Suzanne Westbrook

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Scholarly Contributions

Journals/Publications

• Forbes, J., Piotrowski, V., Prey, J., & Westbrook, D. S. (2013). Understanding NSF funding opportunities. SIGCSE 2013 - Proceedings of the 44th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, 203-204.
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  Abstract: This session highlights programs in the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Education and Human Resources (EHR) and Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorates. The focus is on providing descriptions of several programs of interest to college faculty and discussing the requirements and guidelines for programs in these areas. The session includes a description of the proposal and review processes as well as strategies for writing competitive proposals. Participants are encouraged to discuss procedural issues with the presenters. Copyright © 2013 ACM.
• Piotrowski, V., Westbrook, S., McClure, M., Forbes, J., & Taylor, H. (2012). Understanding NSF funding opportunities. SIGCSE'12 - Proceedings of the 43rd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, 397-398.
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  Abstract: This session highlights programs in the National Science Foundation's Division of Undergraduate Education, Office of Cyberinfrastructure and Directorate of Computer and Information Science and Engineering. The focus is on providing descriptions of several programs of interest to college faculty and discussing the requirements and guidelines for programs in these areas. It includes a description of the proposal and review processes as well as strategies for writing competitive proposals. Participants are encouraged to discuss procedural issues with the presenters. © 2012 Authors.
• Boustedt, J., McCartney, R., Deibel, K., Huggins, J., Simon, B., & Westbrook, S. (2009). It seemed like a good idea at the time. SIGCSE'09 - Proceedings of the 40th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, 265-266.
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  Abstract: We often learn of successful pedagogical experiments, but we seldom hear of the the ones that failed. For this special session we solicited submissions from the SIGCSE membership, selected the best from among these, and will have presentations at the session by the selected authors. Our contributions describe pedagogical approaches that seemed to be good ideas but turned out as failures. At the session, contributors will describe their pedagogical experiment, the rationale for the experiment, evidence of failure, and lessons learned. © 2009 ACM.
• Boustedt, J., Mccartney, R., Deibel, K., Huggins, J., Simon, B., & Westbrook, S. (2009). It seemed like a good idea at the time. SIGCSE Bulletin Inroads, 41(1), 265-266.
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  Abstract: We often learn of successful pedagogical experiments, but we seldom hear of the the ones that failed. For this special session we solicited submissions from the SIGCSE membership, selected the best from among these, and will have presentations at the session by the selected authors. Our contributions describe pedagogical approaches that seemed to be good ideas but turned out as failures. At the session, contributors will describe their pedagogical experiment, the rationale for the experiment, evidence of failure, and lessons learned.
• Murphy, L., Richards, B., McCauley, R., Morrison, B. B., Westbrook, S., & Fossum, T. (2007). Women catch up: Gender differences in learning programming concepts. Proceedings of the Thirty-Seventh SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, 17-21.
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  Abstract: This paper describes a multi-institutional study that used categorization exercises (known as constrained card sorts) to investigate gender differences in graduating computer science students' learning and perceptions of programming concepts. Our results show that female subjects had significantly less pre-college programming experience than their male counterparts. However, for both males and females, we found no correlation between previous experience and success in the major, as measured by computer science grade point average at graduation. Data also indicated that, by the time students completed their introductory courses, females reported nearly equal levels of mastery as males of the programming concepts. Furthermore, females generally considered the programming concepts to be no more difficult than did the men. Copyright 2006 ACM.
• McCauley, R., Murphy, L., Westbrook, S., Haller, S., Zander, C., Fossum, T., Sanders, K., Morrison, B., Richards, B., & Anderson, R. (2005). What do successful computer science students know? An integrative analysis using card sort measures and content analysis to evaluate graduating students' knowledge of programming concepts. Expert Systems, 22(3), 147-159.
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  Abstract: This paper describes a multi-institutional study that used a repeated single-criterion card sort to investigate graduating computer science students' knowledge of programming concepts. The study seeks to improve computer science instruction by gaining insight into how graduating students retain and assimilate introductory programming knowledge into their broader understanding of the discipline. A total of 291 card sorts was elicited from 65 undergraduate students in their final year of study at eight colleges and universities throughout the USA. To fully exploit the rich qualitative and quantitative aspects of the card sort data, an integrative analysis process was used that combined content analysis with two measures, normalized minimum spanning tree and edit distance, both developed specifically to analyze card sort data.
