Six Months On, Six Months Off: My Experience of Maternity Leave in Tech

Today, my second child, Henry, turns one. I went on maternity leave for six months when he was born, which means I have also been back for six months. I was a grad student when I had my first baby, so life was pretty different then. Being International Women's Day in addition to Henry's birthday, it feels like a good time to reflect on my experience this time around.

Henry eating a cupcake at his daycare's birthday celebration.

In no particular order, here are some thoughts about my six months off:

• I felt pretty useless the first 6-8 weeks, recovering from a repeat c-section after 50 hours of labour towards a failed VBAC.
• Everything was changing on my team when I left, big time. We had a new team lead who was amazing, but this fact gave me all kinds of feels as I was more or less 'in charge' until then. 
• I kept close tabs on the goings-on of the team while I was away. Slack was part of my regular social media rounds. I even contributed with tangible work here and there when there was something I could help with or that I was really invested in.
• I managed to get a lot of reading done during my leave and that felt really good.
• I missed the office (the actual building in addition to the people there).
• I decided I wanted to pursue technical leadership instead of people management as a career path.
• I didn't have the motivation to go out to play groups or baby classes as I did the first time.
• I didn't socialize much other than visiting with family. (It was great to visit my parents' pool patio for example, even if I rarely actually swam.)
• Making lunch for myself sucked (we get free lunches at work).
• I constantly asked my husband, who works at Shopify as well, what was going on at the office, what was for lunch, whether he brought my any dessert, etc.
• I felt very grateful that I could take so much more time off than my American friends, and have my EI allowance topped up by Shopify the entire time.
• My team sometimes joked that I never really left.

And some thoughts about my first six months back:

• At first, I struggled with rejoining as an individual contributor on a team I had in some ways started and led for a while.
• My husband was on leave for the second half of Henry's first year and he stayed completely disconnected from work by choice.
• It was incredible how fast things had moved while I was away, and I can't imagine how far behind I would have been if I hadn't stayed connected.
• I was happy to be able to jump back in quickly with work I was very familiar with from before my leave.
• The first four months were difficult in terms of scheduling meetings, pumping sessions, and time with students whose schedules were very complicated. Some of my newer colleagues questioned my time management skills / commitment to quality.
• Henry was a terrible sleeper the entire six months I was back at work (we only sleep trained him this past week and before that waking up every two hours was a 'good' night). I was running on near empty and had nothing left to give outside of work.
• I missed carpooling with my husband and eating lunch with him, but also enjoyed the slight increase in schedule flexibility knowing he could pick up our daughter from school. It was also nice to eat with teammates and get to know them.
• I'm finding myself wanting to wean in the near future, despite having nursed my daughter until she decided to stop on her second birthday.
• I had a hard time enjoying Henry during these months, largely due to sleep deprivation and perhaps being away from him most of the weekdays. But that's back on track now that I am sleeping!

So many feels, this whole baby thing! I'm incredibly grateful to have had this experience while working at Shopify, which appears to be one of the best tech companies in this regard.  However, it's easy to see why being on leave for any number of months, let alone a whole a year, can hurt someone's career. Our society definitely needs to continue figuring out how to balance to scales for folks who leave to care for family, and to encourage men to take leave as often as women.

Getting Better at Ruby for #AdventOfCode2017

Because I'm a computing educator, I don't write code every day. I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss it. So when I heard about Advent of Code late 2017, I knew I wanted to participate.

In its third year, Advent of Code was created by Eric Wastl. On each day of December up to and including Christmas Day, a new problem is released at midnight Eastern time. Each registered user gets personalized input, and when you solve part one of the problem, a second, usually more difficult, part is revealed. Each part earns you a star. The faster you get your stars, the higher you are ranked. There's a global leaderboard showing the top participants.

I wasn't too interested in the competition aspect, knowing I couldn't be up at midnight every night working on code. Instead, I decided to commit to solving the problems as close to when they came out as I could for my circumstances. I also decided to use Ruby so I could remember the basics I used to know from working in Rails for half a year, and learn about the language on its own a bit more deeply.

I managed to solve almost all the problems the day they came out, with just two or three being finished the day after due to time constraints (read: two young children). I also learned a lot about Ruby, from the unexpected things you can do with hashes to its memory model, and more. My favourite trick was using a two-item array representing an x-y coordinate as a key to a hash.

More importantly, it was really really fun writing code every day. I couldn't believe how addicting it was. Most of the problems were fairly easy to solve using Ruby (sometimes it felt like it was cheating using that particular language!), though some were much trickier conceptually. None of them completely thwarted me though, and I managed to figure them all out on my own without looking online. Earning each star was very satisfying.

The code as I wrote it is now up on my Github – no editing after the fact. I know I'm not following all the Ruby conventions (I really do prefer camel case for example), and I'm probably being more verbose than a lot of folks doing this competition (I love readable code). Now that the competition is over, you can see all the problem descriptions to understand what I'm trying to achieve. (I think you still have to solve part 1 to see the part 2 description, though.)

Google I/O 2016 as an Anita Borg Scholar

Back in February, I ran an event to celebrate Anita Borg's birthday. I along with some Shopify colleagues focused on students not majoring in computer science; we invited them for a short talk, organized mentoring activity, and coding workshop. I got the idea from the alumni network of past Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship winners: we were invited to run events all over the world. Google program managers picked the most impactful events from each region, and the winners got to attend Google I/O all-expenses-paid. I was one of the winners!

