The Rest Is Teaching: A Podcast for Computing Education Practitioners & Researchers

Steve Draper and Joseph Maguire on the Different Types of Contributions to Knowledge

Science is a broad church, full of narrow minds, trained to know ever more about even less. That’s according to biologist Steve Jones, but in Computing Education Research (CER) are we being too narrow-minded about what counts (and what doesn’t count) as a contribution? We spoke to Steve Draper [https://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/psychologyneuroscience/staff/stevedraper/] and Joseph Maguire [https://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/computing/staff/josephmaguire/] at the University of Glasgow about their paper The different types of contributions to knowledge (in CER): All needed, but not all recognised published in the ACM Transactions on Computing Education (TOCE). The overall aim of this paper is to stimulate discussion about the activities within CER, and to develop a more thoughtful and explicit perspective on the different types of research activity within CER, and their relationships with each other. While theories may be the most valuable outputs of research to those wishing to apply them, for researchers themselves there are other kinds of contribution important to progress in the field. This is what relates it to the immediate subject of this special journal issue on theory in CER. We adopt as our criterion for value “contribution to knowledge”. This paper’s main contributions are: A set of 12 categories of contribution which together indicate the extent of this terrain of contributions to research. Leading into that is a collection of ideas and misconceptions which are drawn on in defining and motivating “ground rules”, which are hints and guidance on the need for various often neglected categories. These are also helpful in justifying some additional categories which make the set as a whole more useful in combination. These are followed by some suggested uses for the categories, and a discussion assessing how the success of the paper might be judged. A full transcript and show notes can be found at uki-sigcse.acm.org/2025/09/08/episode-4 [https://uki-sigcse.acm.org/2025/09/08/episode-4/]

Suzanne Matthews, Tia Newhall and Kevin C. Webb on Diving Into Open Interactive Textbook Publishing

The textbook has long been a mainstay of education. Although online textbooks can give students easy (and sometimes free) access to increasingly interactive resources, authors have a bewildering array of tools and publishing models to select from. Freely available software allows instructors to publish course material freed from the constraints of printed paper and monolithic Learning Management Systems (LMSs) . One example of this is Dive into Systems. We spoke to the authors of this textbook: Suzanne Matthews [https://www.suzannejmatthews.com/], Tia Newhall [https://www.cs.swarthmore.edu/~newhall/] and Kevin C. Webb [https://www.cs.swarthmore.edu/~kwebb/] from Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania and the United States Military Academy at WestPoint, New York about their accompanying paper Dive into Systems: A Free, Online Textbook for Introducing Computer Systems. Their paper was published at the SIGCSE technical symposium, from the abstract This paper presents our experiences, motivations, and goals for developing Dive into Systems, a new, free, online textbook that introduces computer systems, computer organisation, and parallel computing. Our book’s topic coverage is designed to give readers a gentle and broad introduction to these important topics. It teaches the fundamentals of computer systems and architecture, introduces skills for writing efficient programs, and provides necessary background to prepare students for advanced study in computer systems topics. Our book assumes only a CS1 background of the reader and is designed to be useful to a range of courses as a primary textbook for courses that introduce computer systems topics or as an auxiliary textbook to provide systems background in other courses. Results of an evaluation from students and faculty at 18 institutions who used a beta release of our book show overwhelmingly strong support for its coverage of computer systems topics, its readability, and its availability. Chapters are reviewed and edited by external volunteers from the CS education community. Their feedback, as well as that of student and faculty users, is continuously incorporated into its online content at diveintosystems.org/book [https://diveintosystems.org/book/] Cite this episode, its transcript and show notes using DOI:10.59350/shk5w-r7n33 [https://doi.org/10.59350/shk5w-r7n33]

Sue Sentance on Computing in Schools in the UK & Ireland

Computing is widely taught in schools in the UK and Ireland, but how does the subject vary across primary and secondary education in Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland? We spoke to Sue Sentance, [https://www.cst.cam.ac.uk/people/ss2600] at the University of Cambridge about her paper Computing in School in the UK & Ireland: A Comparative Study co-authored with Diana Kirby, Keith Quille, Elizabeth Cole, Tom Crick and Nicola Looker. This was published in the Proceedings of the UK Conference on United Kingdom & Ireland Computing Education UKICER. From the abstract: Many countries have increased their focus on computing in primary and secondary education in recent years and the UK and Ireland are no exception. The four nations of the UK have distinct and separate education systems, with England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland offering different national curricula, qualifications, and teacher education opportunities; this is the same for the Republic of Ireland. This paper describes computing education in these five jurisdictions and reports on the results of a survey conducted with computing teachers. A validated instrument was localised and used for this study, with 512 completed responses received from teachers across all five countries The results demonstrate distinct differences in the experiences of the computing teachers surveyed that align with the policy and provision for computing education in the UK and Ireland. This paper increases our understanding of the differences in computing education provision in schools across the UK and Ireland, and will be relevant to all those working to understand policy around computing education in school. Show notes and transcript for this podcast can be found at uki-sigcse.acm.org/2025/09/03/episode-1 [https://uki-sigcse.acm.org/2025/09/03/episode-1/]

Quintin Cutts on Modelling Code Comprehension

It’s all very well getting an AI to write your code for you but neither writing code or reading code are the same as understanding code. So what is going on in novices brains when they learn to actually understand the code they are reading and writing? We spoke to Quintin Cutts [https://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/computing/staff/quintincutts/] from the University of Glasgow about his paper co-authored with Maria Kallia on Introducing Modelling and Code Comprehension from the First Days of an Introductory Programming Class in published in CEP ’23: Proceedings of 7th Conference on Computing Education Practice, from the abstract: An approach to code comprehension in an introductory programming class is presented, drawing on the Text Surface, Functional and Machine aspects of Schulte’s Block Model, and emphasising programming as a modelling activity involving problem and machine domains. To visually connect the domains and a program, a key diagram conceptualising the three aspects lies at the approach’s heart, alongside instructional exposition and exercises, which are all presented. Students find the approach challenging initially, but most recognise its value later, and identify, unexpectedly, the value of the approach for problem decomposition, planning and coding Show notes and transcript for this podcast can be found at uki-sigcse.acm.org/2025/09/03/episode-2 [https://uki-sigcse.acm.org/2025/09/03/episode-2]

Rosanne English on Graduate Skills for Computing Students

What do employers want from Computer Science students and how good are Universities in producing graduates with what employers need? We spoke to Rosanne English [https://www.strath.ac.uk/staff/englishrosannedr/] at the University of Strathclyde about her paper co-authoed with Alan Hayes Towards Integrated Graduate Skills for UK Computing Science Students published at UKICER. From the abstract: In preparing computing science students for industry, degree content often focuses on technical skills such as programming. Such skills are essential for a successful post-study career in industry and is popular with students. However, industry notes that students are often limited in what can be referred to as graduate attributes or transferable skills. Such skills include effective teamwork, communication, and critical thinking amongst others. Similar gaps have also been demonstrated for computing science students more specifically, resulting in industry developing their own training programmes for graduates. To address this issue, graduate attributes could be incorporated more readily into computing curricula. Within the UK this is discussed in accreditation requirements as well as higher education frameworks. However, research which aims to explore how to achieve this is still comparatively limited. Building on existing work in this area, this paper presents a thematic analysis of graduate attributes at Russell Group Universities in the UK to identify the most common attribute themes, and uses the most frequent themes to begin to consider how these could be more readily embedded in CS curricula. Show notes and transcript for this podcast can be found at uki-sigcse.acm.org/2025/09/03/episode-3 [https://uki-sigcse.acm.org/2025/09/03/episode-3/]