The Art and Science of Everything

backlash against nielsen: http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article603.asp
backlash against everything: http://www.usabilitymustdie.com/

these resonate with me because of the thoughts that led to me writing my humanities and HCI mini-manifesta

some design principles of computer science learning experience design

Fill these in with cases of how this has happened in different sorts of contexts, paying attention to any possibly subte particulars about the context that made the described practice successful in supporting the design principle.

* Students should be able to frequently and accurately assess their performance in relation to the class.
- therefore giving hour estimates for how long a program takes isn’t successful as it doesn’t account for the perceptual flexibility of time; what are you going to do — journal your hours?
- What are strategies for mediating attribution differences in men and women?

* Students should be able to validly assess their performance in relation to their peers.

* Students should feel safe participating in course activities, both emotionally and physically. (i.e. a lab can be a great place, but maybe not for a campus where you need to walk and there are muggings right and left)

* Curricula should support varied styles of learning.
- i.e. Listeners, readers, talkers

* Curricula should support varied styles of conceptualizing and solving problems. (This does not imply “writing sloppy code is okay.” Solutions will be subject to the same standards and models to the same tests of robustness.)

more more more! we need more! these are but paltry examples

Concrete sigcse women in CS things that I will follow up on:
- Univ of Colorado group working on women in CS questions
- SIGCSE committee on expanding the community of women in computer science
- These teachers really need tools for cultural and classroom evaluation, probably more than all but the most general directives — design principles coupled with tools to understand if their current classrooms meet those needs

My talk @ SIGCSE:
- cohesive thought that came out of it for me was that the problem is really this disconnect in gendered communication styles and pedagogical choices should abide by the design principle that a course should afford opportunities for students to see how their peers *really* work, rather than giving an open space for them to talk about it
- I really should talk about the whole study at some point, since 106A really frames it, maybe submit other chunks of paper (the fem stud journal submission) to
- learn to talk slower

Product designing computer science with the goal of making it equitable, inclusive, and vibrant:
- how do you cause a frame shift?
- broken windows principles, tipping point strategies for who to get in the boat, etc
- just because a workaround is there doesn’t mean that there isn’t a problem

Panel on ethics @ SIGCSE:
from conversation with Flo Appel - feminist ethics, social ethics, intellectual property ethics
ethics course speaker teaches uses 5 online discussions, 2 face to face discussions, grading basis?
- sometimes outside experts help (getting them in a dialogue with students rather than lecture format would be really cool)
- each page has off-site links to related articles, a study guide, discussion ?s, “breaking news” (google news alerts?)
- submission to peer review “independent study topics” - how does eric’s presentation day do this? students present to TAs or to classmates also? making ethical interrogations is a useful skill (as is giving UI critique)