I'm not a developer within the Google ecosystem, though I do use Google products to run my life. (Even more ironically, my husband is currently an Android developer.) As such, my experience of Google I/O wasn't going to be based on the talks per se. Instead, I focused on networking while catching a few talks that seemed interesting and relevant to my group back at Shopify.

Most of the AB scholars attending for the same reason as me stayed in the same hotel, and I was really grateful to be able to head to the conference grounds with one of them after arriving Tuesday afternoon (thanks Saboya!). We got our conference badges and then headed to the Women Techmakers dinner around the corner. There, I met a bunch of wonderful women, including some as passionate as me about computer science education. I also met up with some women with whom I submitted an (unsuccessful) Grace Hopper panel proposal. The event was lovely and I'm very appreciative of the folks that put it on.

Fellow scholar Saboya before the delicious food was served

The next morning, I/O proper began. Our group of scholars was extremely lucky to be given reserved seating at the opening keynote. Hosted at an amphitheatre, half the audience was in the direct, late morning sunlight for two full hours. We were in the front half of the seating area and therefore shaded.

The keynote itself had a really fun opening with animation and music that was totally my style. I wasn't terribly inspired by CEO Sundar Pichai, and it took a while to see any women on stage. But there were a few interesting announcements like Google Home and clever uses of AI in messaging, even if I still don't see how changing the font size in instant messages was ever considered note-worthy.

After the keynote, there was a flood of people having no idea where to go to get lunch food. The conference had to feed us because there was nothing else available anywhere nearby, but being so incredibly hot and sunny, it was not exactly comfortable to eat most places on site. Our group of scholars and friends managed to find a tree to sit under, which was again quite fortunate.

This was the best we could do for lunch. Many were stuck in the sun.

You may be starting to see a theme here about the sun. Many folks, including my work colleagues, were feeling sick from being in the direct sun during the keynote, and it was difficult to escape it the rest of the conference as well. The activities were all spread around the amphitheatre's parking lot with little shade available.

Talks were in air conditioned tents, but there was grossly insufficient seating in them, so long lines started forming an hour or even two before the most interesting talks. I was lucky to get into a couple of the rather popular virtual reality talks without dying of sun stroke, which was nice. But I only attended three talks in total because it just wasn't worth standing on pavement in the sun. Frustrating to consider that people watching the conference from home for free got better access than those spending hundreds of dollars to be there in person.

I spent most of the conference chilling in the shade, but because of the reasons I was there, I didn't mind. I had opportunities to chat with work colleagues as well as fellow scholars and new amazing women I tried to recruit to Shopify (still hoping to hear from some of them!). I'll never forget the many times I got to talk CS education with some truly amazing people.

Plus, you can't complain about the parties, assuming you weren't too exhausted by the evening to attend them!

Our scholars group got to meet up several times for meals at the neighbouring Google offices, and on the last day of I/O we gave presentations about the events we ran. So inspiring! I am really looking forward to keeping in touch with the group, and seeing how we might make an even bigger impact together.

All in all, despite the griping about I/O (no device giveaway!) and the very real issues with this year's venue (your take-home is heat exhaustion!), I'm very grateful I got to attend and that I got a lot out of the trip. Can't wait to meet up with some of the scholars again at Grace Hopper!

PhD: On Hold

I've sent in the forms.  I've updated my committee.  The deed is done.

My PhD is on hold.

Pause / Rafa Puerta

More officially, I am deregistering from the program in good standing.  I am giving myself max one year to reevaluate, but my intention is to eventually reapply and finish my thesis.  I don't need the degree right now, which is why I feel ok putting it on hold, but I do want it in hand eventually to open some doors in the future.

I have been on leave from the program since September 2015.  It seems that I could get another semester of leave, but I don't think it will be enough.  There's an exciting new education project at work.  I unsurprisingly found my way to it, and even have the opportunity to lead it.  It's on the ambitious side, so I want to make sure I can focus all my attention on its success.  Worrying about my thesis seems like a distraction for now.

All I need to do is finish my project and write my thesis.  ("All.")  I've completed coursework, comprehensive exams, and even the thesis proposal.  I do have a lot of development and experimentation work to do, but once that's done, I shouldn't have that tough of a time writing the dissertation.  I like my project and want to see it through.  It just doesn't have to be right now.

Transitioning From Academia to Industry

It seems that 2015 has been a year of change for our family.  My husband got a new job in February, we somewhat suddenly decided to buy a new house down the road over the summer, and I was unsuccessful at getting a permanent teaching position at Carleton.  Rather than becoming a full time student to wrap up my PhD, however, I decided to jump ship to industry.  And so I am currently a developer at Shopify here in Ottawa.

change / Andrea NIgels

When I decided to go to industry, I had my sights on Shopify and only Shopify.  Many of my friends worked there, and I felt like it was the kind of place I could make an impact.  But I was really nervous about interviewing – would they want someone who had been locked away in the ivory tower since her co-op days in undergrad?

