Alison Clear

What's in a Name?: International Interpretations of Computing Education Terminology

The ACM, the AIS, and the IEEE Computer Society have jointly defined five computing disciplines: computer engineering, computer science, information systems, information technology, and software engineering. These terms and many others are used as the names of educational programmes. Across the world, the same name may be used for quite different programmes and different names for similar programmes. This makes it difficult for potential students, employers, and educators to determine the nature of a particular programme and how it compares to others. Because computing is global, greater clarity in terminology is required. We have surveyed academics and literature internationally to determine the scale of the nomenclature issue across the globe. A consistent naming scheme would be ideal, but the different terminologies are now entrenched in different countries, so this paper provides the next best option, a taxonomy of the principal terms and their meanings.

CC2020: A Vision on Computing Curricula

This panel discusses the development of a global, futuristic computing overview curricular report called Computing Curricular 2020, also known as CC2020. This new document, which is an initiative of the ACM Education Council, published by ACM, will be a revision of one of the most cited curricula documents called Computing Curricula 2005, also known as CC2005 [1]. CC2020 will build on the attributes of the existing predecessor. It will encompass broad global inclusion by welcoming active participation from computing societies around the world such as the Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ). CC2020 will also be futuristic in its development. While the new document will include an update to reflect existing curricula reports for computer engineering, computer science, information systems, information technology, and software engineering, it will also describe ways in which new and emerging curricular areas would be included within the framework of the report. The working group of CC2020 will include approximately two dozen professionals from academia and industry who will engage in crafting the new document. Additionally, a subset of about ten people of the working group forms the executive or core operational unit of the CC2020 project. The panelists for this representation are members of this executive group. Their global origins and affiliations represent the diversity of interaction that is one of the hallmarks of this undertaking. The panelists will present their views on the future aspects of the CC2020 report from the perspective of their experiences and affiliations, as well as their countries. The panelists will also provide contrasting points of view on topics relevant to the project. Audience interaction and participation will consume approximately fifty percent of the time allocated to the presentation.

Representative names of computing degree programs worldwide

Through the auspices of ACM and with support from the IEEE Computer Society, a task group charged to prepare the IT2017 report conducted an online international survey of computing faculty members about their undergraduate degree programs in computing. The purpose of this survey was to clarify the breadth of and disparities in nomenclature used by diverse communities in the computing field, where a word or phrase can mean different things in different computing communities. This paper examines the English-language words and phrases used to name the computing programs of almost six hundred survey respondents, and the countries in which those names are used. Over eight hundred program names analysed in this paper reveal six program names that together account for more than half of all program names. The paper goes on to consider possible correspondence between reported program names and the five areas of computing identified by the ACM. Names such as computer science and information technology appear to dominate, but with different meanings, while the names of other computing disciplines show clear geographic preferences. Convergence towards a very small number of highly representative program names in computing education worldwide might be deceptive. The paper calls for further examination and international collaborations to align program names with program curriculum content.

ITiCSE 2016 report

Many details from this years unique ITiCSE stand out including the Santa Catalina Monastery, the main colonial monument of the city built in the 16th century. It was the venue for the mid-winter outdoor conference dinner and the coach tour of the surrounding countryside, to name some of these details. The most important, though, was our research work: ITiCSE is truly an international conference, with submissions and presentations from a wide variety of countries: the first authors of the 54 papers were from over 22 different countries on six continents. ITiCSE also has a long tradition with its working groups and there were seven again this year.

Integrating International Students into Computer Science Programs: Challenges and Strategies for Success

International students are an important and desirable constituent in most computer science programs. These students help to enrich the programs, bring new perspectives into the classroom, diversify the student population, globalize the curriculum, broaden the perspective of domestic students, and generate revenue for the host institution. Each of these characteristics is desirable and increasingly important in todays highly connected world and job market. Most institutions invest resources in attracting international students and provide orientation sessions for them on arrival to help acclimate them to the new environment and to introduce them to other students. There are often clubs to provide support groups and social functions to help them meet and make friends with domestic students. However, challenges for international students, and for the faculty teaching them, persist at many institutions despite these efforts to help international students deal with culture shock, differing academic expectations and teaching methods, and different attitudes toward issues such as plagiarism.

ITiCSE 2016 preview

We are pleased to welcome ITiCSE 2016, the 21st Annual Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education, to Peru. The program of the conference will consist of keynote lectures, paper sessions, panels, working groups, tips and techniques, courseware demonstrations, posters, and exhibits.

Aligning Quality Assurance at the course unit and educational program levels

Quality assurance is a subject that has grown dramatically in importance in recent times. In previous work, we have described how the ACM Curricula can be used to support the Quality Assurance process of educational programs, using the Computer Science program at Reykjavik University as an example. Faculty members and employers of graduates participated in the process, that resulted in providing both detailed quantitative data and qualitative information. The assessment also raised awareness of how abstract topics and learning outcomes from an international standard can be used when revising the curricula of a particular course in a CS program. Quality assurance is indeed a continuous process, where the results of evaluations should be used to drive improvements. In this paper we focus on how a Database course was re-structured based on a recent quality assurance process.

Global Perspectives on Assessing Educational Performance and Quality

Educational performance indicators are being considered or implemented in different ways by institutions and governments in different countries. What impact is this likely to have on computing education?

ITiCSE: the next decade

This year marks the 19th ITiCSE conference. This panel will provide conference delegates, both frequent attendees and those new to ITiCSE the opportunity to reflect on the conferences success as one of the premier international com- puter science education conferences and to discuss potential future directions for the conference.

How students learn: ripples in computer science/software engineering curriculum (abstract only)

Learning cycle models have long offered structure and ideas for how to teach using a range of activities. Unfortunately recent studies have shown the models of learning styles and learning cycles are poorly supported by scientific evidence. In order to explore the answer to the question, how people learn, Race (2010) has put forward a model to simplify the terminology used in other learning models. The first two ripples are the Want ripple where the student has some want to learn, and the Need ripple where the learner has established that there is a need to learn the subject. These two ripples are considered the motivation aspects of the course. This poster describes the ripple model and the analyses the first two ripples in the context of Computer Science/Software Engineering students.