not so much

  make people into the most amazing

  software engineers ever right that's

  just not what school is going to be for

  there's not enough time for that other

  teachers who maybe don't come with any

  cs background

  i think so much of their teaching is

  driven by that

  fear of lack of content knowledge that

  it's just a really challenging

  space and i think that bringing

  vulnerability into those situations

  having people with computing backgrounds

  really recognize that

  cs teaching can and should be many

  things especially

  in secondary and that teachers without

  computing backgrounds

  it's okay if the students are learning

  at the same time as you and there's a

  lot of potential for

  shared learning in that too and that

  just might mean that the kind of

  learning that's possible and which kinds

  of standards might be met just might

  vary depending on

  who's in the room and what kinds of

  learning the teacher is doing

  and then primary of course is this whole

  different world i just think of it as

  this wonderful

  wild west of of possibility where

  there's just

  infinite ways that you might connect

  computing to other subjects

  and in many ways because standards don't

  have too much to say about

  how that might happen i think that those

  teachers are the most free

  and recognize that freedom to just do

  whatever seemed

  like an opportunity so i'm most

  optimistic there

  about the kinds of teaching that might

  happen yeah the k8 space in particular

  was my favorite to work with because i

  didn't have to worry about ap tests i

  didn't have to worry about like all

  these other things

  that were related to teaching in high

  school or undergrad or graduate level

  and so there's a lot of creativity and

  fun in the k-8 realm in particular

  absolutely so one of the themes that i

  noticed

  on your website was that you like

  helping youth and teachers understand

  some of the limitations

  of technology so i'm curious if there's

  a cs educator in the k-12 space who's

  listening right now

  what limitations do you wish they knew

  about and taught

  in some ways there's really just one big

  one and it's

  really a counter narrative to the

  dominant narrative about computing

  the dominant narrative really is that

  computers are magic that's kind of how

  we

  talk about them in the media that's how

  we see them in movies and television

  that's how companies market about them

  and even when we're experiencing

  computers and using software they

  certainly appear to be magic

  if we can't imagine how they're working

  it just looks like magic and so i

  understand why we often come to this

  conclusion

  that they are magic but that's a really

  problematic narrative

  in a cs education context because they

  aren't magic

  and we want to demystify that magic and

  framing them as these

  infinitely powerful authoritative things

  that can do no wrong

  is very problematic because it's one not

  true and two

  it hides and masks all of these other

  ways in which they

  do go wrong so at the simplest level i

  think the thing that i want you to

  understand

  and that i think teachers need to

  understand to help you understand that

  is that software breaks all the time

  and it breaks you know in all kinds of

  unexpected ways and then if you ask any

  professional software engineer

  tell me what's broken about your

  software they would sit down and say

  do you have a couple of hours because

  there's about 5000 defects reported in

  our

  issue tracker and i can't possibly

  summarize them for you here

  in one sentence you know people engaged

  in creating software are

  intimately aware of just how often

  software is broken and how often

  it doesn't work and it's not magic and

  how hard one some of the basic

  functionality really was

  but then it goes further than that right

  like some of the ways in which software

  is broken

  software engineers don't even see and

  they're just really hard to notice

  unless you're paying very close

  attention to

  how software is situated in the world

  which is not something that computer

  science

  has often paid attention to so an

  example is i was just ranting about this

  on twitter

  i changed my name about a year and a

  half ago and one of the first things i

  did after i changed my name

  was to go on to the acm digital library

  website and change my profile

  so that my new name would be reflected

  acm unfortunately hasn't yet fixed all

  of my publication names but at least i

  could change my profile information so

  that people wouldn't stumble upon it and

  use my

  dead name which is what transgender

  people use to refer to their old names

  today i went to the profile to check on

  something and it had reverted

  and acm didn't notify me of this they

  didn't

  tell me that there was some change to

  this there was no notification it

  probably was just some weird defect on

  their side

  but there's a way that being trans and

  seeing your dead name is a really

  destabilizing thing it kind of ruined my

  morning

  yeah it was just not a lot of recovery

  from that it just took me a while to

  just

  get over the idea that not only had i

  seen it but there were just a whole

  who knows how many months maybe this

  entire year because i hadn't looked at

  it

  of people just going there identifying

  my work

  with something that's not my name

  anymore and i guarantee you

  that software engineer did not think

  about that case they did not think about

  that failure did they didn't think about

  that consequence

  it was not part of their release plan

  and even if they're aware of the defect

  now i'm pretty sure that

  there's nothing in that issue tracker

  that describes that error

  right that says this is the consequence

  of that mistake

  who knows if they're even prioritizing

  it like how often is it that somebody

  changes their profile name

  probably a defect because they haven't

  really thought carefully about that use

  case

  so you know that's the deeper and more

  subtle kinds of ways in which software

  isn't magic

  it's a tool we create that just ends up

  having all of these unintended

  consequences that we very rarely examine

  and i think that youth are just so

  uniquely positioned to understand those

  unintended consequences

  because they live with them every day

  they just haven't named them

  right they live with them in learning

  management systems they live with them

  and

  social media they learn with them in all

  of the ways that they interface with

  technology in their lives and

  you know they're just not connecting the

  harms they experience

  to the phrase computer science so how do

  you recommend cs educators this can be

  k12 higher ed whatever realm you're

  thinking of how do

  you recommend they encourage cs students

  to think in more

  ethically responsive inclusive and

  equitable ways well i'll start by

  putting on my researcher hat and just

  saying

  we don't know yet i think that's an open

  question

  it's something we have to do research on

  there's a lot of experimentation

  happening right now i think both on the

  part of researchers but also teachers

  who are starting to engage issues of

  ethics and justice and computer science

  and a lot of the things that seem to

  work pretty well are trying to start

  not from what a mathematician might do

  or a theoretical

  computer scientist might do and starting

  from the kind of the first principles of

  computer

  science but instead starting from really

  really concrete things

  like for example we had a study where we

  brought a bunch of students in

  to learn about machine learning and just

  do some basic linear regressions around

  data

  but rather than giving them a data set

  that was clean and perfect and well

  prepared for the kinds of learning we

  wanted them to do

  we gave them a tool that said go gather

  your data

  your social media posts from instagram

  or facebook or whatever it is that you

  use

  and we're going to use that as the data

  for making these predictions

  and there was this really magical thing

  that happened that when they started

  seeing the regression make predictions