Mind you, I have always tried hard to remain 'useful' in the industry sense.  I figured it would keep my teaching relevant if I got the permanent position, and it would help me break back into industry if not.  While I didn't work on any large-scale team projects during my grad school years, I did choose an application-heavy research area and was mindful to maintain good development practices where I could.

Clearly, it worked.  I had interesting projects to talk about during my interviews, code to show on my GitHub, and despite my nerves, I did just fine for the pair programming part.  I showed I had a strong technical base and a boatload of passion.

Once I managed to get hired, I wasn't so nervous about actually starting a few months later.  Which is interesting, since I didn't really know Ruby or Rails, the language and framework I'd be working in.  I suppose I felt confident in my ability to learn new things quickly, and I can't say I was wrong.  I still don't know Rails deeply, but I have been able to learn what I need as I go.  My aforementioned conceptual base along with my enjoyment of the design aspect of programming have made it easier.

And so my transition from academia into industry has been a good one.  It's been nice to keep more regular working hours, and it's been fun learning new technologies.  If I hadn't had 20 months of co-op experience in undergrad, or continued to practice throughout grad school, the switch would have been a lot rougher.  If you're a grad student, strongly consider industry-based internships and make sure to learn the tools of the trade (starting with version control!).  With a strong base and a little confidence, you can make the switch, too!

And as for my PhD, worry not: I am on leave this semester, but I do hope to (slowly) get through it eventually.  You'll have to wait for the "how to work full time while working on your PhD part time" posts a while longer. ;)

HLF2015 / Pomp and Circumstance at the Opening Ceremony

This blog post originates from the Heidelberg Laureate Forum Blog. The 3rd Heidelberg Laureate Forum is dedicated to mathematics and computer sciences, and takes place August 23-28, 2015. Abel, Fields, Turing and Nevanlinna Laureates will join the forum and meet 200 selected international young researchers.

The importance of the Heidelberg Laureate Forum really hit home for me when I saw how much effort was being put into making the event special for both the laureates and young researchers. From the smallest details, like the quality of the conference bags, to the pomp and circumstance of the opening ceremony, the organizers sure are doing things right.

The opening ceremony felt a bit like a wedding at first. We were asked to stand, the music started courtesy of a very talented saxophone quartet, and then we stared at an open door for a good few minutes before the laureates proceeded in. Cue the huge round of applause to honour the 26 laureates, winners of the ACM Turing Award, Abel Prize, Fields Medal, and Nevanlinna Prize. I'm sure each and every of the 200 young researchers present were honoured to be in their presence, and eventually even meet them personally.

@HLFF/ B. Kreutzer - All rights reserved 2015

There was a touching moment of silence for those we have lost since last year's forum, including the founder of HLF, Klaus Tschira. The rest of the ceremony featured welcome speeches, including two from politicians: Sigmar Gabriel, Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy, and Vice Chancellor of Germany; Dr. Eckart Würzner, Lord Mayor of the City of Heidelberg. I found it quite refreshing that not only did these politicians seem to understand the importance of science and technology, but genuinely cared about it.

Saxophone Quartet Balanced Action @HLFF/ B. Kreutzer - All rights reserved 2015

We were treated to some more sweet sounds of the saxophones at several interludes, and lead by the quartet Balanced Action out of the building and along the historic cobblestone streets to the opening reception nearby. Hard to make a group of mathematicians and computer scientists feel any more special than that (that is, until dinner at the castle, but that's a story for another time).

The video of the opening ceremony is available online.

HLF2015 / The Calm Before the Forum

This blog post originates from the Heidelberg Laureate Forum Blog. The 3rd Heidelberg Laureate Forum is dedicated to mathematics and computer sciences, and takes place August 23-28, 2015. Abel, Fields, Turing and Nevanlinna Laureates will join the forum and meet 200 selected international young researchers.

My husband and I are sitting in the restaurant of the historic brewery and hotel, Kulturbrauerei, where the wifi is good. Now that we've recovered from having essentially no sleep Friday night while we traveled from Ottawa to Heidelberg, it's time to get excited about the upcoming activities at the Heidelberg Laureate Forum. Although I am in fact a young researcher (a part-time PhD student at Carleton University, to be specific), that's not why I'm here. I was invited to blog for the event, and I'm really looking forward to sharing my experiences with you.

A view of the castle and bridge appropriately called Old Bridge.

After we arrived in Frankfurt Saturday morning (which, I feel obliged to point out, was only midnight our time), we sleepily made our way to Heidelberg by train. We decided to walk from the train station to our hotel. We thoroughly enjoyed the pleasant hour-long stroll along the river where we spotted a play park our daughter would have adored, and many lovely homes with a great view. We were lucky enough to get our hotel room early, so we checked in, had lunch, and napped.

A outside-in view of the restaurant at Kulturbrauerei.

The rest of our Saturday consisted of a wonderful media get-together at Kulturbrauerei, and some after-dark exploration. We ended up at Schloss Heidelberg (Heidelberg Palace), where we got some lovely views of the city at night. We're looking forward to the opportunity to get inside during one of the many social events hosted by the Forum.

Schloss Heidelberg is lit up very nicely at night.

Today, the Forum kicks off with opening ceremonies and a reception. Then we have a week of intellectual stimulation to look forward to, with lectures from the laureates as well as opportunities to engage with the young researchers. I have a feeling our departure on Saturday is going to come all too soon...