• Murphy, L., Fossum, T., Haller, S., Sanders, K., McCauley, R., Morrison, B. B., Zander, C., Westbrook, S., Richards, B., & Anderson, R. E. (2005). A multi-institutional investigation of computer science seniors' knowledge of programming concepts. Proceedings of the Thirty-Sixth SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, SIGCSE 2005, 510-514.
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  Abstract: Research on learning suggests the importance of helping students organize their knowledge around meaningful patterns of information. This paper reports on a multi-institutional study to investigate how senior computer science majors articulate and organize their knowledge of programming concepts using a card-sorting technique adopted from knowledge acquisition. We show that card-sorts are an effective means of eliciting students' knowledge structures and suggest they can also be used to help students organize their knowledge throughout the curriculum. Copyright 2005 ACM.
• Sanders, K., Fincher, S., Bouvier, D., Lewandowski, G., Morrison, B., Murphy, L., Petre, M., Richards, B., Tenenberg, J., Thomas, L., Anderson, R., Anderson, R., Fitzgerald, S., Gutschow, A., Haller, S., Lister, R., McCauley, R., McTaggart, J., Prasad, C., , Scott, T., et al. (2005). A multi-institutional, multinational study of programming concepts using card sort data. Expert Systems, 22(3), 121-128.
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  Abstract: This paper presents a case study of the use of a repeated single-criterion card sort with an unusually large, diverse participant group. The study, whose goal was to elicit novice programmers' knowledge of programming concepts, involved over 20 researchers from four continents and 276 participants drawn from 20 different institutions. In this paper we present the design of the study and the unexpected result that there were few discernible systematic differences in the population. The study was one of the activities of the National Science Foundation funded Bootstrapping Research in Computer Science Education project (2003).
• Lister, R., Box, I., Morrison, B., Tenenberg, J., & Westbrook, D. S. (2004). The dimensions of variation in the teaching of data structures. Proceedings of the 9th Annual SIGCSE Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education, 92-96.
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  Abstract: The current debate about the teaching of data structures is hampered because, as a community, we usually debate specifics about data structure implementations and libraries, when the real level of disagreement remains implicit - the intent behind our teaching. This paper presents a phenomenographic study of the intent of CS educators for teaching data structures in CS2. Based on interviews with Computer Science educators and analysis of CS literature, we identified five categories of intent: developing transferable thinking, improving students' programming skills, knowing "what's under the hood", knowledge of software libraries, and component thinking. The CS community needs to first debate at the level of these categories before moving to more specific issues. This study also serves as an example of how phenomenographic analysis can be used to inform debate on syllabus design in general.
• Lister, R., Tenenberg, J., Box, I., Morrison, B., & Westbrook, D. S. (2004). The dimensions of variation in the teaching of data structures. SIGCSE Bulletin (Association for Computing Machinery, Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education), 36(3), 92-96.
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  Abstract: The current debate about the teaching of data structures is hampered because, as a community, we usually debate specifics about data structure implementations and libraries, when the real level of disagreement remains implicit - the intent behind our teaching. This paper presents a phenomenographic study of the intent of CS educators for teaching data structures in CS2. Based on interviews with Computer Science educators and analysis of CS literature, we identified five categories of intent: developing transferable thinking, improving students' programming skills, knowing "what's under the hood", knowledge of software libraries, and component thinking. The CS community needs to first debate at the level of these categories before moving to more specific issues. This study also serves as an example of how phenomenographic analysis can be used to inform debate on syllabus design in general. Copyright 2004 ACM.
• Collins, W., Lister, R., Tenenberg, J., & Westbrook, S. (2003). The role for framework libraries in CS2. SIGCSE Bulletin (Association for Computing Machinery, Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education), 403-404.
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  Abstract: The recent emergence of object-oriented framework libraries of classic data structures and algorithms such as the Standard Template Library and Java's Collection classes provides a set of general and efficient data structure components for use by practicing software developers. This paper examines the role of standardized framework libraries in the first data structure course at the university level.
• Westbrook, D. (1999). Multiparadigm language approach to teaching principles of programming languages. Proceedings - Frontiers in Education Conference, 1, 11b3-14 - 11b3-18.
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  Abstract: This paper describes our experiences in using the multiparadigm language GED to teach our principles of programming languages course. The benefits of using a multiparadigm language include less time spent on learning new environments for different languages, easier transition to different paradigms, and opportunities for multiparadigm programming. In this paper, we give a brief description of GED (which supports the imperative, functional, logic, and object-oriented paradigms), describe how it is used in our course, and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of this approach versus the traditional use of several languages.