  based on their own data

  instead of data that we curated for them

  they had really intimate

  understandings of precisely why the

  regression was bad

  and why it wasn't making good

  predictions and what variables and

  features and factors were missing from

  the models that they had built

  in ways when we just gave them the

  curated data they didn't have any domain

  insight into what that data meant and so

  when we asked them to

  think of things that might be wrong with

  the model they just couldn't brainstorm

  anything

  there was just nothing there for them to

  latch on to so

  connecting i think these ideas of bias

  and modeling two students lived

  experiences

  into their own data sets that reflect

  their lived experiences i think that's a

  really powerful

  possible direction that teachers might

  take and where these biases discuss

  with the full group because often in

  educational settings

  when students turn in something only the

  teacher the professor sees the thing

  that is turned in and it's kind of like

  a one-on-one conversation

  but when biases like these appear and

  students are reflecting on it are they

  sharing it widely with the class in this

  particular study

  there wasn't a group context like that

  for them to do that sharing

  but others have replicated some of these

  ideas and when there is sharing of some

  of those things even just voluntary

  students start very quickly realizing

  the diversity

  of ways that things can go wrong and i

  think that that's sort of this really

  clear link between ideas of diversity

  equity and inclusion

  in the context of technology and what it

  means to see that right when you

  leverage the diversity of experiences in

  a classroom

  as a way to teach the ways that

  technology

  doesn't account for diversity it becomes

  really really obvious

  how hard it is to make technology that

  really is responsive to all of the

  variation in the world

  and then you can get into more subtle

  things like you can start talking about

  things like

  conditionals in imperative programming

  languages and how they use boolean logic

  to make decisions and then connecting

  that with all of the different nuances

  and the decisions that we make as human

  beings and how they're almost never

  binary and they always account for many

  different factors not just

  three variables that we have in our

  conditional expression right

  yeah one of the things that i have kind

  of vocalized as a problem that i see in

  a lot of the k-8 space in particular is

  there's not enough

  room to account for solving problems and

  engaging in different perspective or

  different ways

  so coming to different solutions and

  then kind of conversing about it because

  obviously

  when you go with a puzzle based and

  there's one right answer there's not

  really an opportunity to discuss well

  what other possibilities are for this

  so i personally have enjoyed projects

  where it's like hey we're trying to

  solve

  this problem that can be solved many

  different ways let's talk about it as a

  class

  the different ways that we solve what

  worked why what didn't work why

  so like all my degrees are in music

  education and coming from an outside

  perspective like the field has been very

  open and welcoming to quote outsiders

  to learn the space and it seems like the

  theme that i've recognized from day one

  is that

  they are seeking diverse perspectives

  within the field whether as an educator

  as a student whatever

  and i personally have appreciated that

  yeah and i think that's a really

  subtle distinction to make there we're

  getting better at making but it's only

  something recent that's come up

  the students perspectives and the

  teachers perspectives absolutely those

  are essential things to get right from

  an inclusion perspective

  and a pedagogical perspective and then

  there's this whole other layer of

  diversity of all of the other

  experiences in the world

  that aren't represented in that

  classroom right and the connection

  between

  a software designer or a software

  engineer or a software company

  having to interface with that diverse

  world software companies have

  not grappled with that diversity yet

  and yet we're starting to see the

  effects of them kind of ignoring that

  diversity

  and so talking about diversity as a

  subject of computer science as a

  part of doing it as a part of designing

  software

  that's this new topic that i think is

  really central to kind of

  expanding the broader scope of computer

  science to include all of the other

  things that students are learning in

  their other classes

  in history in social studies in english

  and humanities

  that's where it starts touching on all

  of those other areas

  so with that in mind the idea of like

  solving many different problems in

  different ways and

  seeking diverse perspectives and whatnot

  and going back to one of the first

  things we talked about with

  centering things around curiosity and

  discovery and whatnot

  what are some of your thoughts on grades

  because i've seen

  some of your posts on it i'm wondering

  if you could kind of summarize for

  listeners

  what your thoughts are on grades and how

  they relate to what we've been talking

  about

  yeah grades everybody loves grades right

  no i'm not sure anybody loves grades i'm

  not sure teachers like grades i'm not

  sure students like grades

  i remember you know the summer before

  starting as a professor

  just really trying to grapple with the

  history of where they came from and why

  we have them

  and reading some histories that i'm not

  sure are

  true but they're certainly what we have

  documented that there was a tutor at

  cambridge university

  around the time that statistics was

  emerging in the 19th century as a

  powerful way of dealing with variation

  in industrial practices

  and that tutor just said well what if

  school was like industry and we could

  actually

  deal with variation intolerance measure

  student performance and that was it like

  that one idea

  back in you know 1870 something that

  brought us to where we are today

  and so that history seems really

  important because we haven't always done

  it this way

  right we've always thought about

  teaching in diverse ways and it hasn't

  always involved measurement of learning

  and then secondly i think you know we

  just have to use that history to

  recognize what problem we think we're

  solving with it and remember that

  history

  and when i think about grades i think

  about it as really kind of

  trying to solve two distinct problems

  one is problems of motivation

  right how do we help students that are

  not excited about learning some material

  to learn

  right grades are a blunt instrument to

  provide some extrinsic motivation

  it's sort of a scary though and unjust

  kind of instrument

  think about what it means to say i will

  give you this grade if you do this thing

  it actually means the opposite which is

  i'm gonna punish you if you don't

  right and what does that punishment mean

  taking away opportunity

  taking away a sense of self-efficacy i

  mean there's just so many downsides to

  that kind of punishment model

  of some of the assessment and then the

  other problem that greats try to solve

  are

  a broader systemic thing which is

  selection in society how do we choose

  which people get which resources

  and the idea that grades are for helping

  decide who gets into college

  or decide who gets a job or decide who

  gets some scholarship

  to me when you start talking about those

  issues then you just have to get into

  things like wait why are we even

  deciding why doesn't everybody just get

  to go to college

  why doesn't everybody just have the

  resources they need to go to school

  we've done that for

  k-12 why are we not doing that for

  two-year colleges why are you not doing

  that for four-year colleges

  at some level you might draw the line

  and say well not everybody gets to

  have the job they want not everybody

  gets to work at google not everybody

  gets to do some things and you might

  have to have some other criteria too

  are grades the best measure for deciding