My Experience at Foundations of Digital Games 2015

During the last full week of June, I took a wonderful trip to Pacific Grove, California for Foundations of Digital Games 2015.  (You might recall that last year's conference was on a cruise ship.)  I didn't end up presenting anything this year, and I'm so glad I went despite this.  I found the whole experience rather invigorating.

Before continuing, be sure to note that I've posted publicly accessible notes for most keynotes and a selection of paper sessions.  The proceedings are also available.  I'll talk more about the academic content of the conference in another post.

This year's conference was held at Asilomar Conference Grounds, which began life as a YWCA summer camp for girls about 100 years ago.  It is part of Asilomar State Beach, which is, unsurprisingly, gorgeous.

Our keynotes and some of the parallel track sessions were held in the site's chapel.  Not the greatest for lighting (and, to an extent, sound), but a really neat building in terms of its architecture.

All meals were held in the dining hall at a set time signalled by the dinner bell.  In addition to giving meals a fun summer camp feel, it ensured that everyone in the conference ate together.  I loved this setup for its ability to build community and encourage networking.  I had many excellent conversations over food, and even some pivotal moments in terms of my thesis (more on that in a future post).  A downside was that the food was usually just ok at best, and there was always too much of it .

Although most attendees stayed on site, we were spread around many different buildings on site.  I was really surprised to see our lodging when I first walked up to it.  I remember describing it as a "70's nature lodge" and wondering how something so dated, and without any in-room phones or TVs, could cost so much.  I suppose, though, that a lot of the money goes towards the maintenance of the beach, which softens the blow.  It really did grow on me over time; the slight ocean view from the balcony likely didn't hurt.

One of the things I really enjoyed was walking along the boardwalks that wound through the protected sand dunes.  They were often higher than the beach, thus affording some lovely views.  Occasionally, you even met some wildlife along the way.

After the conference was over, I headed to Monterey and spent an afternoon at Monterey Bay Aquarium with a fellow conference attendee.  The aquarium is inside old cannery buildings, so from the outside doesn't look like much.  It was absolutely spectacular inside, though.  I loved every minute there and could have stared at some of the exhibits forever, constantly discovering new details.

After a long walk along the coast to my last hotel room and an early morning flight the next day, my trip was over.  I can't say I've ever had a bad experience travelling to California, and I'm really grateful that I was able to use my professional development money at Carleton to make this trip.  Stay tuned for a future post about the academic side of FDG.

Blogging and Meeting CS Greats at the Heidelberg Laureate Forum

The Heidelberg Laureate Forum "offers a select group of young researchers in mathematics and computer science the extraordinary chance to meet the preeminent scientists of their field for one week of cross-generational, scientific dialogue."  Although I would qualify as a young researcher who could have applied to attend, I hadn't actually heard of the forum by this year's deadline.  Instead, I was contacted by one of the lovely media organizers for the event to see if I'd be interested in blogging (oh, and by the way, expenses to and within Germany will be paid).  I'm sure you can imagine my answer!

Here's how the event is described by its organizers:

For the third time, recipients of the ACM A.M. Turing Award, the Fields Medal, the Nevanlinna Prize and the Abel Prize gather in Heidelberg to meet with 200 young researchers from all over the world. For one week, the laureates of mathematics and computer science will exchange with young researchers through lectures and workshops, plus a “hot topic” session discussing the socio-ethical challenges of Big Data.

I'm personally quite excited to hear from some of the pioneers of computing (though I am disappointed they are all men, when there are indeed female Turing Award winners).  When I registered as a journalist for the forum, I requested the chance to interview John Hopcroft because of his passion for computer science education.  It will also be awesome to see the likes of Stephen Cook (laid the foundations of NP-completeness theory), Frederick Brooks (originator of the 8-bit byte and author of The Mythical Man Month), and Ivan Sutherland (pioneered the graphical user interface with Sketchpad).

Other interesting aspects of the forum are the social and outreach components.  The laureates get together with local students on Wednesday morning, while the young researchers visit local institutions (hopefully I can go with the laureates!).  The welcome dinner Monday night is being held at Heidelberg Castle, and we get to visit (and wine and dine at) the Speyer Museum of Technology. Check out the full forum schedule here.

I want to tell you more about the events on big data, but I'll save that for the next blog post.  Stay tuned for more about the forum leading up to and during the week of (August 23-28).  Also be aware that the events will be recorded and archived publicly online, so you can check it out for yourself later on.

Spring Research Update

It's been a while since I last did a research update. With spring (sort of) arriving, there's no better time to reflect on a winter's worth of hard work.

First / Dean Gugler 

Coherent Emergent Stories

Most of my effort in the last 8 months has been dedicated to teaching, but despite this, I managed to make progress on my PhD and thesis project.  In the fall, I spent time putting together my thesis proposal, trying to make the content as close to final-thesis quality as I could.  Then I proposed in December.

Since then, I have been dabbling with a next-iteration prototype to test my story ideas.  Instead of trying to craft an entire game, I am focusing on what I call a "story explorer."  I am designing the prototype to be as data-driven as possible so I can quickly and easily test many different stories and approaches to arranging those stories with my story engine.

Gram's House

The Gram's House project is a labour of love, and I am so excited to see how far it has come since I came up with the idea years ago.

