RIPPA Principles

Research in Practice Project Activities (RIPPAs) are a new form of collaborative, community-forming activity for Computing Science education research and practice at the United Kingdom and Ireland Computing Education Research (UKICER) conference.

The aim is to bring practitioners and researchers together in computing science education to form networks, exchanges ideas, form collaborations and put research into practice, incorporate research into practice or improving practice.

RIPPAs span several months and participants are expected to commit to participating in a small number of workshops as well as conducting some activity in their context, such as incorporating research into practice, collecting data and/or conducting research.

Participation and Commitment

The specific participation and commitment requirements depends on the RIPPA, but broadly RIPPAs require participants to:

• Join information presentation. Prospective participants should join the information presentation at the United Kingdom and Ireland Computing Education Research (UKICER) conference to find out about the specific RIPPA and what it involves. Ask questions and meet others interested in the activity.
• Attend start-up workshop. The workshop will introduce the RIPPA, methodologies and approaches utilised as well as provide an opportunity for participants to get to know each other and learn about what is happening across the community.
• Perform activity. Participants are expected to perform some activity as part of the project. This activity could be to conduct research in their own context, incorporate research into their own practice or improve their practice. Participants would then share their contributions back to the group remotely.
• Attend interim workshop. The workshop will give participants an opportunity to share their contributions as well as analyse results and discuss any insights from the activity. The group will then begin to form it into a complete outcome and decide next steps.
• Capstone workshop. The final workshop to pull together together any remaining work involved in the activity and form into an artefact that can be disseminated among the community through the optimal channel, such as the Computing Education Practice (CEP) conference or UKICER.
• Relax and unwind at a wrap-up dinner. Wrap-up meal and opportunity to reflect on the experience and plan future collaborations with other participants.

Outcomes

The focus of RIPPAs is the participants and the expectation is that they will achieve the following from participating in a RIPPA:

• Strengthened knowledge and skills in research and practice. Dependent on the specific RIPPA, the expectation is that participants will strengthen their knowledge and skills. This could be awareness emerging teaching practice and how to investigate it, appropriate methodologies for computing education research (CER) and/or deepened appreciation of the state of the art in CER.
• Strengthened and expanded network of collaborators. Form connections with academics, scholars and researchers from across the computing science education community with similar interests and challenges. Valuable not only for conducting future research investigations but also to gain insight into innovative practice in other institutions as well as creating bonds with other academics to discuss on-going sector challenges and how to solve them.
• Publication. The expectation is that outcomes of RIPPAs will be high-quality, multi-institutional studies that are authentic and steeped in data from contexts spanning many different from many perspectives. Participants will be authors on such high-quality contributions that are difficult to devise and coordinate for most sole academics.