Innovations and Opportunitiesin Liberal Arts Computing Education

Innovations and Opportunities
in Liberal Arts Computing Education

A SIGCSE 2023 affiliated event organized by members of the SIGCSE Committee on Computing Education in Liberal Arts Colleges.

This event builds on directions and priorities identified at our prior SIGCSE events:

This event will include a morning session focused on topics covering the breadth of opportunities and challenges faced by liberal arts computing educators. An afternoon session will focus on the ACM/IEEE/AAAI CS2023 draft curriculum model. Members of the Committee will lead a workshop based on a liberal-arts focused process they have developed for curriculum review and revision that balances institutional identity with external guidelines for CS curricula. Feedback from this session will inform both the process under development and the Committee’s advocacy efforts with the ACM/IEEE/AAAI curriculum task force. Throughout the event, sessions will give participants an opportunity to learn about work already taking place within the liberal arts computing community as well as to engage in Q&A and breakout discussions.

Invitation for Submissions and Participation

The program committee invites submissions for presentations within the morning session on any topic in computing education with a particular focus on liberal arts perspectives and approaches. This can include a presentation of an effective innovation or an exploration of a unique opportunity or challenge faced by the liberal arts computing education community. Possible topics might include innovative courses, curricula, or co-curricular programs, DEI initiatives, academic and career advising, faculty recruiting and retention, and other issues as identified to have a specific liberal arts perspective. Selected submissions will be briefly presented in a panel setting. Breakout sessions, led by panelists and program committee members, will then be used to allow attendees to discuss these topics in small groups with the presenter and other interested attendees.

Submissions should follow the templates provided below. All submissions will be lightly screened by the program committee for suitability. All suitable submissions will be made available to the community through the Committee site and all authors of accepted submissions will receive an invitation to participate in the event.

We also welcome those that would like to attend and participate in this event, but do not have a submission for one of the above sessions. Registration is open via the following Google Form: [link being updated shortly]

We anticipate being able to invite everyone who expresses interest. However, in the unlikely event that our venue cannot accommodate everyone, attendees will be selected giving first priority to those submitting to one of the sessions and then by reviewing attendance applications to achieve representation from a broad range of institutions. All interested faculty and students are welcome.

All attendees, whether making a submission or not, must also be registered for the SIGCSE Technical Symposium. Apart from the required SIGCSE TS registration there will be no additional cost to participants for this event.

Important Dates

Category Date
Submissions Due January 17, 2023
Notifications January 27, 2023
In-Person Event at SIGCSE Wednesday March 15, 2023, 9:00am-5:00pm EST

Call for Participation

The program committee invites submissions following the provided templates indicating the information requested in a submission. All submissions may be made through email or GitHub pull request following the process described below. Submissions, and questions about submissions, can be sent to Jakob Barnard (Jakob.Barnard@uj.edu).

  1. Curricular Innovation Submissions:​ A brief (1 to 2-page) description of a curricular innovation that reflects a specifically liberal arts philosophy. This may include full curriculum models, individual courses, outreach programs, co-curricular programs, or other interdisciplinary or liberal-arts focused educational initiatives. Please see the template and example below.

  2. Opportunities and Challenges Submissions: A brief (1 to 2-page) exploration of an opportunity or challenge in computing education that is either unique to the liberal arts context or where the liberal arts context provides a usefully distinctive perspective. These need not be exhaustively researched explorations but submissions should illustrate how the presenter would be able to bring context or knowledge beyond first-hand, anecdotal experience to the conversation.

Submission Process

Submissions may be made in one of two ways:

Post Event Reports

The Program Committee intends to collaborate with interested authors from each session to write event reports. These reports will be posted to this repository and may also be submitted to a peer reviewed venue for publication (e.g. SIGCSE Bulletin).

Tentative Event Agenda

This event will be broken into two sessions, each a half day. The morning session will focus on topics submitted by the community at large, as described in the abstract above. Selected submissions will be briefly presented, roughly 5-10 minutes each. Breakout sessions will then be used to allow attendees to discuss these topics in small groups with the presenter and other interested attendees. Depending on the number of submissions and range of topics, the agenda might have all topics presented first and then proceed into two rounds of breakout discussions (to allow participants to focus on more than one topic). Alternatively, we may have two sub-sessions of topics presented followed by a breakout session for just those topics.

The afternoon session will be run as a workshop focused on CS2023 and how liberal arts institutions can use it in their curriculum review and revision process. Attendees will get an overview of CS2023 and the Committee’s involvement in crafting a liberal arts response to the proposed new curriculum guidelines. From there, attendees will be led through the opening stages of a “process workbook” that the Committee has developed that helps programs articulate their identity and make strategic choices about revising their curriculum in the light of CS2023. With CS2023 still in draft form, the focus will be on the early stages of the process workbook, while making some use of the draft content. In addition to helping programs get started on our workbook, the Committee will collect feedback to help improve the process and workbook. Attendees will be given access to updated versions and guidance following the session to allow them to continue the work begun at this session once they return to their institutions.

Program Committee

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License Unless otherwise noted on an individual resource, all materials in this repository are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License