Lately we've been hard at work on the NSF AISL Pathways grant we were awarded to study the effect of story on teaching computer science concepts with games to middle school girls.  We have been working on prototypes for three analog games to be used in informal settings.  The game cover the concepts of data representation (specifically images), data organization (searching and sorting), and algorithms (writing and reading precise instructions).

It has been a lot of fun coming up with the game designs, but also very challenging.  I really want to make sure we have something more than a lightly gamified activity.  I want the games to have inherently interesting and motivating goals that happen to require understanding of our CS concepts to achieve.  I want the games to present interesting and meaningful choices to players, and have at least some degree of replayability.  I'm not sure that our current games have all these features, and I am convinced that we can come up with even better designs.  Hopefully our resident story and game design expert Lorraine Hopping will stay patient with my constant pushing, because she has been an amazing asset to this project and has a lot more experience than I do!

Something else exciting is that two of my first year students may be joining the procedural content generation grant team at Northeastern University in Boston this summer.  I am beyond thrilled to be able to enable this kind of opportunity, and I can't wait to see what they are able to accomplish.

In addition to the summary of Gram's House on my own webpage, we have started an official project site hosted by Northeastern.  We are still working on adding content, but that should be a good place to find information about the project in the future.

On Completing a PhD Proposal

In Mid-December, my PhD thesis proposal was accepted, leaving me ABD ("all but dissertation"). It was quite the journey to get there, and I have some hopefully useful insights to share from the experience.


if you've ever wondered... / toby

If you're curious, much of the information about the doctoral proposal for our School is likely widely applicable. We are supposed to finish the proposal within 6 terms of registration, but in reality that's not very common. Many students do their proposal much later in the process, after completing most of the work needed for the thesis. We tried to do my proposal a bit sooner so we could get some solid feedback earlier in the process. I'm really glad we did, but more on that later.

The Document

The first step of the proposal is to write the document. I started working on this during the summer while also developing a prototype game using my interactive storytelling framework, then part-time in the fall when I went back to teaching. However, several iterations were required, the first being on the general structure of the document. This is what we settled on in terms of chapter layout:

• Introduction
• Background
• Project Goals and Design
• Work Completed
• Future Work Plan
• Conclusion

I put most of my effort into the second and third chapters. The background is where you have to not only show that you have a good grasp on what's out there, but also clearly show the gaps you are trying to fill. I used the Project Goals chapter to really spell out what I was trying to accomplish, and describe the storytelling framework we had published at Foundations of Digital Games.

Both of these chapters needed multiple iterations even after I fixed the overall structure of the document. We tried to bring them as close to final thesis-level quality as we could in the time we had, hoping we could reuse a lot of it again later. This is what I spent most of the fall doing.

My process for the background section is interesting to look back on: although I knew from the beginning what the text in that chapter had to accomplish, it still took me three to four iterations to get there. I fixed one problem each iteration. First, I improved the organization of the chapter so each major section had a clear organizing principle. Then I analyzed the literature more critically, then more effectively highlighted the gaps. I reorganized the sections again, and finally added better conclusions to tie up each section. The final product actually ended up being decent!

In some ways I would have liked to spend more time on the document. I noticed a few too many problems when re-reading it a few weeks after giving it to the proposal committee. For example, I cut back my introduction just before submitting, and later I realized just how... bad it was. But, to be honest, the end result — passing the proposal — would not have changed. Sometimes you have to know when to stop, even if that reason is that you simply can't spend any more time on it.

The Oral Examination

Three weeks after submitting the document to the committee, we had our proposal examination. It started with me giving a 15-20 minute talk, followed by two rounds of questions from the committee.

When preparing for the talk, I re-used a technique that helped me with a past conference presentation: I wrote a script to figure out what I wanted to say. After some feedback from my supervisor on that, , I ended up iterating on that, too.  I ended up finishing my slides a little too close to the actual presentation time. I had originally hoped to run through the talk at home at least a few times (once with my husband), as well as take notes about my background section and key project information so I would be really well prepared for questions. I did none of that. Although I still passed, I think those with some more time might really benefit from trying these ideas.

These are the slides from my talk, which give a decent enough idea of how I structured it in the end. As you can see, I centred the organization around the proposed contributions of the thesis.

Because of my lack of planned practice, I ended up being pretty nervous for the talk, and it showed.  Which is a shame, because I'm generally pretty good at presentations and keeping nerves in check.  But I guess it turned out well anyway, since some of the committee understood what I was trying to do better after the presentation.

The question portion of the exam was... interesting.  I feel like I was barely asked any questions at all.  I mostly got feedback about the proposal document (lots of constructive criticism!) and suggestions for where to go from here.  The committee suggested some ways to narrow the scope of our work and suggested ways to avoid having to make an entire game to test our designs.  This was incredibly relieving! Nothing I've done so far has been wasted effort, and future plans now look more achievable somehow.  The plan is to meet back up with the committee in six months to go over an updated plan since things are likely to change enough that we don't yet know what the final thesis will look like.

Based on this outcome, I am very glad we did an "early" proposal.  I highly recommend biting the bullet and proposing your thesis as early as you can.  Your supervisor should know if you've got enough to pass.  Get valuable feedback early and perhaps even save yourself some work, as happened in my case.