  which of those scarce resources

  people get and who doesn't get them not

  even sure they're the best measure for

  that too

  if you know anything about psychometrics

  you know that none of us are really

  grading all that carefully or well

  and we really shouldn't be trusting many

  of those measurements for anything so

  when you you know take all of those

  critiques of grades and you really just

  set aside that motivation to select and

  you

  recognize the problem of motivating

  students well

  and just find better ways of motivating

  students find ways that are more

  positive and constructive and asset

  based

  rather than punishment based and if you

  really have to help people

  select you know we have other models for

  that we can

  do letters of recommendation and

  portfolios and we can do interviews and

  there's a lot of

  things that work relatively well they

  have their own caveats

  but we sort of just discount them

  because we've just accepted that back in

  the 1870s

  a tutor had an idea about statistics

  it just seems like the wrong rationale

  for doing this practice

  yeah one of the things that i know

  you've also read so k anders erickson's

  idea of deliberate practice and

  developing expertise and skill

  acquisition when i was reading through

  those

  studies it really resonated with me and

  really made me question grades because

  okay if we're going with the idea that

  in order to develop expertise you have

  to put in

  a significant amount of deliberate

  practice on something okay i totally buy

  into that as a musician i had to put in

  tens of thousands of hours to become

  good at it

  but if kids are able to go home and work

  on a computer

  and some kids are able to go home and

  they don't have internet they don't have

  a device

  that's going to create a huge difference

  in the amount of time that they can

  spend in deliberate practice so if i

  were to grade based off of

  quality or based off of like a curve or

  whatever any approach i take

  whoever is able to go home and engage

  with us more is going to

  learn at a faster pace than somebody who

  does not have access to the technology

  at home

  and so putting a grade on quality

  whatever

  it becomes an ethical problem that i was

  just like all right if you are engaged

  in class and you are actively learning

  and trying to improve yourself

  you get an a if you are setting your own

  goals and whatever those steps are

  whether it's

  smaller or larger than the people around

  you doesn't matter just as long as you

  are trying to learn

  what recommendations would you give to

  other educators or have you taken

  in terms of your own approach to grades

  because we still got to assign them at

  some point

  we do and i speak from a privileged

  position as a tenured professor where if

  i don't assign them or i just assign

  them to mean something that's what i

  want them to mean really nothing's gonna

  happen to me

  if i don't assign them something might

  happen to students they might not

  sustain a scholarship they might not be

  able to get into the graduate school

  that they want so clearly within the

  system i have to assign

  something but what they mean can be

  something that i decide

  an example would be in this last quarter

  which we just wrapped up this past week

  during this pandemic it's just not been

  a time that i've wanted to create the

  kind of stress that comes with grades

  and summative assessments and i just

  decided to remove that stress so i just

  said infinite resubmits

  infinite regrades anytime you want

  feedback and you want to do better on an

  assignment just let me know and i will

  regrade or my ta will regrade and the

  result was

  you know what should happen in most

  teaching and learning which is that i

  just give a lot of feedback

  students practice a lot they learn what

  they got wrong and what they got right

  and they start isolating which aspects

  of their knowledge they want to improve

  there's still that sort of incentive

  component built into the

  class because i'm giving a grade at the

  end of it but it just meant that

  students were spending a lot more time

  engaging with

  the mistakes they'd made and the things

  they got right and i was spending a lot

  more time just giving feedback

  and that felt really good i think the

  result was that

  a 4.0

  nothing will happen somebody can accuse

  me of great inflation and i will just

  tell them that

  well everybody learned a lot did the

  right thing

  right one of the quotes on one of the

  posts that you did about grades

  is is your goal for some to succeed and

  some to fail

  are you still operating with a belief

  that only some students are capable of

  learning what you're teaching

  and grades are supposed to detect who

  those are or is your goal for

  everyone to learn that quote like it

  totally resonated with me that

  makes a lot of sense i wish more people

  had the approach that you're outlining

  with the infinite resubmits and

  getting feedback and iterating on things

  and whatnot because it models what we do

  outside of these formalized spaces

  one of the quotes that a professor

  mentioned in passing

  was what do we do with students who take

  course

  they're able to develop complete

  understanding of this concept in 16

  weeks but

  we have to assign a grade at the end of

  the 14th week so what happens with those

  students

  and that just was like oh yeah we can't

  just like

  constrain learning into these

  predetermined slots of time

  and expect everyone to succeed within

  that no of course not

  and i mean it goes back to that

  experience i have in my

  pre-algebra class learning basic on my

  texas instruments tia 82 calculator

  had somebody told me that i only had 10

  weeks to learn that programming language

  and to change that version of tetris

  that i was trying to make run faster

  i wouldn't have succeeded it wouldn't

  have happened i

  certainly didn't have a teacher to help

  me do it i was doing it all on my own

  too so it was just going to take a long

  time

  i think i spent the entire summer just

  rereading that manual for the calculator

  just over and over and over again

  tinkering with things and trying to make

  the game work better that i was trying

  to change

  but all of the constraints that come

  with time and grades and other things

  that's what would have broken that model

  one more example of this when i was in

  college i took

  a required statistics for engineers

  course because

  at the time when i was there our cs

  degree was in the college of engineering

  and i had to take all of the engineering

  requirements

  so staff electrical fundamentals physics

  and all of these other random things

  that had nothing to do with computer

  science

  but in the stats course because they

  were teaching i don't know

  enough stats faculty for that they

  didn't have enough stats tas for it so

  they just did a mastery learning model

  they had a sequence of lessons you would

  read them

  and then they just had like a pile of 20

  versions of a quiz for every single one

  of those lessons you just

  kept taking the quiz until you passed it

  and not only passed it but could explain

  why each answer that you gave was right

  to the ta and once you've demonstrated

  mastery on them

  you were done with the course and you

  became a ta and it just led to this

  really interesting productive

  learning context that everybody's

  working hard to understand this material

  the moment they do understand it they

  can help others understand it the

  pool of instructors grows over time

  the people who take two weeks to mask

  the material you know they're done in

  two weeks and they can help out with

  others

  learning and those that might take 10

  weeks it just might take 10 weeks

  and that's okay and then the beautiful

  thing was if it took longer than 10

  weeks

  when somebody got to the end of the

  quarter they would just let you

  retake the class replace the old grade

  with a new grade and if it took you 20

  weeks to get to that 4.0 than you did

  so everybody got a 4.0 on that class

  every single time and eventually

  mastered that material

