Learning to Develop Learning and Teaching of CS: A Collaborative Example

Developing and improving teaching and learning in computer science is a complex task. One of the most significant challenges involves encouraging students, teachers and the formal university structures to all move in the same direction, for example to embrace the ideas of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). Much of the difficulty can be found in the fact that the intrinsic nature of SoTL implies that teaching and learning should be researched and critically examined. This in turn demands a development of underlying staff and organisational attitudes. As a consequence, the ways to relate to the students, the subject area, the teaching and our colleagues must scrutinised, with the intent of finding new teaching and learning forms. This contribution discusses an on-going four year project, ABoLT (Al Baha optimising Teaching and Learning), in which Uppsala University (UU) in Sweden and Al Baha University (ABU) in Saudi Arabia collaborate on developing computer science (CS) education at ABU, based in the ideas of SoTL to the benefit of both partners. In the project, ABU will renew its teaching in CS and, at the same time, initialise, formulate and conduct research in computing education, as a means to understand and improve its own teaching and the learning of its students.