Gram's House Project Team Receives Two NSF Pathways Grants!

Gram's House is a research project I started several years ago with a prototype originally designed for Microsoft's Imagine Cup competition.  Since then, a core research team has formed around the project: me (Carleton University), Elisabeth Gee (Arizona State University), Carolee Stewart-Gardiner (Kean University), Gillian Smith (Northeastern University) and Casper Harteveld (Northeastern University).

We just got awarded two NSF Pathways grants for the Advancing Informal STEM Learning program!

The Role of Story in Games to Teach Computer Science Concepts to Middle School Girls

This project is being co-lead by Elisabeth Gee and Carolee Stewart-Gardiner.  Since I'm not a research faculty member, I am participating as a contractor.  We are going to dive deeper into determining the effect of story in educational games that teach computer science to middle school girls.  This will extend previous work I did with a study during my mini-course a couple of years back.

As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program funds innovative resources for use in a variety of settings. Nationally, the US has a shortage of computer scientists; a big part of this problem is that girls are discouraged from learning computer science at a very young age. This project tries to address this problem by creating a videogame specifically oriented towards getting middle school girls interested in learning computer science concepts outside traditional programming classes. Based on evidence that stories provide a compelling way to present complicated technical subjects and that girls in particular respond to technology careers as a way to help others, the project is building a videogame called "Gram's House" in which social workers intend to move a fictional grandmother to a retirement home unless the player can outfit her home with sufficient technology for her to remain independent. Solving puzzles in the game requires learning core computer science concepts. Research studies will be conducted to determine whether the videogame is effective at getting girls interested in computer science, at teaching computer science concepts, and whether using stories makes videogames more effective for learning.

This project based on an earlier successful prototype uses an iterative research-based design process including paper prototyping, playtesting, and focus groups (N=20) to create age appropriate activities, based on the CS Unplugged series, that support learning concepts from the Data, Internet, Algorithms, and Abstraction sections of the high-school level CS Principles curriculum. A quantitative, quasi-experimental design will be used to determine the overall effectiveness of teaching CS concepts under three types of game conditions: (a) games alone, (b) games with fictional settings, and (c) games with stories. A novel assessment instrument will be developed to assess content learning and qualitative observation using a standard observation protocol will be used to gauge interest and engagement. 70-80 middle school girls will be recruited for afterschool participation in the study in two states. As part of the dissemination efforts, a facilitator's guide, rule book, and materials such as maps and storyboards will be created and shared with the game. In addition, a workshop for computer science and other teachers who are interested in using games to teach CS concepts will be conducted.

(Project link on NSF website.)

GrACE: A Procedurally Generated Puzzle Game to Stimulate Mindful and Collaborative Informal Learning to Transform Computer Science Education

The PCG project, as I like to call it (where PCG stands for procedurally generated content), is being lead by Gillian Smith and Casper Harteveld.  They want to learn more about how best to generate puzzles that teach high level computer science concepts, and whether players will learn more about the concepts when discussing how puzzles are generated in an attempt to help one another solve them.

Northeastern University will design, test, and study GrACE, a procedurally generated puzzle game for teaching computer science to middle school students, in partnership with the Northeastern Center for STEM Education and the South End Technology Center. The Principal Investigators will study the effect of computer generated games on students' development of algorithmic and computational thinking skills and their change of perception about computer science through the game's gender-inclusive, minds-on, and collaborative learning environment. The teaching method has potential to significantly advance the state of the art in both game-based learning design and yield insights for gender-inclusive teaching and learning that could have broad impact on advancing the field of computer science education.

Development and evaluation of GrACE will consist of two, year-long research phases, each with its own research question. The first, design and development, phase will focus on how to design a gender-inclusive, educational puzzle game that fosters algorithmic thinking and positive attitude change towards computer science. The content generator will be created using Answer Set Programming, a powerful approach that involves the declarative specification of the design space of the puzzles. The second phase will be an evaluation that studies, by means of a mixed-methods experimental design, the effectiveness of incorporating procedural content generation into an educational game, and specifically whether such a game strategy stimulates and improves minds-on, collaborative learning. Additionally, the project will explore two core issues in developing multiplayer, collaborative educational games targeted at middle school students: what typical face-to-face interactions foster collaborative learning, and what gender differences exist in how students play and learn from the game. The project will reach approximately 100 students in the Boston area, with long-term goals of reaching students worldwide, once the game has been tested with a local audience. Results of the project will yield a new educational puzzle game that can teach algorithmic thinking and effect attitude change regarding computer science. Through the process of creating a gender-inclusive game to teach computer science, it will provide guidelines for future educational game projects. Beyond these individual project deliverables, it will improve our understanding of the potential for procedural content generation to transform education, through its development of a new technique for generating game content based on supplying educational objectives.

(Project link on NSF website.)

Faculty of Science Excellence in Teaching Award

I'm really proud and honoured to have recently received one of our Faculty of Science Excellence in Teaching Awards! I got it last week at the faculty Christmas lunch.  Here's a photo from the event and the info posted to the School of Computer Science website.

The 2013 Faculty of Science Holiday Reception was the occasion for Mrs. Gail Carmichael to receive a Faculty of Science Excellence in Teaching Award. The award acknowledges Gail's teaching achievements and initiatives. Gail has a real passion for teaching computer science.

