CMCE 2016 - 2nd International Workshop on Case Method for Computing Education

This second workshop on case methods for computing education aims at bringing together educators, researchers and practitioners to discuss and share experience on the application of case method pedagogy for effectively teaching technology oriented computing education. The first workshop (cmce2015.und.edu/) was held at the 22nd Asia-Pacific Software Engineering Conference, in New Delhi, India in December 2015.
Faculty teaching computing courses face the difficult challenge of how to prepare students for the real world of computing practice. It is essential to teach concepts and principles but at the same time one has to somehow translate this directly into real-world activity, for example, in software engineering discipline, how to design, develop and maintain software solutions. Case teaching method provides a number of benefits to enhance student learning through “interactive pedagogy” by stimulating critical thinking and problem solving skills and by creating reasonably realistic replicas of actual situations--which include incomplete information, time constraints, and conflicting goals. The case method uses two elements namely the case, and a set of activities related to that case. The case is a rich narrative that provides detailed information about a situation in which an individual or group must make a decision or solve a problem. Though some faculty have used case method for teaching computing courses, there has been no concerted effort by the professional computing communities to promote this pedagogy.
Case method has been successfully applied in teaching other professions including law, medicine and business. Though there is great pedagogical value in case method, computing has not fully leveraged this method for teaching. One of the main reasons for this is the lack of cases and a repository where faculty can search and find useful cases. Another is the fact that there is very little written and sharing among faculty on how to use cases when teaching technology oriented topics such as software engineering, programming, solution architecture, etc.
The main goals of the workshop are to gather academics and practitioners who are keen to research and apply the case method pedagogy in computing education, and subsequently contribute to the development of a case repository and set of practical tips on how case method can be incorporated into the different computing courses.