The Age, News. Dr Shaanan Cohney, senior lecturer in cyber security at the University of Melbourne.Pic Simon Schluter 17 June 2021
Winner, CORE Teaching Award Early Career
Dr Shaanan Cohney was awarded the 2024 CORE Teaching Award Early Career, for an outstanding trajectory in curriculum design with an extensive focus on motivating students and addressing the critical issue of student engagement. His implementation of new initiatives has led to high impact which is impressive for an early career academic with limited time to show impact of his teaching. For his example, his passion for student motivation has led to initiating active learning through engaging students with stage props and exercises on the lecture theatre stage illustrating computer science concepts. His commitment to student learning has led to establishing the First Year Center, a dedicated drop-in space to build a cohort of students and offer support. Other examples of Dr Cohney’s dedication to student learning include incorporating flipped learning with high quality videos, introducing weekly problem sheets to scaffold learning building on real-world tasks, and collaborating on an automatic feedback tool to provide more feedback to students without additional tutors.
Presentation Title: 80% of the CS1 Classroom for 5% of the Cost
Abstract: It’s a tired refrain that CS1 and CS2 teachers are under-resourced and under-equipped to teach to a class of 100s to 1000s. It is also easy to envy the few institutions where CS1 is supported by massive teams and bottomless pockets. But…. What if we could get 80% of the way there on only 5% of the budget?
In this talk, I’ll present how four years of scrappy woodwork, production design, and late nights, led to a multi-award winning CS2 class… with only 5% of the budget of Harvard CS50.