  so if you were to just suddenly lose

  your memory

  starting over blank slate right now in

  terms of

  relearning or gaining understanding in

  computer science or

  in pedagogy teaching what would you do

  to develop your expertise in either of

  those areas

  oh those are both really different areas

  right let's talk about programming first

  i think that's a little simpler than

  teaching programming in cs one of the

  things that made my deliberate practice

  work when i was in middle school was

  just the nature of a compiler

  as poor as the feedback is that

  compilers give when a program is wrong

  it is some feedback and it's more

  feedback than other disciplines will

  give you like if you're

  in biology and you're trying to grow

  some culture

  you're not going to get a lot of

  feedback from the petri dish about what

  you were doing wrong and why it didn't

  grow

  you might need a teacher and with some

  expertise to help guide you on that one

  but when you make a syntax error or

  there's some logic error there's a

  possibility of

  iterating with a compiler to get some

  insight around what went wrong

  it's more often the case that we get so

  many things wrong when we're programming

  that we end up

  exhausting our motivation before we

  discover what went wrong

  and we don't have enough confidence to

  persist in those things so

  i view a lot of learning of programming

  really as a

  the teacher's job is provide enough

  encouragement and support

  and strategies for helping somebody

  understand the feedback they're

  receiving

  that they can continue down that

  inevitable path of making sense of how

  programs can execute

  through the feedback that a compiler

  gives and sometimes supplementing it

  with the teacher

  so if i was relearning programming and i

  had a teacher at my disposal

  you know that's what i'd want to happen

  give me a lot of interesting exciting

  opportunities to make things

  help me understand what i'm getting

  wrong and the learning is going to

  happen

  that's just going to be the automatic

  part the trick is motivation and the

  trick is feedback and those are the two

  pieces that are the hard

  and scarce resources to come by in

  programming teaching of course is an

  entirely

  different challenge to be honest as a

  higher education

  teacher i think the only feedback i get

  about my teaching that's meaningful is

  the feedback i give myself

  and that slows me down quite a bit what

  i would love to have is people who are

  teaching my subjects

  in my classroom every single day telling

  me what they like and didn't like and

  just helping me improve my practice

  really rapidly and continuously but i

  never received that

  we have some peer teaching evaluations

  that happen once a year but

  you know pretty quickly if you're a

  committed teacher you don't have any

  peers that can advance your practice

  and so i'm usually the person as one of

  the senior people who has more teaching

  experience than my junior colleagues

  so it's me advancing their practice and

  not the other way around yeah i

  haven't engaged in some discussions with

  administrators and

  have talked about how learning the

  content knowledge of cs is often easier

  than the pedagogy behind it

  and the reason why is because you have

  more opportunities to learn and fail

  while working on the content knowledge

  but with the pedagogy like there's only

  so many hours in the week

  where you're going to be able to work

  with somebody in terms of being able to

  practice teaching in small or large

  group settings

  oh yeah i teach courses that happen once

  a year

  at most sometimes less frequently than

  that which means that i'll teach a

  lesson

  and i'll give myself 10 minutes after

  class to just write down everything that

  went wrong and

  it better be the case that my notes were

  good because i'm going to come back to

  them a year from then and that's my only

  hope of doing better

  next time was good notes about what was

  broken and what was successful

  about something yeah that's a good point

  when i interviewed dan schneider for

  the podcast he was talking about how he

  really liked having

  in the elementary space like the same

  class several times

  in the day in a row so you teach like

  five of the exact same class and each

  time just change it a little bit tweak

  it here and there and see how it changes

  that's one of the things i also really

  liked about being in the elementary

  space is you have the opportunity to

  just keep trying it over and over with

  different sets of kids and

  and see what works and what doesn't yeah

  the other thing i find myself doing

  to give myself more opportunities for

  practice is

  leveraging all of the prior teaching

  that i've done to just

  mentally simulate what i think is going

  to happen so i'll plan a bunch of

  activities for some

  class in one day i've actually been

  doing a lot of that today for an

  upcoming course

  and i'll find myself just like going

  through some slides and some

  instructions and just

  imagining what students might do just

  pulling on all of the dozens and

  hundreds of students that i've taught

  before and just kind of thinking through

  what might go wrong here

  what might work what might be fun about

  this what might be boring

  what's going to be the confusing concept

  and my mind ends up

  being the little laboratory for working

  through what i think is going to be

  successful and not

  and then if i've really done a great job

  kind of elaborately constructing all of

  the simulations in my head by the time i

  do teach it

  i'll have a really good sense of what

  was wrong and right about that model

  that i had in my mind of what was going

  to happen

  and over time as i've gotten to be a

  better teacher my predictions are better

  i'm you know more and more certain and

  more and more right about what's going

  to happen in the classroom and i can

  give that feedback to other teachers and

  make the same predictions

  for them but if i was starting over

  that's what i'd be missing i'd be

  missing all of that prior knowledge to

  really

  shape my ability to do that more rapid

  reflection and experimentation in my

  head

  yeah i really like that i'd love to see

  some more research

  on that in particular so i've read

  research on mental

  practice and in relation to like sports

  and

  like tactile physical things but it's

  interesting thinking about it from a

  pedagogical standpoint in terms of

  simulating things so like

  there have been studies that have shown

  that mental practice is about 80

  as effective as actually physically

  doing it whether it's like drumming or

  engaging in basketball or whatever it is

  that you're trying to learn so it'd be

  interesting to see what what would that

  look like from a pedagogical standpoint

  how would you develop that

  and i wondered you know how much

  teachers just do this without even

  noticing

  i have these moments like right before a

  class will start where i'll just have

  this sudden realization that something's

  gonna break

  and it's because i've been playing it

  out in my head over and over again right

  or i had a dream about it the night

  before

  or i was thinking about it in the shower

  or you know there's just all of these

  moments where you're really working

  through

  what's going to happen and sometimes

  it's a little too late to make that

  change

  yeah what do you feel is holding back

  educators or the field

  and what can we potentially do about it

  that's a great question

  i'm gonna get really really technical on

  this one i think that most of the things

  that we create in computer science and

  most of the things that we create in the

  software industry

  whether to support learning or not

  whether they're a learning technology or

  an educational platform

  or even just the general purpose

  programming language they're just

  really bad they're really poorly

  designed and hard to learn

  things and it's not the case that let's

  pick on a programming language like java

  or python

  or even scratch it's not the case that

  these are things that are kind of

  designed as they should be and shall

