A multi-perspective digital library to facilitate integrating teaching research methods across the computing curriculum

• Authors: Anne G. Applin;Hilary J. Holz;William Joel;Ifeyinwa Okoye;Katherine Deibel;Becky Grasser;Briony J. Oates;Gwendolyne Wood
• Venue: Working group reports on ITiCSE on Innovation and technology in computer science education
• Year: 2007

The computing research methods (CRM) literature is scattered across discourse communities and published in specialty journals and conference proceedings. This dispersion has led to the use of inconsistent terminology when referring to CRM. With no established CRM vocabulary and isolated discourse communities, computing as a field needs to engage in a sense-making process to establish the common ground necessary to support meaningful dialog. We propose to establish common ground through the construction of the computing research methods multi-perspective digital library (CRM-MPDL), a scholar-produced digital resource for the CRM community. As with its parent design research project on teaching CRM, CRM-MPDL is being developed through iterative and participatory design in an emergent fashion in tandem with the larger CRM community. For our resource to be viable, we must carefully explore the rich details and nuances of our stakeholder communities and the perspectives they bring to the sense-making process. As a discount alternative to truly having a representative sample of our user population "in the room" with us throughout the design and implementation process, we have implemented a development approach for CRM-MPDL using personas as a means to gain insights and feedback from the target user communities. For this iteration of the development process, we are concentrating on the needs of the faculty. In this report, we present our evolving understanding of the project, and seek feedback and input on several key aspects of the theoretical and process models. We then present the framework for the faculty personas, as well as an overview of some of the personas at the time the paper was prepared, in the hopes that we can entice readers to visit the project website to help with the ongoing audit and refinement process. We also give an overview of the content model for CRM-MPDL, which will have evolved (and may even be available as a working prototype) by the time this article appears in print. Finally, we conclude with a current status summary, and issue several specific calls for participation in the ongoing work of the project.