The paper reports the results of a one-day workshop that examined a number of issues involved in setting up a computer science education (CSEd) research data repository to enable data sharing amongst the CSEd research community. Sanders et al. claim that such a repository “would benefit both individual researchers and the community as a whole,” although the types of data available and the benefits expected from such a repository are not identified. The issues in setting up a repository are identified as:

designing an easy-to-use interface; managing data in a variety of formats and languages; anonymizing the data; complying with institutional, legal, and ethical restrictions on the use of data; and building community support.

A number of implementation issues of the repository are discussed. These include usability, generality, and security. A simple prototype including a prototype wizard is described. Possible formats of data and metadata are presented.

The concept of building the repository is worthwhile, but the CSEd data is very diverse, including, for example, results of student surveys, examination questions and scores, definition of teaching experiments, and results. The types of data that can be stored and reused are not discussed. Perhaps the next task of the group should be to develop a taxonomy of data available and how useful each type of data could be for CDEd researchers.