Join Microsoft at SIGCSE 2024!

We are excited to be bringing multiple teams this year to SIGCSE, the premier conference for Computer Science education. Microsoft is a Platinum sponsor once again, to show our commitment to research in CS education and CS educators. SIGCSE 2024 is in Portland, Oregon, and is still accepting registrations. If you're a K-12 student or teacher, you're eligible for discounted rates

Sponsored sessions 

We have three sponsored sessions in the program: 

Degrees + Credentials—preparing students for the skills-first job marketplace and what this means for changes in CS education 

Thursday, 10:45 AM, Rachel Wortman Morris 

AI is accelerating the pace of change in the job market and employers are looking for demonstrated knowledge of skills in addition to degrees from candidates. Hiring managers want to see evidence of skills and competencies that are relevant and applicable to the roles they are hiring for. Learn how Microsoft is enabling institutions and educators to bring in AI, cloud, and security technical skills into the classroom in ways that allow educators the flexibility of how they adopt these teaching tools and result in students having Microsoft-validated credentials to highlight the skills they have learned to complement the degrees they have earned. 

Teaching Modern Web Development with Python 

Thursday, 3:45PM, Pamela Fox 

Python is a popular language for teaching introductory programming, but it’s also an incredibly popular language for backend web development, powering websites like Netflix, Pinterest, and Reddit. In this session, you’ll learn about the top Python web development frameworks (FastAPI, Flask, Django) but also the tools used by industry web developers (like Docker containers and OpenAPI specifications). We’ll show how you can teach web development in the cloud without requiring students to setup tools on their own computer, using GitHub Codespaces and Azure free tier services, and we’ll share a curriculum that you can adapt for your own classes. This session will be led by Pamela Fox, a Python Cloud Advocate at Microsoft, who previously developed the coding courses for Khan Academy and wrote the code for the original Python backend at Coursera. 

Visual Studio Code for Education and Future-Ready Skills in CS Classrooms 

Friday, 1:45PM, Dr. Adam Smeets, Austin Cory Bart 

Join Microsoft for an engaging session with a panel of computer science educators who have weaved Visual Studio Code for Education into their course experiences. Discover how this powerful learning tool, optimized for education, has enhanced their teaching and student experiences. With our long history of supporting K-12+ CS education through products like Microsoft MakeCode and TEALS, we will share insights from our 18-month collaboration with CS educators where we focused on more deeply understanding the evolution of future-ready skills and the needs in CS classrooms. Based on these insights, we’ll share how VS Code for Education addresses these challenges and creates opportunities for educators and students learning to code. You will also learn about how to access and apply our free curricula including ready-to-use lessons, activities, and assessments for both an Introduction to Python and an Introduction to Web Development (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript) course. 

Microsoft booth 

When we aren't presenting our sessions, you can find us hanging out at booth 204 in the exhibition hall. We'll have a small area next to the GitHub booth, so you can get all your Microsoft and GitHub questions answered at the same time! 

  
Microsoft research 

We're also thrilled to see Microsoft researchers co-presenting an accepted paper with UMich, in a paper session that's also available to online participants: 

Investigating Student Mistakes in Introductory Data Science Programming 

Data Science (DS) has emerged as a new academic discipline where students are introduced to data-centric thinking and generating data-driven insights through programming. Unlike traditional introductory programming education, which focuses on program syntax and core Computer Science (CS) topics (e.g., algorithms and data structures), introductory DS education emphasizes skills such as studying the data at hand to gain insights and making effective use of programming libraries (e.g., re, NumPy, pandas, scikit-learn). To better understand learners’ needs and pain points when they are introduced to DS programming, we investigated a large online course on data manipulation designed for graduate students who do not have a CS or Statistics undergraduate degree. We qualitatively analyzed incorrect student code submissions for computational notebook-based programming assignments in Python. We identified common mistakes and grouped them into the following themes: (1) programming language and environment misconceptions, (2) logical mistakes due to data or problem-statement misunderstanding or incorrectly dealing with missing values, (3) semantic mistakes from incorrect usage of DS libraries, and (4) suboptimal coding. Our work provides instructors valuable insights to understand student needs in introductory DS courses and improve course pedagogy, along with recommendations for developing assessment and feedback tools to better support students in large courses. 

Hope to see you at SIGCSE 2024!