Doing a Little Housekeeping and Rebranding
December 3, 2022 at 10:25 am 3 comments
I discovered today that I have written over 2,500 blog posts here on WordPress, starting in June 2009. There was a time when I was writing daily. This is the first post I’ve written here since June. From a pace of a new post every day, to once every six months.
Our lives change so much from year to year. Thirteen years feels like so many changes ago. I live in a different state, working for a different University. Even the name of the department where I work has changed — I was in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech. Now I’m in the Division of Computer Science and Engineering in the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan and I direct the Program in Computing for the Arts and Sciences.
I changed the name of this blog once before. When I started out here in 2009, there were few websites and blogs on computing education. I just called it the Computing Education Blog. But as the field grew and there were more and more terrific sites helping teachers do computing education, I renamed the site Computing Education Research Blog. My focus was on the research, and not on how to be a great computing educator.
Today, there are many great resources even on Computing Education Research. I particularly recommend https://csedresearch.org/. I attended one of their on-line panels this last week — such interesting ideas and such a wonderful and diverse group of researchers.
I have been reticent to post under a banner saying “Computing Education Research” because this site has pretty broad visibility now. There are many more subscribers than the first few years. Newcomers might come here with that title and expect to read a newsletter or an authoritative perspective on the field — that’s an overwhelming responsibility. I recognize that I’m a senior (read: “old”) voice in the field, but I am just one of many voices in the field. Like any academic, I want to share what we’re working on and what I’m thinking about. I do not want to my posts here to appear like I’m speaking for the field.
So, I have renamed the blog for a second time: Computing Ed Research – Guzdial’s Take. This blog represents my perspective. That’s how I’ve always thought of the blog, but I want to make it explicit.
I have updated the Guzdial Papers page for the first time in a decade, and changed the About page.
Thanks for reading!
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Computing Ed Research - Guzdial's Take 
1.
Alfred Thompson | December 3, 2022 at 12:09 pm
This has me thinking I should do something along these lines with my own blog. I’ve gone though a lot of change since I started mine as well. Thank you.
2.
Duncan Hull | December 13, 2022 at 11:09 am
Hello Mark, I’m interested in your comment that the “focus is on the research, and not on how to be a great computing educator.
To what extent do you think good CSEd research should also inform us how to be great teachers of CS too?
3.
Mark Guzdial | December 13, 2022 at 1:11 pm
Hi Duncan,
Absolutely, there is Computing Ed research that can inform us on how to teach CS well. There is a lot of Computing Ed research that might not. We’ve struggled to publish some of our more recent work (e.g., with social science teachers, with participatory design with other-than-CS teachers) because reviewers didn’t see how it was relevant to CS teachers. It’s important for Computing Education research to explore how to teach computing ideas (a) to students who don’t want to focus on CS and (b) by teachers who don’t want to focus on CS. But it may not tell us much about CS teachers.
I’m also thinking about Amber Solomon’s work which points out how CS teaching can lead students astray by using spatial metaphors that are not well thought out. Her work clearly identifies a problem. It doesn’t also tell us a solution.
The dominant form of funding for computing education research in the US today is in Researcher-Practitioner Partnerships (RPPs). RPPs are a great idea for influencing practice. It’s not an effective model if you want to invent something different than current practice or if what you’re trying to teach isn’t being taught at scale anywhere. Some CER will not directly influence computing educators.