Proceedings of the
Western Canada Conference
on Computing Education
WCCCE2025
April 28 & 29, 2025.
Mount Royal University,
Calgary, AB, Canada.
Conference chair:
Charles Hepler
Program chair:
Bill Bird

Copyright notice
Authors retain copyright of their individual contributions to the WCCCE 2025 proceedings. All
accepted submissions are made available under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License (CC BY 4.0), unless otherwise noted. This license allows others to share
and adapt the work with appropriate credit to the authors.
The front matter, including the Message from the conference chair and conference information,
is also made available under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC
BY 4.0), unless otherwise specified.
More about Creative Commons licenses: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hepler, C.(2025). Proceedings of the Western Canada Conference on Computing Education (WCCCE
2025), April 28–29, 2025, Mount Royal University, Calgary, AB, Canada [Conference foreword].
https://doi.org/10.60770/mejm-av5210.60770/mejm-av52

Message from the conference
chair
The Western Canadian Conference on Computing Education (WCCCE) is a forum for
disseminating experience and information on developing and delivering programs and courses
broadly defined in computer science, computer technology, or information systems. The
conference aims to bring together educators, industrial partners, and government officials
interested in the instruction and delivery of computing-related courses and the development and
evolution of computing education.
This year, we are continuing to broaden participation among Canadian computing educators. To
foster this interchange of ideas, the organizers of WCCCE 2025 welcome papers, posters, nifty
assignments, and special sessions on the following (non-exhaustive) list of topics:
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New or experimental computing-education curricula at any level, including K-12
Teaching methods or tools for specific concepts or courses, general methods and tools
for computing-related courses
Methods, tools, and effective structures for designing, teaching and grading, including
automation tools
Experience reports on the use of new techniques or technology
Applications and techniques to support distance and/or distributed learning
Broadening participation and improving student wellbeing
School outreach programs or high-school programs for computer programming and/or
computational thinking
Computing education research

If you effectively use unique methods to teach a computing-related topic or have successfully
adopted a new tool or technology in your computing-related courses or labs, this is an opportunity
to tell people about it. If you have developed a tool that improves the instructional quality of your
courses or provides insight into the learning process, this is the place to demonstrate it. Even if
you have tried methods or tools in your instruction with little success, we are still eager to hear
about it. Your experience can help us all.
Charles Hepler
WCCCE 2025 Conference Chair

Submissions
The number of submissions and acceptance rate for each type are shown in the table below.
Type
Long Paper
Short Paper
Panel/Tutorial
Nifty Assignment
Blizzard Talk

# accepted

# submissions

acceptance rate

6
8
2
2
9

15
16
3
5
9

40%
50%
67%
40%
100%

Committees
Organizing Committee

Reviewers

Charley Hepler (Mount Royal University) – Chair
Amy McCarthy (Mount Royal University)
Apoorve Chokshi (Mount Royal University)
Charlotte Curtis (Mount Royal University)
Gabriel Jerry-Bolduc (Mount Royal University)
Patrick Perri (Mount Royal University)

Alan Fedoruk (Mount Royal University)
Anthony Estey (University of Victoria)
Apoorve Chokshi (Mount Royal University)
Bill Bird (University of Victoria)
Celina Berg (University of Victoria)
Charlotte Curtis (Mount Royal University)
Ed Knorr (University of British Columbia)
Frank Zhang (University of the Fraser Valley)
Gabriel Jarry-Bolduc (Mount Royal University)
Ildar Akhmetov (Northeastern University,
Vancouver)
Ismail El Sayad (University of the Fraser Valley)
Jeffrey Davis (MacEwan University)
Joel Coffman (United States Air Force Academy,
Johns Hopkins University)
John Anvik (University of Lethbridge)
Jonathan Calver (University of Toronto)
Juancho Buchanan (Northeastern University,
Vancouver)
Katrin Becker (Canadian Association of
Instructional Designers, Mount Royal
University)
Kezia Devathasan (University of Victoria)
Larry Yueli Zhang (York University)
Leanne Wu (University of Calgary)
Lino Coria (Northeastern University, Vancouver)
Mariam Elhussein (Mount Royal University)
Maryam R. Aliabadi (University of British
Columbia)
Md Hasan Tareque (University of Lethbridge)
Mike Zastre (University of Victoria)
Patrick Perri (Mount Royal University)
Sarah Carruthers (Vancouver Island University)
Steven Wolfman (University of British Columbia)
Wayne Eberly (University of Calgary)
Xuguang Chen (St. Martin University)
Yu Yan (University of Victoria)

