By and For Teaching Assistants: Homegrown Tools in Computing Classrooms

Teaching computing at scale necessitates some level of automation. Many undergraduate courses have scaled up through commercial Learning Management Systems or, sometimes, ''homegrown'' tools developed by teaching staff. The development of homegrown tools within universities, especially those that lie in computing classrooms, has been reported on for some time. However, research focuses strongly on the applications of these tools, rather than the design process and the overarching ecosystem of software development in which these tools are embedded. We investigate the design of homegrown tools within a large R1 institution, where much of the development is conducted by and for Teaching Assistants (TAs). Our results are synthesized into a four phase design cycle–a framework that allows us to identify gaps in development and grounds future exploration of tool development within computer science education.