Connecting Evaluation and Computing Education Research: Why is it so Important?

With the growth of computing education research in the last decade, we have found a call for a strengthening of empiricism within the computing education research community. Computer science education researchers are being asked to focus not only the innovation that the research creates or the question it answers, but also on validating the claims we made about the work. In this session, we will explore the relationship between evaluation and computing education research and why it is so vital to the success of the many computing education initiatives underway. It will also help computing faculty engaged in computer science education research understand why it is essential to integrate evaluation and validation from the very first conceptual stages of their intervention programs.