Computing research methods multi-perspective digital library: a call for participation

For the past three years, SIGCSE has sponsored a design research project on teaching Computing Research Methods (CRM) [4]. The initial phase of the work included an ITiCSE working group that gathered a great deal of literature on and about: computing research; CRM; and teaching CRM [3]. During the literature review, we discovered a number of similar current and prior efforts, some of which had even met with limited success within their discourse community. However, because the CRM literature is divided across publishers, indices, and discourse communities, none of the earlier efforts established the common ground necessary for meaningful dialog on curricular issues (see section 1.1. of [1])

To establish that common ground, we decided to foster a scholar-produced digital resource to facilitate integrating teaching / learning research methods across the computing curriculum [1]. Scholar-produced digital resources are digital libraries that are produced by scholarly communities of practice, rather than by external stakeholders such as commercial publishers or libraries. These digital libraries are rich interactive web locales that ". . . include aggregations of resources that support research, such as field-based topic gateways and bibliographies; products of original research such as novel multimedia publications and handbook type web publications, communication forums such as preprint archives and pure e-journals; and research tools such as non-proprietary software available via the web." [2]

We started work on the CRM Multi-Perspective Digital Library (CRM-MPDL) in early 2007. A second ITiCSE working group [1] focused on the faculty perspectives in CRM-MPDL. A SIGCSE special projects grant funded student research assistants for CRM-MPDL. As a consequence, students have become a very active and vocal constituency in the project, and they have made significant progress on a set of student design and content elements for CRM-MPDL.

To date, we have developed an international participatory design community [4]; conducted and published an extensive literature review and glossary [3]; developed some initial curricular materials [4]; and constructed a prototype design for the faculty perspective in a multiperspective digital resource to integrate teaching research methods across the computing curriculum [1].

One of the goals of the project has been to build a tool that is useful to faculty, students, industry, administrators, and anyone else who is interested in teaching or learning about CRM. A prototype of CRM-MPDL is ready to be tested, interacted with, and critiqued. The goal of this poster is to solicit participation from the ITiCSE conference attendees. An international audience is necessary for us to get the most comprehensive feedback for the tool. We have a growing set of content materials and a growing set of design materials. A laptop will be available at the poster for attendees to experience CRM-MPDL on site.