This project will facilitate the emergence of a productive research community in the field of computing education by supporting attendees of the 2006 International Computing Education Research Workshop. People who are doing computing education research today rarely have external funding to do that research or to attend meetings to share and discuss their research. This project will help bring researchers, especially those who have limited or no funding, who are junior, or from small colleges or underrepresented groups, to an interdisciplinary forum to discuss exploratory and emerging research in computing education. It will also support researchers from outside computing, but whose work in areas such as developmental psychology is relevant to computing education, and scholars studying issues of prime importance to computing education like broadening participation. Computing education does not have an extensive research base or a vibrant community of research-based practice, and struggles with the problem of everything being invented locally. This grant will help nurture a community of researchers and fuel the development of a body of educational research in the field. This can have far reaching impacts, such as changing the practice of computing education, attracting and retaining a diverse student body, and establishing computing education research as a significant sub-discipline of computing research.
