Sally Fincher is a Lecturer in the Computing Laboratory at the University of Kent at Canterbury, where she heads the Computers and Education Research Group.  Sally holds a B.A. in Philosophy & Computer Science (University of Kent, UK) and an M.A. in English (Georgetown, Washington DC).  Sally is Editor of Computer Science Education, jointly with Renee Macaulay.  Her principal research areas are Computer Science Education and patterns and pattern languages, especially patterns for HCI.

Marian Petre is a Reader in the Computing Department at the Open University and holds an Advanced Research Fellowship awarded by the UK's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.  Until recently, she was Director of the Centre for Informatics Education Research (CIER) at the Open University.  Marian holds a B.A. in Psycholinguistics (Swarthmore College) and a Ph.D. in Computer Science (University College London, UK).  Her principal research areas are expert reasoning and representation in the design of computer systems,  and Computer Science education. She lectures internationally on empirical methods.

Anthony Robins is an Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department at the University of Otago (New Zealand).  His background is in Psychology (Canterbury, New Zealand) and Cognitive Science (Sussex, England).  Most of his research has been in the area of artificial neural networks, especially as models of human learning and memory.  For the last 13 years he has been teaching introductory programming.  This experience has helped to shape a recent interest in the topic of novice programmers and the processes of teaching and learning a first programming language.

In 1992, after six years subsisting on irregular teaching jobs, Raymond Lister completed a PhD in Artificial Intelligence, at Sydney University, Australia. The experience left him with a low opinion of machine learning but a high opinion of human learning. In 1994, he took up his first full time teaching position, at the Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane Australia. After four years there, he taught for three years at the University of Western Sydney, before joining the University of Technology (Sydney) in 2001. This semester is his 14th semester (out of a total of 18) teaching first year programming. In the last three years, he has published three Australian national conference papers and three international conference papers on IT education, primarily concerning aspects of the teaching of programming to first year students.

Denise Tolhurst is a senior lecturer in the School of Information Systems, Technology and Management at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.  In recent years Denise’s work (research and teaching) has focused on teaching and learning in a large first year undergraduate course, with the introduction of a new course structure involving web-supported independent activities and small group work.  Denise has formal qualifications in education, computer science and mathematics.  She has experience in teaching at secondary level, and tertiary teaching of information systems, business computing and teacher training courses.  Denise’s PhD topic was based on learner acceptance of control and navigation in complex hypermedia software, and her research has continued to feature both educational and computing aspects.

Margaret Hamilton is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Computer Science and Information Technology at RMIT University in Melbourne. She is currently Postgraduate Program Leader involved with the introduction of a new Masters Program in ICT and the concomitant questions of what should and shouldn't be included in such a generalist program. Currently her teaching focuses on Object-Oriented Programming in C++. Her research interests are in the area of teaching and learning in computer science and include the planning, designing and writing of programs, the concepts of problem-based learning, and the issues in the detection and management of plagiarism.

Patricia Haden is a Lecturer at the School of Information Technology at Otago Polytechnic (New Zealand). Patricia holds a B.A. in Experimental Psychology and an M.Sc. in Computer Science, both from the University of California at San Diego (United States). Prior to joining the teaching staff of Otago Polytechnic in 2002, Patricia worked as a researcher in several cognitive psychology laboratories in the United States, and taught statistics and experimental design at both UCSD and the University of Otago. She then spent six years as the Computer Assisted Learning developer at the University of Otago Medical School, writing educational software for medical training. Patricia is currently heavily involved in the redesign of the Polytechnic's programming courses, where staff are grappling with questions of teaching paradigm, industry relevance, and methodologies for the assessment of teaching effectiveness.

John Hamer has lectured in Computer Science at the University of Auckland since 1990.  His research interests revolve around declarative and domain-specific languages, which he likes to use to develop software that is just as complicated as it should be.  He has taught introductory data structures for many years, and tries to make connections to both theory and practice.

Simon is a lecturer in IT at the Ourimbah Campus of the University of Newcastle, Australia. His past includes lecturing positions in Computer Science (Exeter Uni in the UK and the Callaghan Campus of the Uni of Newcastle) and Artificial Intelligence (Griffith Uni in Queensland). He has long been involved with teaching programming at various levels, in various paradigms, and in too many languages to remember. His 30 years of teaching also take in many other areas in IT/CS/IS and aspects of a few other disciplines such as maths, physics, and fine art.

Michael de Raadt is a PhD student and instructor of programming at the University of Southern Queensland.  Michael undertook undergraduate study at the University of Western Sydney and achieved his Bachelor of Applied Science Degree with Distinction in 1998, and achieved First Class Honours and was awarded the UWS University Medal in 1999.  Michael is also a recipient of the ACS prize for Highest Achievement.  Michael's research interests include methodologies for teaching problem solving to novice programmers and how introductory programming courses are run (see census results). Michael is an organiser of the Australian Computer Competition, a programming competition for high school students around Australia. Michael has had 5 publications in the field of computer science education.

Ken Sutton is a Lecturer in the School of Information Technology at the Southern Institute of Technology (New Zealand). He has been involved in Computer Education both at secondary and tertiary levels. Though new to formal research, Ken is keen to be involved, particularly with regard to the teaching of introductory programming.

Bob Baker is in semi-retirement. He has a BSc (Maths and Philosophy), MSc (Maths / computing) and MCogSc. Bob has taught in First year undergraduate and post-graduate courses in Computer Information Systems and Communication Systems at UNSW, University of Sydney and ACU. In a prior life, Bob was a High School teacher, a curriculum consultant with the Department of Education and a lecturer in Teacher Education (Computer Education). Bob has an on-going interest in Secondary Computing curriculum, having a leading involvement in the development of two new Computing Syllabuses in NSW and is currently Supervisor of Marking for one of these courses.

Quintin Cutts is a lecturer at the University of Glasgow in Glasgow, Scotland. Quintin obtained BSc and PhD degrees at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, where he worked for a number of years on programming languages and databases.  His interests have moved in recent years towards: educational technology within and outside CS, particularly with respect to face to face teaching; issues in CS-1 courses such as large class sizes, assessment styles, plagiarism, learning problem solving; and automated detection of students at risk.  Underlying all is a commitment to encouraging students to engage with their studies, whatever they are. He was recently involved in a very stimulating cross-discipline research project where six academics explored their understanding of higher education in their own and each others' subjects.  He has just started a 7-month sabbatical at Monash University, where he's going to learn again about ***writing up***.

Jodi Tutty is an IT lecturer at Charles Darwin University. After having worked as a software developer for 6 years, she switched to teaching. Since then she has taught at the school, TAFE and higher education levels.  Her  main teaching area has been in the programming stream and more recently in the database area. Having recently finished a Masters of Education she is interested on developing a research profile in this area.

Ilona Box is a lecturer at the University of Western Sydney. She has been lecturing and developing course content in object-oriented software development since 1998. Her research interests include IS education and simplifying object-oriented business information system development.