CSC News

Mealin Wins Best Paper Award at SIGCSE 2019

Congratulations to NC State Computer Science PhD student Sean Mealin and his co-authors Andreas Stefik (University of Nevada, Las Vegas), Richard E. Ladner (University of Washington), and William Allee (University of Nevada, Las Vegas), for winning the Best Paper Award at the 2019 Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE) Technical Symposium held in Minneapolis, MN February 27-March 2, 2019.

The winning paper is “Computer Science Principles for Teachers of Blind and Visually Impaired Students” in Proceedings of the 50^th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science, pages 766-772.  The abstract follows:

The College Board's AP Computer Science Principles (CSP) content has become a major new course for introducing K-12 students to the discipline. The course was designed for many reasons, but one major goal was to broaden participation. While significant work has been completed toward equity by many research groups, we know of no systematic analysis of CSP content created by major vendors in relation to accessibility for students with disabilities, especially those who are blind or visually impaired. In this experience report, we discuss two major actions by our team to make CSP more accessible. First, with the help of accessibility experts and teachers, we modified the entire Code.org CSP course to make it accessible. Second, we conducted a one-week professional development workshop in the summer of 2018 for teachers of blind or visually impaired students in order to help them prepare to teach CSP or support those who do. We report here on lessons learned that are useful to teachers who have blind or visually impaired students in their classes, to AP CSP curriculum providers, and to the College Board.

To read the winning paper, click here.

The SIGCSE Technical Symposium is the largest computing education conference worldwide organized by ACM SIGCSE.  It attracts over 1,500 researchers, educators, and others interested in improving computing education in K-12 and higher education.

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