Western Canada Conference on Computing Education 2026
Northeastern University, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
April 30th - May 1st, 2026
Welcome
WCCCE (pronounced “Wicky”) is Western Canada’s chance to come together and discuss the challenges, solutions, and opportunities in computing education. With presentation formats ranging from 5-minute blizzard talks to comprehensive panel sessions, there is space for you to share your ideas, be they nifty assignments or complete works of pedagogical research. Come meet with other educators in post-secondary and K-12, as well as industry professionals and government partners with an interest in teaching computing related courses.
For authors looking to upload camera-ready papers, go to your Fourwaves account dashboard, go to Submissions, select your paper and then select the Edit Submission button on the right-hand side. This should allow you to replace the original pdf.
REGISTRATION IS NOW CLOSED,
WE LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING EVERYONE AT NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY SOON!
Keynote Speakers
The following keynote speakers will be presenting. Schedule and talk details to come.
Dr. Cinda Heeren is a Professor of Teaching in the Department of Computer Science at the University of British Columbia. Before joining UBC in 2017, she served as a Professor of Teaching of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Heeren's teaching focuses on foundational computer science courses, most notably UBC's large core data structures course, CPSC 221. Her excellence in the classroom has been recognized with the UBC Killam Teaching Prize (2020) and multiple Incredible Instructor Awards, and she is widely celebrated by students for her engaging, creative, and accessible lecture style.
Dr. Heeren is passionate about computer science education innovation and broadening access to CS concepts. She is a committed early adopter and advocate of PrairieLearn, a modern online assessment platform, and supports a growing community of practice around its use at UBC. Her most recent curriculum development project is DSCI220/221, discrete math and data structures courses designed specifically for Data Science majors. They connect classic computer science with data drawn from applications across the arts and sciences. Her research interests lie in computer science education, and she brings a spirit of creativity and inclusivity to everything she does in the classroom and beyond.
Fired from his first job for playing video games, Dr. Juancho Buchanan is currently a Professor of the Practice at Northeastern University on the Vancouver campus. Juancho is keenly interested in emerging tools enabled by LLMs and is an active practitioner of conversational programming.
He earned degrees in mathematics and computer science from the University of Windsor and the University of Toronto, completing a PhD before beginning his academic and professional career.
Juancho’s career has since moved back and forth across academic and industry settings — from academia at the University of Alberta, to industry at Electronic Arts, back to academia at Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center in Australia, and then into industry again in leadership roles at Amazon, Hothead, Relic, THQ, and Staffbase. He has now returned to Northeastern to investigate the impact of large language models on the software industry from a practitioner’s point of view and to explore what this shift means for how we teach future developers.
Invited Industry Speakers
The following industry speakers will be presenting. Schedule and talk details to come.
Youri Voet is the Co-founder and CEO of CodeGrade, a learning platform dedicated to improving the feedback loop in computer science education. Youri founded CodeGrade in 2018 while completing his Computer Science degree at the University of Amsterdam. Frustrated by the lack of meaningful feedback available to students while working as a Teaching Assistant, he developed the platform to help educators scale their courses without sacrificing the quality of student assessment.
Under his leadership, CodeGrade has grown from a classroom project into a globally adopted tool used by institutions worldwide to automate grading and increase student engagement. Youri is passionate about the intersection of EdTech and pedagogy, frequently speaking on topics such as scalable assessment strategies, the role of AI in the classroom, and curriculum design.
Youri holds a BSc in Computer Science from the University of Amsterdam and has a strong connection to Western Canada, having completed a Minor in Philosophy at the University of British Columbia.
Special Mentions
For recognition of and thanks to those making the conference possible.
Adrián Ortega will be providing photography services during the conference. For samples of his work, please visit his website.
WCCCE Program Committee
Brian Harrington (UTSC) - Chair
Lino Coria (Northeastern)
Ismail El Sayad (UFV)
Salil Ghosh (Northern Light College)
May Haidar (YorkU)
Piper Jackson (TRU)
Leanne Wu (U of C)
Ivan Wong (Douglas College)
WCCCE-2026 Organizing Committee
Juancho Buchanan (co-chair)
Ildar Akhmetov (co-chair)
Hazra Imran
Parsa Rajabi
Jack Thomas
Logan Schmidt
WCCCE Executive/Steering Committee
President: Bill Bird (University of Victoria)
Vice-President: Charles Hepler (Mount Royal University)
Secretary: Sarah Carruthers (Vancouver Island University)
Treasurer: Frank Zhang (University of the Fraser Valley)
Director: Ildar Akhmetov (Northestern University Vancouver)
Director: Youry Khmelevsky (Okanagan College)
Director: Kevin O'Neil (Thompson Rivers University)
Director: Jonatan Schroeder (York University)
Director: Ben Stephenson (University of Calgary)
WCCCE Archive
Sponsors
We are grateful to our sponsors who made this conference possible.
Platinum Sponsors
Gold Sponsors
Silver Sponsors
Bronze Sponsors
In Cooperation With
Location
Northeastern University
410 West Georgia Street
Vancouver, British Columbia
Canada, V6B 0K8
Contact us
If you have any questions, please contact wccce26@northeastern.edu