  always be these are not things that come

  from nature these are designed artifacts

  the teams come together and create an

  innovation

  and sometimes we just create things that

  are really really complicated and

  confusing and i think that a lot of that

  accidental complexity

  just gets in the way of a lot of teacher

  content knowledge but also pedagogical

  content knowledge too yep like think

  about the content knowledge piece

  how much time do we spend explaining to

  teachers

  how to observe the behavior of a scratch

  program because it doesn't have any way

  of setting break points and observing

  what's happening at runtime instead you

  need to insert like 5000

  print statements and or pause statements

  into each of the parts of your program

  right that's just a board design choice

  on the part of that platform it's not

  some intrinsic thing that everybody

  needs to know about computer science

  and then on the pedagogical content

  knowledge side of it that

  ends up flowing into all of these other

  complications suddenly you're not just

  having to know

  that that's a strategy for debugging in

  scratch you also have to know how to

  help people

  properly execute that strategy and

  notice the mistakes they've made when

  they've used that strategy but that

  strategy never should have existed in

  the first place

  it should have just been a better

  programming environment that

  reduced some of these complexities so

  when i think about

  cs education compared to other fields

  like let's say math education or science

  education

  we have so many more accidental design

  flaws that get in our way

  for teaching didn't exist in math or in

  physics or in chemistry

  the number of things that can pop up in

  your math notation there's not a

  software update for algebra notation

  right now

  we settled on it it is what it is and we

  can all just focus on making that better

  computer science even if we've settled

  on something for five years we know it's

  going to be gone in another five years

  and we have to learn a whole bunch of

  other random stuff that doesn't work

  right your response reminds me a lot of

  an interview i did

  almost a year ago with andreas stefik

  and

  he was talking about how they were

  basically

  had a control group and a treatment

  group so like one group was using like

  let's say python another group was using

  a placebo language that was like

  literally just random characters and

  whatnot and they wanted to see how would

  python compare against

  a programming language that was

  completely randomized and so his summary

  of that if people haven't listened to

  this and are listening to this episode

  they should go check that one out it's

  fascinating there's another connection

  there too

  programming language learning which i

  think is something that we've done a lot

  of research on in our lab

  part of the reason that we focused on

  this really specific part of computer

  science education is because i want to

  get rid of that accidental complexity

  i want it to be the case that no matter

  how poorly designed the language is

  i can efficiently and effectively teach

  it to anybody so that they understand it

  and all of its warts and all of the

  things to watch out for

  i can move on and get into the more

  interesting stuff like data structures

  and algorithms and ethics and everything

  else

  but at the moment until we can get

  people to understand programming

  languages really

  effectively and robustly i think it's

  just going to be in the way of all of

  those other subjects

  yeah you mentioned the pck framework

  that's one of the things that i like

  about

  like a variant that came out that was

  tpack so it's like

  the thinking of the venn diagram the

  technological the pedagogical and the

  content knowledge how those all overlap

  and like how you have to know the

  platform that you're using you have to

  know the content knowledge that you're

  using and you have to know how to

  effectively like teach all of those

  things and how they work together

  so people haven't heard of that i'll

  include a link to that in the show notes

  tpack is interesting especially in

  relation to computer science

  because it is certainly the case that we

  use technologies to teach computer

  science

  and that computer science also involves

  some technologies itself

  but it is also the technology that we

  use to create those technologies and so

  it gets really entangled when we think

  about all those different

  interactions between things yep it is

  helpful for teachers to understand

  how computer science was used to create

  the technologies that they're using to

  do the teaching

  so it's very circular when i was looking

  at your website you had an

  interesting page on it where it

  basically showed like the breakdown of

  what your workload was going to look

  like

  for each week like for the upcoming year

  and you're a very busy individual

  so i'm curious how do you handle the

  pressures of

  being an educator a scholar and

  not get burned out from having such an

  intense workload in a field that is

  constantly changing and evolving

  yeah that's a great question i want to

  start off just by recognizing that

  page and my busyness and my productivity

  it's probably a huge source of imposter

  syndrome for a lot of people because

  they can't imagine how i get all of

  these things done

  and they're struggling too so i just

  want to acknowledge that i struggle with

  it too

  it's why i have so many practices for it

  to make it better

  and i've been practicing the

  productivity piece of it for a long time

  way back when i was starting middle

  school back in sixth grade i mentioned

  that my mom was a grade school teacher

  too

  she was the most organized person i knew

  she had a lot of paper planners that she

  used for everything she was very

  organized about her

  lesson and unit plans for school and for

  teaching

  and since she was kind of my teacher

  role model growing up

  i wanted a planner too so really really

  early on in middle school i had a

  planner and to do lists and a calendar

  way overkill for the time right but it

  just meant that i had all of these

  practices that i was constantly

  cultivating

  and i saw hers and she would ask me

  questions about it

  like is that working for you do you want

  to change anything about it we can go to

  the store at the mall

  and they can give you a different kind

  of to-do list if you want a different

  one so

  the idea that we build practices to

  manage our time

  is something i learned really early on

  and then just got better at over time

  what are ways outside of the

  productivity that you

  rest or disconnect from the busyness

  and being productive yeah one of them is

  just the practice of

  drawing really sharp lines around things

  i

  work fixed hours i stop working at a

  certain time i don't look at work emails

  after a certain time i don't work on the

  weekends

  unless i've traded some weekday time for

  some weekend time

  i'm really strict about how much time i

  give my job

  there are weird edge cases being you

  know as a professor i'm supposed to

  follow my curiosity so if i'm curious

  about something and i want to go follow

  it does that work

  right is it not work i don't really know

  so there's some fuzzy boundaries there

  when it comes to research and

  scholarship

  you know but i really do unplug from

  work in ways that i think

  sometimes other people struggle to do i

  got good at that when i was a parent

  in graduate school i wanted to have time

  for my family and be there with my

  family and i

  just decided that grad school was going

  to be a nine-to-five job

  so i'd show up in the office at nine and

  i'd leave at five and i'd know that i'd

  have eight hours

  to get all of my classwork and research

  and

  other random service done and it kind of

  meant that i didn't spend a lot of time

  socializing like a lot of my

  peers did i just focused on my family

  and my research

  and then squeezed in social stuff into

  travel and other things

  but it just meant that i wasn't thinking

  about work when i was doing other stuff

