Leo Porter on the Basic Data Structures Inventory

SPEAKER: Dr Leo Porter

EVENT TYPE: HYBRID

IN-PERSON LOCATION:

Sir Alwyn Williams Building (SAWB) 422
School of Computing Science
University of Glasgow
Glasgow
G12 8QQ

REMOTE ACCESS:

The session can be accessed via the Centre of Computing Science Education Zoom room.

Session 1: 12:00-12:50 – BDSI: A Concept Inventory for Basic Data Structures with Evidence of Validity

A Concept Inventory (CI) is a validated assessment to measure student conceptual understanding of a particular topic. In this talk, I will present a CI for Basic Data Structures (BDSI) and the process by which the CI was designed and validated. Included in this process was: gaining consensus from a number of faculty at diverse institutions on what belongs on the instrument, conducting interviews with students to identify their conceptions and misconceptions of the content, development and refinement of the CI questions using both qualitative and quantitative methods, and a statistical evaluation of final versions of the instrument to ensure its internal validity. Lastly, I will go over how one might apply a similar process to develop similar instruments for other computer science classes.

Session 2: 13:10-14:00 – Using an Interpreting the Basic Data Structures Inventory (BDSI)

For faculty interested in using the BDSI either for teaching or research purposes, this talk will discuss how to administer the assessment including tips to ensure that the process is valuable for instructors and students alike. In addition, I will run an activity with audience participation to present the results from having used the instrument at a collection of diverse institutions to help instructors and researchers interpret their own findings.

BIO:

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