Program Committee
Bill Bird (University of Victoria) – Chair
Apoorve Chokshi (Mount Royal University)
Ildar Akhmetov (Northeastern University,
Vancouver)
Leanne Wu (University of Calgary)

Steering Committee
(Past Organizing Chairs)
Ben Stephenson (University of Calgary)
Diana Cukierman (Simon Fraser University)
Donald Acton (University of British Columbia)
Kemi Ola (University of British Columbia)
Mike Zastre (University of Victoria)

Student Volunteers
Aldo Ortiz (Mount Royal University)
Annette John (University of Calgary)
Asia Ongjoco (Mount Royal University)
Ben Messer (Mount Royal University)
John Galang (Mount Royal University)
Joyayemi Akapo (Mount Royal University)

Rafael Hernandez Alarcon (Mount Royal
University)

Table of Contents
Long Papers
Applying DevOps Practices to Course Material: Recommendations from Software Development
to Develop and Manage Courses
Joel Coffman

Beyond Code: The Role of Liberal Arts in Shaping Computing Science Education
Herbert H. Tsang, Andrew J. Park

Bridging the Gap: A Need for CS Educators’ Expertise in Bringing GAI to High School Teachers
Simon Wermie, Celine Latulipe

CS Connections: Adapting a Popular Puzzle Game for Computing Concepts
Ethan Fong, Michelle Craig, Jonathan Calver

Enhancing Academic Advising with Generative AI: A Retrieval-Augmented Decision Support
System
Arhaan Khaku, Abdallah Mohamed

I Didn't Know That Was Cheating: Student and Instructor Views on Academic Integrity in
Computer Science
Jaime Paredes Paez, Michelle Cheatham, Leanne Wu

Short Papers
A Pedagogical Model for Soft-Skill Education in Computer Science: Pass/Fail Grading with
Public In-Class Feedback
Nandi Zhang, Nelson Wong

Activity Design for First-Year Students with Access to AI
Robert Collier

C-ing Beyond AI: A Cloud-Based Approach to Authentic Programming Assessment
Ildar Akhmetov, Maryam Tanha, Logan Schmidt, Saeed Yazdanian

Exploring Students’ Problem Context Preferences
Ron Friedman, Steven Wolfman, Mazen Kotb, Meiqi Yu, Stephan König, Mehrdad Oveisi

Implementing Standards-Based Grading: A Structured Approach for Easy Adoption
Larry Yueli Zhang, Jonatan Schroeder, Meiying Qin

Participatory Design by Proxy? Practices for Ensuring Inclusion of Marginalized Communities
Bethany Edmunds, Dana Zhan, Sara Iqbal Bavan, Xiaolin Liu, Jiayi Qian, Jieling Gong, Shuying Du, Qingman Li,
Tianyu Fang, Jiahui Song, Yuzheng Shi, Panxin Liu, Anran Lyu, Yvonne Coady

Quizercise: A Hybrid Assessment Method Integrating Quizzes and In-Class Exercises
Nelson Wong

Varphi: A Description Language for Turing Machines
Hassan El-Sheikh, Mohammad Mahmoud

Panel / Tutorial
Crafting Authentic and Engaging Assignments
Michelle Craig, Ron Friedman, Firas Moosvi, Ben Stephenson, Steven Wolfman

When Lyrics Become Code: Programming Like a Rock Star
Ildar Akhmetov

Nifty Assignments
Decaboard: A Nifty Assignment for Beginning Python Programmers
Toby Donaldson

Nifty Assignment: Sunburst Chart
Ben Stephenson