  that was really a nice way of kind of

  making space for

  other things that mattered in my life i

  wish i did that in grad school

  in particular when i was working on my

  dissertation i was working in a k-8

  elementary school

  so that was my nine to five essentially

  i was teaching at a community college at

  night and then i was writing my

  dissertation

  on weeknights and on weekends and like

  christmas morning like etc like

  there were no breaks family vacations i

  was in hawaii working on my dissertation

  on the beach so

  that i do not recommend for anyone and i

  have since to move away from that kind

  of work

  work balance or lack of

  what do you wish there was more research

  on that could inform

  your own practices there are so many

  questions

  in computer science education that we

  don't have answers to

  there's just so many different things i

  am most curious and i think i struggle

  the most with the ones that connect with

  students identities

  you know we have so many research papers

  about things like

  how to teach a particular concept in

  computer science

  or how to assess a certain kind of

  knowledge in computer science but we

  just don't have a lot that really

  connects

  in substance with who our students are

  and what that has to do with them

  learning computer science an example of

  a project

  that one of my phd students is working

  on they've been really interested in how

  students think about careers in computer

  science and how their conceptions of

  careers

  ends up shaping their motivations in

  computer science classes

  and ends up determining what they value

  and don't value about what they're

  learning

  i think there's really interesting

  things there that are just so

  fundamental around

  what it even means to teach something

  well can you teach

  some theoretical concept in computer

  science well

  if students completely deny it as a

  legitimate thing to know

  from a career perspective and if you're

  teaching it anyway right what are you

  doing

  how are you connecting that to their

  identity and if you never do

  what is the consequence of that on how

  that knowledge plays out

  in their career because if they go and

  discount it as relevant will they ever

  bring it to bear on any of the problems

  that they encounter in practice

  and if they don't then what was the

  point of teaching it in the first place

  at all so i'd love to see that times all

  of the other random things

  around whose students are and how they

  bring themselves into the classroom and

  how that shapes

  how they see what we teach and how we

  connect with their identities

  yeah and are students entering in with

  their own blinders on

  like if i had not been asking questions

  and kind of pursuing my own curiosities

  i would not be doing this interview

  right now like i wouldn't have gone into

  computer science as a field like i would

  have continued with music education it's

  so when you go into a class like here's

  my end goal of what i want to get out of

  this degree

  without realizing the potential other

  avenues you could go down while pursuing

  that degree i don't know it's just kind

  of narrowing

  it is and then sometimes it's narrowing

  and sometimes it's not so

  an example is we found that some

  students their career aspirations around

  computer science are actually not

  content-based

  they're more economic stability based

  they're in computer science because

  they've grown up in poverty and they've

  received the narrative that the only way

  to not be in poverty is to be in

  computer science and that's a

  hard narrative to escape in a city like

  seattle and so they're

  totally open to learning whatever

  they're just like teach me anything i

  could possibly know about computer

  science because

  anything that will get me to that

  stability is something that i want and

  i'm just going to trust you that

  whatever you're teaching me is it's

  going to be that thing whereas others

  might come in with a really strict

  narrative around what computer science

  is

  right computer sciences all of the

  languages and apis that appear

  on the job position descriptions

  on the hiring website and those are the

  only things that are valid

  and microsoft and google and amazon get

  to decide what those are

  and you do not teacher teacher you are

  not the expert

  right so those are really different ways

  of bringing

  those narratives into the classroom that

  dramatically change what kinds of

  teaching are possible

  yeah no that's a good point and i like

  the two different examples you gave with

  that

  do you have any questions for myself or

  to the field at large i am really

  curious

  you know let's imagine time is not a

  thing and

  we have all of the resources that we

  need what do you want it to look like

  i'm particularly curious around k8 since

  you had some lots of expertise in that

  space what do you wish it looked like if

  we could just

  change the systems and the structures to

  be whatever we think the idea would be

  the late sir kim robbins did like the

  ted talk that

  a lot of people are familiar with

  basically arguing that schools kills

  creativity

  and that has something that i have felt

  as an individual that is something i

  have

  engaged in as an educator and didn't

  realize it and now reflect on it and go

  hmm i would have done that differently

  if i

  knew then what i know now i wish

  education

  was the formalized places and spaces

  that we went to was more about just

  being able to go on this journey of

  learning what is interesting to you

  and kind of engaging that in your own

  way and there is a model

  called the sudbury school where teachers

  are staff members quote

  and you are able to go in and say i want

  to learn this today

  there's a famous case of a kid who's

  like i just want to learn how to fish

  and spent two years just fishing that's

  all they did

  and then one day they came in and were

  like i want to learn astrophysics and so

  then they started exploring astrophysics

  and to me that sounds awesome like just

  creating a space where we can learn

  together create cool things and kind of

  have fun with that and explore

  and part of this has to do from seeing

  how many

  courses and subject areas are now

  mandated in the k-12 space

  it's diluting everything else that we're

  working on and so we're learning

  surface level things on a lot of

  different topics but never really having

  the opportunity to apply them

  in an interesting way and in a way that

  is meaningful to kids

  in their lives and in the communities

  that we work in it's just we're all

  learning the same surface level stuff

  and doing nothing with it and that is

  kind of a shame because

  then it positions these formalized

  spaces for learning and educators and

  whatnot as

  these outsiders that are disconnected or

  anachronistic

  with society and with what we want to do

  in life so if i were to kind of

  change things it would be to focus on

  let's have fun with learning and let's

  get rid of all this other

  excess mandates whether it's grades or

  mandatory subject areas or whatever but

  that's kind of my

  pie in the sky dream that i'd like to

  see

  i love that vision and i think it also

  is kind of points to this

  really tragic irony too of you know

  being in higher education myself

  where we have the freedom to create that

  system in higher ed

  right we can just get rid of all the

  prereqs and we can say go learn whatever

  you want and

  we can teach our classes however we want

  because there's nobody that's really

  telling us how they're taught or what

  kinds of methods we use

  we have that freedom in higher ed but we

  don't use it for any of that

  it's just not at all there because our

  imaginations are too small honestly

  right and the resources we have to learn

  to be great teachers are too small

  too and then you know your imaginations

  in k-12

  are not limiting you can imagine all

  these other different ways of it but

  then there's

  constraints so we should just trade

  places

  it's fascinating like working within and

  outside of the system

  and like all the constraints and the

