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\subsection*{Project Summary}
The goals of the \emph{Disciplinary Commons in Computing Education}
are to fundamentally transform computing education, develop
educational leaders to drive this transformation, and build regional
and national communities of computing educators.  Transformation does
not happen by fiat: the way to transform computing education is to
transform computing educators. We believe that transformative change
occurs from the bottom up, emerging from the active exchange of ideas
between computing educators at a variety of institutions, from
research universities to community colleges, even high
schools. Opportunities for these exchanges do not spontaneously
emerge, however, and education-focused communities seldom have the mix
of skills and resources to sustain themselves: they need organization
and leadership. That leadership and that organization are what we
propose to create.

In the proposed CPATH: Community Building project, we will run four
\emph{Disciplinary Commons} in different regions of the US, with groups of
computing educators from a variety of institutions.  In each region,
10-15 educators will meet face-to-face for half-day meetings monthly
throughout the academic year, where they will discuss the teaching and
learning that occurs within their classrooms.  This shared, critical
engagement will be driven by the development of
individually-constructed course portfolios.  The course portfolio
focuses on a single course, connecting course objectives,
instructional design, and design rationale to actual student
performance, and is a well-known method for advancing reflective
teaching practice and improving student learning.  By meeting monthly,
working together on a common task, having paired site-visits, and
sharing and criticizing materials and resources, these educators will
build a community within each region, as well as having connections to
the educators with the shared experiences in the other regions.

This approach was piloted and evaluated in the 2005-6 academic year:
in the US  with 10 educators by Josh Tenenberg, and 
in the UK with 17 educators by Sally Fincher.





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\noindent{\bf Intellectual merit:} This model has intellectual merit
both in its theoretical grounding 
and its empirical validation.  It is theoretically based in the
reflective practices associated with individual development and
professional artistry as described by Dewey and Sch\"{o}n.  Documenting
teaching practice and reflections in the form of course portfolios is
likewise grounded in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
literature.  Empirically, this model has been piloted and evaluated twice. 

\vspace*{.3cm}

\noindent{\bf Broader impacts:}
The specific outcomes will include an Internet-accessible archive of
course portfolios produced by regional participants in the
\emph{Disciplinary Commons}. The existence of a rigorous, peer-reviewed, and
publicly available archive of portfolios across a range of courses
will have a broad impact on the culture of computing education.  The
more important impacts, however, are on the regional participants.
Participants in a \emph{Disciplinary Commons} create a community with
a shared experience, shared interests in education, and a heightened
awareness of educational computing issues. They have a broad
perspective about other institutions (in the region and/or
disciplinary area) and knowledge of differences between student
populations at a deeper level than it is possible to obtain in any
other way. This unusual breadth of knowledge means participants are
well-positioned to be the driving forces behind significant reform in
computing education: they will know what to look at, they will have a
community to work with, and they will have the broader perspective to
move toward systemic change on a regional and national scale. Impact
will also be broadened through the dissemination of the
\emph{Disciplinary Commons} model as a means for building communities
of engaged and innovative computing educators.  Impact will be
broadened as well by connecting this project to a parallel
\emph{Disciplinary Commons} proposed by Sally Fincher to the UK
National Teaching Fellowship Scheme initiative.
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