DCER: sharing empirical computer science education data

Data sharing is common, and sometimes even required, in other disciplines. Creating a mechanism for data sharing in computer science education research will benefit both individual researchers and the community. While it is easy to say that data sharing is desirable, it is much more difficult to make it a practical reality. This paper reports on an examination of the issues involved by researchers who gathered at a one-day NSF-sponsored workshop held in connection with SIGCSE 2008. We outline the advantages and challenges of developing a repository, show how the challenges have been addressed by repositories in other fields, describe a possible prototype system for empirical computer science education data, and discuss how to move the project forward.