Abstract:
In recent decades, software engineering education has faced increasing demands, requiring scalability beyond the basic "CS 1" level. We need scalable approaches to teach both intermediate and advanced software engineering topics, as well as the technical and nontechnical group skills necessary for complex software projects. Additionally, academia has shown renewed interest in mastery learning: providing students with flexible pacing and deadlines and ample practice opportunities to achieve any desired level of expertise. This talk reviews recent and ongoing work in these areas, highlighting how the same educational technology that facilitates creative pedagogy also supports mastery learning, even within the constraints of traditional higher education courses. (Thanks to ChatGPT for its help shortening this abstract.)
Speaker bio:
Armando Fox (he/él/il/lui) is a Professor of Computer Science, Faculty Advisor for Digital Learning Strategy, Campus Equity Advisor, and Computer Science Diversity Officer at UC Berkeley. With his colleague David Patterson, he co-designed and co-taught Berkeley’s first Massive Open Online Course on “Engineering Software as a Service”, offered through edX, and co-authored the award-winning accompanying textbook of the same name; this work was recognized in 2015 by the ACM Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award. His current research in CS education focuses on creating novel technologies to help both traditional and nontraditional learners master advanced programming concepts at scale.
Host: Geoffrey Herman