NSF CISE Pathways to Revitalized Undergraduate Computing Education (CPATH) program has completed three funding cycles and has invested heavily in computing education. Each of the funded proposals has accomplishments and setbacks that should be shared with others. This special project supports a workshop to bring together the leaders of the funded projects in order to share experiences, explore opportunities for additional collaborations, and discuss issues that hinder accomplishing their stated goals. The workshop is planned for late March 2010 at a facility in Arlington, VA. The site is chosen for easy access both by the grant PIs and by NSF staff who wish to observe and learn about the accomplishments and challenges of the CPATH program.
Intellectual Merit: The proposed workshop will give leaders of CPATH funded projects an opportunity to reflect on their goals and their progress, to brainstorm on ways in which other project?fs experiences might inspire some new activities or some changes of emphasis, and to make new connections to related activities that will enhance each of the projects.
Broader Impacts: The outcomes of the workshop will include hard?]to?]quantify results from connections made between projects. There will also be concrete results in the form of commentary on experiences, suggestions for future directions, descriptions of ideas that worked and ideas that did not work. The results will be published on the NSF NSDL Ensemble site: the computing pathway to NSDL. The existence of the results will be well publicized and these materials will help future proposals to CPATH and other NSF computing education programs to avoid the pitfalls experienced by others and will provide insights that will lead to stronger proposals and more accomplishments in areas targeted by the CPATH program
This award supported the 2010 meeting of the principal investigators (PIs) of awards from the NSF CPATH program. The program goals are lofty -- the transformation of education in computing. The PIs gather to share their results to date, to learn more of NSF priorities and expectations, and to adjust their own project plans accordingly. This meeting was a lively and rewarding event with good discussions and idea sharing across the funded projects. Invited speakers set the tone for break out sessions and those sessions led to further discussion in the plenary sessions. The attendees were all active and well engaged with the process. It was clear that the CPATH program was producing very valuable transformations and that the PIs are dedicated to accomplishing the project goals. The meeting was held in Washington DC in order to allow NSF staff to attend without additional cost to the program. A number of NSF program officers did attend and their presentations were informative to the community. In addition, one of the plenary talks addressed expectations and approaches for evaluating the effectiveness of the projects. All the presentations led to informed discussion. The presentations were all preserved in the NSF NSDL at the computing education portal site: www.computingportal.org/CPATHPI-2010