Besides all her teaching commitment, she has published four peer-reviewed papers on computer science teaching. The most recent one has been published in the Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges. Gail has an impressive list of extra-curricular activities that reflect her commitment to teaching computer science for girls. They include advisory board membership to the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology, mentor for the Carleton University Women in Science and Engineering Mentoring Program, both organizer and instructor for Girl Develop It! Ottawa, and co-chair for communities committee of the conference Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. She has given numerous talks to present her views on computer science teaching. Her latest one was entitled Gram's House: Encouraging Girls to Consider Computer Science Through Games was presented at the 2013 conference Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing.

Teacher for a Year!

It's finally official: I get to teach for a year!

Teach Your Heart Out / Krissy.Venosdale 

I've had this post bottled up for a while now, waiting for the papers to finally be signed.  As of July 1, I will be a faculty instructor for our School of Computer Science for a one year term.  I'll be taking leave from my PhD to take advantage of this opportunity.

Because this is exactly the job I want for my career, I am obviously very, very excited.

In addition to seeing what I can do in terms of recruiting and retaining women in our programs, I am really looking forward to trying a few interesting things in terms of pedagogy (though I will start small to make sure I have a handle on the courses I'm covering first).  One course I will be doing is Intro to Computers for Arts and Social Sciences, which I had been working on improving when I taught it in summers past.  This year, I'd like to try using Python and test out the book chapters I've been working on for the introductory CS book I introduced way back when (yup, we are still working on it!).  I am also hoping to use this course to further our research on using stories to teach computer science.

I've been keeping notes and links to awesome teaching resources for a while now, but I want to ask my fellow educators out there: what single tip would you give to a new instructor? What awesome resources would you share?

New Template + Comments Work Again

Because someone brought it to my attention that comments weren't working anymore (and I had no idea how to fix them), I decided it was time for a new blog template.  I based the new look on a free template from Pugly Pixel called Strawberry Shortcake.  So, things look a little fresher around here, and comments work again! Yay!

Let me know if you like it. :)

Stories and Games at GRAND 2013

Last week, I attended the annual meeting of the GRAND (Graphics, Animation, and New Media) research network, held in Toronto.  Although the research and discussion presented and held at the conference spanned much more, the focus for me was on games and stories in games.

The presenter I was most excited about seeing was Jane McGonigal of Reality is Broken and Superbetter fame.  She believes that gamers are actually practicing some rather useful skills when they play.  For example, they learn to be hopeful and creative, two of several things that we should want people solving the world's greatest problems to be.  I reviewed her book a couple of years ago and still find that it influences my thinking on games.  Although I already knew most of what she talked about at GRAND (having been a fan for a while), I loved seeing her in person, and loved even more that my friends and colleagues now buy into her ideas as well.

A surprise for me was how much I loved Terry O'Reilly's talk.  I admit I'm not much of a CBC follower (unless they're airing an Ottawa Senators hockey game), so I didn't know who Terry was ahead of time.  He spoke about the power of stories, mostly with respect to marketing and advertising.  One of my favorite quotes:

Make people feel your message, not just understand it.  -Terry O'Reilly

Besides being an extremely good talk, it was fascinating how much I connected with his message with respect to games.  In particular, I found myself being convinced by him (and less directly by Jane McGonigal earlier) that stories can truly make a difference in learning with educational games.

On Tuesday night I presented my nicely designed research poster.  I was quite pleased to see a few other really great posters.  My favorite poster (possibly of all time) described Tiffany Inglis's research on pixel art in the form of a comic strip.  Check out the poster on her project page.

Finally, on Wednesday, the last day I was at the conference, I attended the Women in Games panel.  The panel featured Grace from Fat, Ugly, or Slutty, Cecily from Dames Making Games, Anita of Feminist Frequency (which is most recently focusing on tropes vs. women in videogames), and Brenda of Silicon Sisters, a women-lead game studio in Vancouver.  The discussion was fascinating, and I saw a lot of what I do with women in CS shine through, even though involvement in games can be much broader than programming/CS.  It was also really neat to see what Brenda and her company have been working on, since I had been chatting with Brenda about stories in games the previous evening at my poster.

Even though I had less than two days between trips (poor baby Molly!), and even though I could only stay for two days, I'm really glad I ended up coming to GRAND.  I feel energized as I move into my attempt to get a lot done research-wise this summer...

In Which I Am Tempted to Move to California

Blog posts have been sparse lately: I have been traveling.  Last week I spent five days in Palo Alto, California.  The visit was primarily for the Anita Borg Institute Advisory Board meeting, but I also had the opportunity to take a break from being a mommy and grad student (too often at exactly the same time) as well as visit and network with friends new and old.

The problem is, the more often I visit, the more tempting it is to live there!

The Advisory Board meeting was fruitful for the Anita's Quilt project.  I don't want to say too much yet, but suffice it to say I think the Quilt's stories have a bright and exciting future.  After the meeting I had the pleasure to join fellow board members Kathy, Kitty, and Carol (who hosted us).  Besides a most excellent meal, I enjoyed sharing what insight I could into Canadian politics and the like.

