Research and Scholarship

Member, Computing Education Research Group (CERG) , Faculty of IT, Monash University
Seminar coordinator, CERG
Member, Center for Organisational and Social Informatics (COSI), Faculty of IT, Monash University

About Computing Eduction Research Group

Computer Education Research Group (CERG) considers two aspects of computing education:

• ways of improving the teaching and learning of computing topics,
• ways of using technology to assist with the teaching process.

CERG is part of the Computer Science Education Research Group International (CERGI). These groups aims to focus on relevant and contemporary educational issues in computing and seeks to provide a vision for the pedagogical future of computing.

Research Interests

• Impact of task design on student learning of programming
• Studio based teaching
• Teaching innovations through the use of ICTs
• Developing scholarship of teaching
• Improving Teaching Quality

• Editor, of the Special Issue of Computer Science Education journal, 2007.
• Member, Australasian Computer Education Executive, which is the body that selects the programme chairs for the Australasian Computer Education Conferences.
• the Australasian Computing Science Education (ACSE)
• Member, Higher Education Research Development Society of Australia (HERDSA)
• Member, ACM SIGCSE
• Member, the Australian Society for Computers In Learning in Tertiary Education (ASCILITE)

Reviewer, Journals

• ITiCSE
• ACE
• AJEE
• AusWIT
• Koli
• ICER

International Program Committee of Reviewer

• Member, Program Committee ACE 2007, ACE 2008

Active Research Projects

1. PhD - Principles for designing programming tasks. This research investigated undergraduate first year programming tasks and how they influenced students' learning of programming.
2. Computer Science and IT teachers' conceptions of Teaching (2006). The aim of this research is to determine the perceptions of successful and unsuccessful teaching among Computer Science and IT academics in l6 universities in six countries.
3.  ICT-Ed Project (2006). This project establishes the perceptions of ICT that students bring into their course and investigates the role this has on their progression through the course. •  Innovations in teaching through the use of ICT (2004) . This project attempts to address the lack of active student engagement with coursework feedback by proposing a particular style of use of an electronic voting system (EVS).
4. Studio based Teaching (2000-2002) This project piloted a studio-based teaching model into the undergraduate BIMS degree and evaluates the effectiveness of this approach as compared to the standard lecture-tutorial style approach.
5. Teaching ICT, AUTC (2000 & 2002) These two CERG projects involved investigating innovations in teaching and curriculum development in ICT have been recognised by the Carrick institute, to be developed further, as part of the Carrick Discipline-based Initiative.

Competitive Research Grants

• Carrick Priority Grant (2006) Improving the Formative and Summative Assessment of Novice Computer Programmers. Chief Investigators: Lister, R., Carbone A., De Raat, M. Kay, J., Roe, P., Thomas, R. ($117,770) [ Notification 4-8 September 2006] Of 71 EOIs submitted to Scheme only 13 were asked to be developed into a full proposal. This is a cross institutional proposal with five institutions across Australia participating.
• AUTC Grant (2001 & 2002) Learning Outcomes and Curriculum Development in Major ICT Disciplines, J. Hurst, D. Hagan, S. Markham, A. Ellis, A. Carbone, J. Sheard, M. Eley, J. Tuovinen (Stage 1: $189,000 & Stage 2 $99,613)
• Metropolitan Western Health, VIC, Southern Area Health, VIC, Southern Nursing Homes, VIC, Waverley War Memorial Hospital, NSW (2000) Starsafe - Online competency based testing P. Johnson, M. Webber, A. Carbone. ($26,670)
• Prior to 2000, I had obtained four research grants (SIF 1999, $69,351; TRF 1999, $45,100; TRF 1998, $27,575; TIF 1998, $50,000; Education grant $400) tallying to $192,426, and a PhD research Travel Grant WebNet’97 Conference, in Toronto, Canada.

PhD and Hons students supervisions

• D. Golschevsky; CSC4000 Computer Science Honours projects (Industry based) - Graphical Student Progress Indicator (G-SPI) (1996)
• C. Yap, CSC4000 Computer Science Honours projects (Industry based) - A Web-based Teaching Timetable Scheduler (1996)
• M. Drago. CSC4000 Computer Science Honours projects (Industry based) - A Web-based Database of Teaching Strategies (1996)
• Nick Konstantinidis "Why IT projects fail" - BITS (Hons)
• (trainee PhD supervision with Dr Judy Sheard and Assoc Prof John Hurst) Sally Firmin, PhD, e-Learning Signatures: the role of e-learning in shaping the  (tertiary ICT educators') perceptions (and applications) of pedagogies (2007)

Document last modified July 2008