Workshop on Teaching Constraint Programming WTCP 2023

Program

Venue: CP 2023, Toronto, Canada.

Time: Sunday, August 27th, 2023, 09:00-17:00

09:00-10:00: Invited Talk: Carleton Coffrin, Jip Dekker, Jimmy H.M. Lee, Jason Nguyen, Peter J. Stuckey, Guido Tack and Allen Zhong
Automating Solution Checking and Grading with MiniZinc (presentation)
10:00-10:30: Christophe Lecoutre.
Teaching Constraint Programming while using PyCSP3, ACE and Jupyter Notebook (paper) (presentation)
10:30-10:55: Coffee Break
10:55-11:25: Tejas Santanam and Pascal Van Hentenryck.
Modern Constraint Programming Education: Lessons for the Future (paper) (presentation)
11:25-11:55: Augustin Delecluse, Guillaume Derval, Laurent Michel, Pierre Schaus and Pascal Van Hentenryck.
A review of the Constraint Programming MOOC on EdX (paper) (presentation)
11:55-12:25: Discussion:
Curriculum Choices for CP
12:25-13:40: Lunch
13:40-14:10: Janet Choi, Barry O'Sullivan and Helmut Simonis.
Teaching Constraint Programming in the SFI CRT-AI Program (paper) (presentation)
14:10-14:40: Marc Cané, Jordi Coll, Marc Rojo and Mateu Villaret.
SAT-IT: the Interactive SAT Tracer (paper) (presentation)
14:40-15:10: Josep Alos, Carlos Ansótegui, Jose María Salvia and Eduard Torres Montiel.
OptiLog for Education (paper)
15:10-15:30: Coffee Break
15:30-16:30: H.Simonis.
State of CP Teaching - An Overview (presentation)
16:30-17:00: Discussion:
Tools for Teaching/ How to promote CP

Invited Talk: Automating Solution Checking and Grading with MiniZinc

Speaker: Peter Stuckey

A critical need in teaching discrete optimization is to give feedback to learners regarding what is wrong about the “solutions” they provide. MiniZinc provides a solver independent modelling language for expressing discrete optimization problems. In this talk we describe a methodology for using MiniZinc to easily create solution checkers that give meaningful feedback to learners. The checkers can be used independently of the technology the learners use to actually solve the problem. The checkers can be included (in an obfuscated state) in a MiniZinc project file, to allow standalone projects that learners can complete locally through the MiniZinc IDE with meaningful feedback. The checkers can also used as an online service enabling learners to submit solutions for checking and feedback including grading via the MiniZinc IDE or a Python script. The online service can also support leaderboard, and peer review. We have made use of this checking methodology for automatic feedback and grading of over 100,000 student submissions running in the Coursera Massive Open Online Courseware platform. Automated solution checking provides a pathway to self-directed learning for discrete optimization which we believe is vital to ensure that the technology is used widely.

Call for Papers

The workshop on Teaching of Constraint Programming (WTCP) 2023 is an event organized as part of CP 2023, the 29th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming. It will be held on August 27th, directly preceding the CP conference. This follows an earlier workshop, WTCP2015, at CP 2015 in Cork.

The aim of the workshop is to present and collect information about the different ways Constraint Programming is taught in academia and industry, to identify best practices, and create an up-to-date list of resources that are available for teachers and potential students.

The previous workshop at CP 2015 provided a snapshot of the field at that time. Since 2015, many new courses have been prepared, while the Covid-19 pandemic has challenged many of the assumptions on how courses should be taught. We feel it is time to again collect and disseminate information about the state of teaching of Constraint Programming.

Workshop topics include:

Evaluation of in-person and on-line courses on Constraint Programming and related topics
Overviews of curriculum covered in courses
Outreach programs to reach non-traditional audiences
Discussion of different teaching formats, based on practical experience over time
Feedback from students about reception of CP courses and materials

Important Dates

Paper Submission: July 14th, 2023
Notification of acceptance/rejection: July 28th, 2023
Camera ready version: August 8th, 2023
Workshop day: August 27th, 2023

This workshop will accept a variety of submission formats related to CP education. In addition to the presentation of research results and teaching case studies, we especially welcome submissions of instructional demos, recent breakthroughs, future directions, and descriptions of interesting aspects of CP education or educational methods that can be brought to the CP community.

There are two types of paper submissions: extended abstracts (at most two pages) and full papers (at most fifteen pages). References are not part of the page limit. Papers are submitted through EasyChair via https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=wtcp2023, as a PDF file following LIPIcs guidelines (https://submission.dagstuhl.de/series/details/5#author).

We also accept (and strongly encourage) non-traditional electronic submissions, such as demonstrations of CP courses you have been a part of, presentations on lessons learned from CP courses, etc.

All submissions will be reviewed and those that are well-written and make a worthwhile contribution to the topic of the workshop will be accepted for publication in the workshop proceedings. The proceedings will be available electronically at CP 2023. Accepted contributions will be allowed a time slot for a presentation at the workshop. At least one author of each accepted paper/presentation must attend and present at the workshop. Please note that every workshop participant needs to be registered for the workshop.

If you have any questions about the workshop, please contact the chairs: Tejas Santanam and Helmut Simonis (helmut.simonis@insight-centre.org)