On Thursday, I had lunch at a tasty Italian pizzeria with my friends BJ and Valerie, both of whom I know through work with ABI and the Grace Hopper Celebration.  It was so great to catch up with them.

Thursday night I attended my very first ABI Women of Vision Awards.  As expected, it was highly inspirational.  I especially fell in love with Maja Matarić.  Without us realizing who she was at first, she had started chatting with a group of us in the pre-banquet reception.  She mentioned how she should probably wear some makeup even though she doesn't usually; otherwise, her mother (who was in attendance) might scold her.  So she pulled out the lipstick her mother had given her and put it on.  As another woman who never wears makeup, I felt like we might be kindred spirits.  (Her award speech was also absolutely incredible.)

Finally, on Friday, I met up with my friend Carlos, whom I met after a cold-email to tell him how much I loved his book Lauren Ipsum.  I visited him at Facebook, where he worked.  We walked around while we chatted, and although I got a great personalized tour of the Facebook campus, I was admittedly enjoying our conversation too much to properly pay attention.

I did take a few photos, though.  For example, this is the front entrance of the campus.  It is surprisingly nondescript!

There is a whole different look and feel once you step outside the lobby into the "walled garden." The aesthetic of the architecture, landscaping, and all the small details is really appealing.  You will also see a hacker motif showing up everywhere, but not in an obnoxious way.  See if you can spot it in the next two photos.

 

I made sure to leave my mark before heading out...

With all the wonderful people and beautiful places to live and work in the Bay Area (and that's not even mentioning all the amazing tech events to attend), it is certainly tempting to move down there.  But not to worry, fellow Ottawans: it's not going to happen anytime soon! Having family here is too important.  I do have to admit I am thinking it might be a good option in 20+ years when our kids are all grown up... ;)

The Best Posts of All Time

I love how much easier it is to see statistics on blog post views with the most recent Blogger redesign.  While these (probably?) don't account for views by RSS subscribers, it has been fascinating seeing which posts are the most popular and by what margin.

The Python vs. Processing post is way ahead of the others.  I guess this isn't a surprise, since it ended up on Hacker News.  The view count continues to go up all the time.  Now if only I could figure out how to write more posts that are that popular!

It's also interesting that my discussion of a board game is right up there.  I'm thinking that post must be linked from a board game site or something, but I haven't figured out where yet.

It's nice to see that the post about the computer science book we're working on made the cut.  That project is still progressing, albeit slowly (new babies for both of us co-authors certainly didn't help!).  I am feeling pretty good about its awesomeness.

Here are some links to the top posts, since many of you may be newer readers and haven't seen them yet!

• Python vs. Processing as a First Language
• Story in Board Games: Betrayal at House on the Hill
• Who Knew Science and Dance Could Be So Closely Related?
• Cooperative Board Games Take Some Getting Used To
• From Blogging to ABI Board of Advisors
• Preparing to Answer Questions You Don't Know the Answer To
• Introducing: My Thesis Topic
• GHC09: PhD Forum 2
• Why Computer Science is Relevant No Matter What You're Teaching
• Help Design a Book for Computer Science Beginners

Upcoming Eye Surgery

I'll be out of commission for the next little while as I embark on my second of two eye surgeries.  I have a corneal disease called keratoconus, which makes the bonds in my cornea weak so that the surface bulges (my sixth ever blog post talks about it, and even includes a mapping of my eyes as they were at the time).  Keratoconus is a degenerative disease, and the cross-linking surgery I'm getting is meant to halt the progression rather than improve the situation.  Not so exciting, given the price tag and painful recovery, but better than the possibility of a cornea transplant one day.

I'm going to schedule a few posts over the next few days while I recover from the surgery.  This means I won't be posting links on Twitter/G+/Facebook, so if you enjoy the blog, I'd love to have you stop by, leave a comment for me to respond to later, and maybe even subscribe!

This Year's Grace Hopper Submissions

Tonight is the deadline for the 2013 edition of the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing's Call for Participation.  Although I wasn't sure I was going to submit anything this year, I ended up submitting twice! Here are the abstracts...

Gram’s House: Encouraging Girls to Consider Computer Science Through Games

Gail Carmichael, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada
Carolee Stewart-Gardiner, Kean University, Union, New Jersey
Gillian Smith, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts

Computer science still faces a significant gender imbalance with women earning less than 20% of degrees.  To address this issue, we designed an educational computer game, Gram’s House, which aims to teach CS concepts and demonstrate how CS can be used for social good.  We will introduce the game concept, demonstrate two early prototypes, report results of a pilot study, and share our future plans, including procedural content generation.


Academic Presentations Don't Have to be Boring, Honest!

Gail Carmichael, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada
Terri Oda, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico

Public speaking is an important part of the academic environment: conference presentations help you communicate your work to others in your field, classroom presentations help you teach, and presentations are often a necessary part of getting and keeping any grant funding.  Unfortunately, it is a skill that few academics spend enough time honing.  This workshop will give attendees a crash course in ways to manage complex technical presentations without putting the audience to sleep, including a variety of styles, practice techniques, and refutation of some of the very bad advice often given to inexperienced academic presenters.  We want to emphasize that oral communication is not the same as written communication, and that in many ways a talk is a story about your research: figuring out that story and how to tell it is a very important part of scientific communication.