  affordances

  that are possible within the educational

  space

  i like i love it on one hand on the

  other hand i see so many problems that i

  want to be able to fix or address and

  whatnot it's sometimes overwhelming

  yeah that's a big gap right between our

  imaginations and the

  amount of work it takes to make change

  happen struggled a lot with that

  especially taking on administrative

  roles in higher education the reality of

  change

  whether we like it or not just being

  really really challenging and slow

  and if we do it really really well

  sometimes it will happen and it will be

  incremental

  the really radical things are just very

  far out of reach sometimes

  and often because people are

  overburdened and tired and exhausted and

  they can't

  handle that much change right and can't

  even conceive of

  how it would work like when i have

  mentioned this with other people

  they'll say well what about when

  somebody needs to know this subject area

  that they're no longer learning the

  surface level on it's like

  well then they will have studied how to

  learn so they'll be able to figure it

  out

  like college professors who are really

  good in a content area have had to learn

  pedagogy and whatnot and that one class

  that they take on a saturday before

  classes start is not enough to teach

  them everything they need to know to be

  a great college professor so like

  they've had to learn that

  there are many subject areas and

  disciplines where people are learning

  things outside of what they've been

  formally taught

  and myself speaking like only having

  taken two formalized classes in computer

  science

  a lot of it was learning through online

  resources and learning through trial and

  error and whatnot so

  it's something that i value in which

  more people understood and that basic

  idea

  that people just learn i mean that's the

  thing that

  just seems like the inescapable fact

  that we all have to grapple with

  right schools are a way of doing it and

  teachers are a way of doing it

  and learning technologies are a way of

  doing it but if they were

  to all disappear we would still learn

  right we would probably just learn

  differently and learn different things

  less efficiently depending on the

  circumstance and the person

  it's not clear what that world would

  look like and it's not clear

  that you know industry would be happy

  with our ability to fuel it with

  students that know particular things but

  people would still learn

  are there any questions that i haven't

  asked that you want to talk about i

  guess there's questions about community

  too

  and what it means to be in a field

  that's growing and vibrant

  but also has a lot of work to do yeah in

  what ways

  do you see the field is growing but is

  being held back by

  the areas that it needs to improve yeah

  there's a really long list of things

  to do i think a lot about when i entered

  the

  research field formally and just meeting

  the community and recognizing the scope

  of educational reform

  that was really taking on and that a lot

  of researchers and teachers and

  educators have taken on

  only in hindsight has become obvious

  that that mission was

  you know a multi-decades mission and so

  that's a

  long marathon and so i think a lot about

  what it means for us to build community

  that's resilient for that long

  run what it means to really celebrate

  the small wins and the medium-sized wins

  and the incremental progress that we

  make and just

  you know recognize that all of those

  things are good things

  and then yet continue working with each

  other to make more of that happen

  i think that those two things around

  like making long-term change happen

  but having community that's really

  supportive of itself

  and of each other that those two can't

  be

  separated from each other you're not

  going to have change unless you have a

  community that's really committed to

  that

  support and you won't have community if

  you don't have some vision for long-term

  change either

  so i hope we keep continue cultivating

  that and supporting each other so we can

  keep that change going

  so if you had let's say a phd student

  coming in

  and isn't really familiar with the

  community and is asking for advice on

  how do i get in touch with the community

  and learn and grow from

  others within the field what advice

  would you recommend for them resources

  for one

  so i think our community has created so

  many wonderful resources around which

  communities exist

  what different types of reform efforts

  exist like any

  really diverse community it's very

  scattered and there's information

  everywhere and so

  a lot of our effort has to go into

  organizing some of that so that people

  can find

  simpler front doors to it and so that's

  what i usually do is i point my students

  to those front doors and say well here's

  a place to start and a community to

  start with

  and as long as i can get them plugged in

  on that first path the community itself

  is going to pull people in and really

  introduce them to the broader structure

  and ecosystem and opportunities it's

  really just that

  entry point that i think requires some

  bridging so i've worked a lot on things

  like

  the computing education research faq

  that i maintain

  so that anybody that's entering the

  research part of cs education

  can say oh this is what the research is

  this is

  the community these are the people in it

  these are some of the challenges that

  it's facing and the accomplishments that

  it's made

  and it's something that i wanted to have

  when i was entering research in the

  first place like

  what what does it look like who's in it

  and what's happening there

  so i find a lot of students and even

  other faculty that read that faq

  you know they leave with some broader

  systems level understanding

  of what's happening that they can then

  use to navigate which communities do i

  want to meet with which conference do i

  want to go to

  where might i find my interests best

  expressed and find some people with some

  common interests

  to meet so i think that navigational

  kind of content

  is really important yeah one thing that

  i'd add on to that having given this

  advice before is

  don't just go to those communities and

  spaces and

  be in a corner with other new people

  within the community go up to

  the senior scholar and just ask

  questions about their work and their

  research interests and whatnot and just

  get to know people

  people are willing to and love talking

  about what they're interested in

  absolutely and i mean i think senior

  people want that to happen too

  because we're not just interested in

  talking to the people that we

  already know or interested in newcomers

  as well i was at a conference a couple

  of years ago and

  somebody had given a keynote he was one

  of the people who'd really set some of

  the foundations for the field of

  software engineering

  and he was sitting at a table by himself

  nobody was talking to him

  and here's this person that had this

  multi-decades wealth of knowledge about

  the history of this entire field of

  which this conference is about and not a

  single person wanted to have a

  conversation with them

  and so i just sat down and introduced

  myself and we talked for like three

  hours about

  just all of these arcs of history and

  everything that i could possibly want to

  know about software engineering

  it just takes a little bit of courage to

  go and make that conversation happen

  yeah it is a little bit scary but like

  some really cool things can come from it

  like i've had presentations and

  publications come out of

  just those one-off conversations where

  somebody remembered that and they

  reached out to me

  sometimes years later hey would you be

  interested in writing about that topic

  yeah absolutely it's always worth it

  where might people go to connect with

  you

  and the organizations that you work with

  there are a lot of ways to connect with

  me so

  people can always write me an email i

  respond to them pretty quickly

  you can find me on twitter i respond on

  twitter pretty quickly

