Welcome to the June 2024 edition of Inroads. We saw that many of the articles and columns for this issue contain information about ChatGPT and Large Language Models more generally, as well as the inherent inequalities and bias in the data which affect diversity, equity, and inclusion in computing. Hence for our front cover, our Artistic Director has come up with an image encapsulating some of these feelings and concerns as stemming from the Orwellian concept that "big brother" may be watching us!

In his column for this edition, Tony Clear reflects on the phenomenon of Large Language Models (LLMs) and their global impact when compared with the colonization of countries centuries ago. He compares the colonialist views of settling and taking ownership of the land, with the recent data ownership arguments around generative AI and ChatGPT. He writes around the question of whether LLMs and the possibilities provided by generative AI represent a third-wave extension of this colonization idea giving us much food for thought.

In his column on efficiency of Algorithms among other things, Henry Walker identifies numerous experiments that may help provide insights for student learning and experience. His recommendations are extensive and range from comparing both efficiency and correctness of code from the Web versus traditional approaches to checking results from generative AI queries among other ways of demonstrating the principles for writing and analyzing code. It is always interesting to read Henry's wisdom around important elements of scope, experience, and practice including examples of where and how some common algorithms may fail.

The challenges facing computing ethics education are examined by Yeslam Al-Saggaf. He writes about the responsibilities of computing professionals to ensure that computing technologies are used ethically and responsibly and details challenges but also highlights where ethics education has been shown to have a positive impact on computing professionals' behaviour in the workplace. The multiplicity of perspectives can make teaching computing ethics challenging. With computing professionals continuing to create technologies that can be harnessed for both good and bad, the need for effective computing ethics education has never been more important.

In their article for "As I See It," Sanaz Zamani and Roopak Sinha ask whether PhD students could use ChatGPT to perform their systematic literature reviews (SLR) for them. While new PhD students will have to learn to incorporate Generative AI with care, the authors outline other possible benefits in terms of speed and comprehensiveness of the outcomes achieved. Similar practices will no doubt be adopted in other contexts, such as undergraduate work or staff looking for relevant literature in a research project, so these benefits will presumably be more widespread than just for PhD students.

Ilenia Fronza and Luis Corral present "A Facilitator's Guide to Create and Consolidate a Teenage Coding Camp" where they draw on their experience of more than ten years of teaching coding skills to high school students using block-based programming platforms. They reflect on their evolutions of developing capabilities and technical content to help teenage participants in problem-solving, creativity, collaboration, and coding skills and give insights into their plans for progressing through the topics and tools, now working with more than 500 participants. Their summary and recommendations lead to valuable advice for readers around learning strategies, enabling technologies, teamwork, and partnerships.

In the next of their series of articles on Prominent Propagators, David Bunde, Zack Butler, Christopher Hovey, and Cynthia Taylor interviewed Joanna Goode, the Sommerville Knight Professor and Department Head in the College of Education at the University of Oregon. Joanna co-authored "Stuck in the Shallow End: Education, Race, and Computing," which explores inequality in K-12 computer science education in the Los Angeles Unified School District. This line of research led her to develop and propagate the Exploring Computer Science high school curriculum. Joanna's line of scholarship examines how educational policies and practices can foster equity, access, and inclusion in K-12 computer science education.

In their column, "Notes from the Margin," Tamara Pearson and Pamela Leggett-Robinson offer an interesting and very powerful view on reimagining a way forward in computing education through "Wake Work." They explain understanding the wake as being how passengers in a ship's hold might experience navigation through the stormy ocean. Wake work in computing education requires new modes and methods of research, teaching, dissemination, and access. They call for both the individual and collective efforts of those in the margins to resist and create meaning within the context of the ship, the hold, and the weather. This is an opportunity for us all to hear the call and support the wake work.

Daniel Gooch, Kevin Waugh, Mike Richards, Mark Slaymaker and John Woodthorpe write about ways of flagging assessments as containing Gen-AI material. They contribute to our understanding of how and why students are using Gen-AI, by providing a thorough background literature review and a rigorous approach to the analysis of student data.

Through analyzing over 10,000 student records, they provide empirical insight into the current scale of the use of AI tools in assessments. Their investigation of the demographic data also provides insights into some of the characteristics of students who do use the AI tools.

We hope all the articles and columns in this edition of Inroads inspire you to incorporate aspects of GenAI in your teaching, if only to teach AI literacy to everyone, and recognize its use in assessments. Finally, we wrap-up with another set of interesting puzzles provided by Scott Weiss for the BackPage contribution. There are also some interesting research questions requiring further investigation and context explanation to help us understand how to navigate in our ever-changing diverse world of computing education research. So, let's make some "inroads" into these questions!

Margaret Hamilton and James Harland
    Editors-in-Chief

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