  a lot of the communities that i work

  with end up having somewhat more private

  spaces

  like slacks and discords and other types

  of things but

  a great way of connecting with those is

  to just connect with a person in that

  community like myself

  and then we send you invites so i think

  that that's the key thing is to just

  be bold to reach out to people in the

  community and i think more than many

  other communities i've been part of

  especially research communities

  the cs education community is a place

  that just wants

  to grow once new people wants new

  perspectives so

  i've never found anybody that's nastily

  rejected somebody for saying

  hi i'm new can you show me around

  and with that that concludes this week's

  episode of the csk8 podcast

  i really hope you enjoyed this interview

  i record these intros and outros after

  the fact and so it was great going back

  and listening to this interview again

  with amy

  if you also enjoyed it please consider

  sharing it with somebody else as there's

  some great information

  and wisdom imparted by amy thank you so

  much for listening to this episode stay

  tuned next week for another unpacking

  scholarship episode and two weeks from

  now for another interview i hope you're

  having a wonderful week and are staying

  safe

Guest Bio

Amy J. Ko is a Professor at the University of Washington Information School and an Adjunct Professor at the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering. She directs the Code & Cognition Lab, where she studies human aspects of programming. Her earliest work included techniques for automatically answering questions about program behavior to support debugging, program understanding, and reuse. Her later work studied interactions between developers and users, and techniques for web scale aggregation of user intent through help systems; she co-founded AnswerDash to commercialize these ideas. Her latest work investigates effective, equitable, and inclusive ways for humanity to learn computing, especially how data, algorithms, APIs, and machine learning can oppress by amplifying injustice. She received her Ph.D. at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University in 2008, and degrees in Computer Science and Psychology with Honors from Oregon State University in 2002.

---

Resources/Links Relevant to This Episode

• Other podcast episodes that were mentioned or are relevant to this episode

  • Accessibility and Inclusion in CS Education with Maya Israel

    • In this interview with Maya Israel, we discuss Maya’s shift from special education into CS education, the importance of universal design for learning (UDL) in CS classes, understanding the spectrum of accessibility for students with a diverse set of needs, the current status of accessibility and inclusion within the field of CS education, problematize deficit framings of students with disabilities, and so much more.

  • Accessible CS Education through Evidence-based Programming Languages with Andreas Stefik

    • In this interview with Andreas Stefik, we discuss the importance of using evidence-based programming languages, problems with the lack of replication in CS education scholarship and academia in general, the importance of designing for accessibility and disabilities, lessons learned designing Quorum (an accessible programming language and platform), and much more.

  • Assessment Considerations: A Simple Heuristic

    • In this episode I read and unpack my (2019) publication titled “Assessment Considerations: A Simple Heuristic,” which is intended to serve as a heuristic for creating or selecting an assessment.

  • Critical Response Process

    • In this episode I talk about how you can use Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process to encourage feedback and dialogue among students around the projects they create.

  • Discussing Computer Science in K-12 with Shuchi Grover

    • In this interview with Shuchi Grover, we discuss the importance of having a variety of assessments in a CS class, why we need more research on computational thinking, why educators and scholars should read literature outside of the field, Shuchi’s new book titled “Computer Science in K-12: An A-To-Z Handbook on Teaching Programming,” and much more.

  • Exploring (Dis)Ability and Connecting with the Arts with Jesse Rathgeber

    • In this interview with Jesse Rathgeber, we discuss what educators should know about (dis)ability culture and research, person-first language vs identity-first language, suggestions for combating ableism through anti-ableist practices, how the arts and CS can come together and learn from each other (great for sharing with arts educators who might be interested in CS), and much more.

  • From Mathy McMatherson to Codey McCoderson: An interview with Dan Schneider

    • In this interview with Dan Schneider, we discuss how Dan transitioned from math education to CS education, designing spaces for educational experiences, suggestions for expanding and diversifying CS programs, how pedagogical approaches evolve over time through experimentation and reflection, the importance of listening to and working with kids one-on-one, and much more.

  • How Do You Encourage Critical Thinking and Dialogue?

    • In this episode I discuss an approach I’ve used for encouraging critical thinking and dialogue through individualized feedback and group discussion.

  • How to Get Started with Computer Science Education

    • In this episode I provide a framework for how districts and educators can get started with computer science education for free.

  • Individualized Learning Without Grades with Sofía De Jesús

    • In this interview with Sofía De Jesús, we discuss Sofía’s book (Applied Computational Thinking with Python: Design algorithmic solutions for complex and challenging real-world problems), the importance of bringing your full self into the classroom, designing for equity and inclusion, working with individuals one-on-one rather than teaching to group averages, problematizing grades in education, collaborating with educators, and much more.

  • Rethinking the Roles of Assessment in [Computer Science] Education

    • In this episode I unpack Scott’s (2012) publication titled “Rethinking the roles of assessment in music education,” which summarizes three roles of assessment (assessment of learning, assessment for learning, and assessment as learning) that I discuss in relation to computer science education.

  • Should I Say “Disabled People” or “People with Disabilities”?

    • In this episode I unpack Sharif, McCall, and Bolante’s (2022) publication titled “Should I say “disabled people” or “people with disabilities”? Language preferences of disabled people between identity- and person-first language,” which summarizes findings from a survey on participant preferences for language around disability and an analysis on language in conference abstracts.

  • The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance

    • In this episode I unpack Ericsson, Krampe, and Tesch-Römer’s (1993) publication titled “The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance,” which debunks the notion of innate abilities within a domain and describes the role of deliberate practice in achieving expert performance.

  • More episodes related to assessment

  • More episodes related to engagement

  • More episodes related to ethics

  • More episodes related to reflection

  • More episodes related to vulnerability

  • All other episodes

• Read Amy’s website posts I mentioned or drew questions from

  • Amy’s bio

  • Current projects

  • Grading is ineffective, harmful, and unjust — let’s stop doing it

  • How to be a great (CS) teacher

• Learn more about TPACK

• Watch Sir Ken Robinson’s TED Talk

• Learn more about the Sudbury schools I mentioned

• Read Amy’s “Computing Education Research FAQ” that Amy mentioned

• Connect with Amy

  • Amy’s website

  • Amy’s Twitter profile

  • Contact and connect with Amy

• Find other CS educators and resources by using the #CSK8 hashtag on Twitter

---

Free CS Resources I Have Created

• JavaScript (Khan Academy) resources

• Media arts and technology makerspace resources

• Scratch resources

• Sonic Pi resources

• Swift resources

---

More Content

---

Most Recent Podcasts

#CSK8 Podcast RSS Feed RSS

---

Most Recent Presentations

Presentations RSS

---

Most Recent Publications

Publications RSS

---