Andrew D. McGettrick

Computing Curricula 2005: The Overview Report

In 2001, the ACM and the IEEE-CS published Computing Curricula 2001 which contains curriculum recommendations for undergraduate programs in computer science. That report also called for additional discipline-specific volumes for each of computer engineering, information systems, and software engineering. In addition, it called for an Overview Volume to provide a synthesis of the various volumes. The Computing Curricula 2004 Task Force undertook the job of fulfilling the latter charge. The purpose of this session is to present the recently completed work of that Task Force, now known as Computing Curricula 2005 (CC2005), and to generate discussion among, and feedback from SIGCSE members about ongoing and future work.

Recentering computer science

The recent decreases of enrollment in computer science programs signal a chasm between our historical emphasis on programming and the contemporary concerns of those choosing careers.

Grand Challenges in Computing: Education---A Summary

The conference on grand challenges, held in Newcastle on 30 and 31 March 2004, occurred at a particularly opportune time. The strand on the educational aspects was particularly relevant and the idea innovative in the sense that this was the first occasion on which a grand challenge event with a focus on educational issues in computing had taken place. This paper provides some of the background and includes a distillation of the educational challenges that emerged from that event.

Trusting collaboration in global computing systems

A significant characteristic of global computing is the need for secure interactions between highly mobile entities and the services in their environment. Moreover, these decentralised systems are also characterised by partial views over the state of the global environment, implying that we cannot guarantee verification of the properties of the mobile entity entering an unfamiliar domain. Secure in this context encompasses both the need for cryptographic security and the need for trust, on the part of both parties, that the interaction will function as expected. In this paper, we explore an architecture for interaction/ collaboration in global computing systems. This architecture reflects the aspects of the trust lifecycle in three stages: trust formation, trust evolution and trust exploitation, forming a basis for risk assessment and interaction decisions.

Computer engineering curriculum in the new millennium

Currently there is a joint activity (referred to as Computing Curricula 2001, shortened to CC2001) involving the Association for Computing Machinery and the IEEE Computer Society, which is producing curriculum guidance for the broad area of computing. Within this activity, a volume on computer engineering is being developed. This volume addresses the important area of the design and development of computers and computer-based systems. Current curricula must be capable of evolving to meet the more immediate needs of students and industry. The purpose of this paper is to look at areas of future development in computer engineering in the next ten years (2013) and beyond and to consider the work of the Computer Engineering volume of CC2001 in this context.

The current crisis in computing: what are the real issues?

1. SUMMARY Computing education is in crisis. Enrollments have fallen to such an extent that some academic computing programs are facing significant reductions in staffing levels or even elimination. Of even greater consequence to society, however, is the growing gap between the number of jobs requiring high-level computing skills and the number of graduates who are prepared to take those positions. Over the long term, this growing shortfall threatens the economic security in many countries. Finding strategies to address this problem is complicated because so many different factors are implicated in the enrollment decline. The complexity of the problem makes it critically important to seek a comprehensive solution strategy that takes that underlying complexity into account. This session offers the chance for representatives of ACM’s Education Board to carry on a discussion with the SIGCSE community about possible responses to this crisis that affects us all. 2. BACKGROUND That there is currently a crisis in computing education is not in doubt. Enrollments have been falling steadily for a number of years, so that enrollments are now often half of what they were five years ago. This dramatic decline in student interest has occurred not only in the United States but also in many other countries.

The computing ontology: application in education

Working Group 3 at ITiCSE 2007 continued the ongoing work of the Ontology of Computing project. The working group brought several new people into the project and addressed areas of the ontology of particular interest to these participants. In particular, the group worked on the Ontology sections related to History of Computing, Computing Security and Social and Ethical issues. With the intention of applying the ontology to the support of curriculum development in mind, the group also reviewed and discussed proposed means of presenting a visual representation of the ontology. There was also some work on the present structure of the ontology and future possibilities.

Toward curricular guidelines for cybersecurity

This session reports on a workshop convened by the ACM Education Board with funding by the US National Science Foundation and invites discussion from the community on the workshop findings. The topic, curricular directions for cybersecurity, is one that resonates in many departments considering how best to prepare graduates to face the challenges of security issues in employment and future research. The session will include presentation of the workshop context and conclusions, but will be open to participant discussion. This will be the first public presentation of the results of the workshop and the first opportunity for significant response.

Setting the stage for computing curricula 2013: computer science -- report from the ACM/IEEE-CS joint task force

Following a roughly 10 year cycle, the Computing Curricula volumes have helped to set international curricular guidelines for undergraduate programs in computing. In the summer of 2010, planning for the next volume in the series, Computer Science 2013, began. This panel seeks to update and engage the SIGCSE community on the Computer Science 2013 effort. The development of curricular guidelines in Computer Science is particularly challenging given the rapid evolution and expansion of the field. Moreover, the growing diversity of topics in Computer Science and the integration of computing with other disciplines create additional challenges and opportunities in defining computing curricula. As a result, it is particularly important to engage the broader computer science education community in a dialog to better understand new opportunities, local needs, and novel successful models of computing curriculum. The last complete Computer Science curricular volume was released in 2001 [3] and followed by a review effort that concluded in 2008 [2]. While the review helped to update some of the knowledge units in the 2001 volume, it was not aimed at producing an entirely new curricular volume and deferred some of the more significant questions that arose at the time. The Computer Science 2013 effort seeks to provide a new volume reflecting the current state of the field and highlighting promising future directions through revisiting and redefining the knowledge units in CS, rethinking the essentials necessary for a CS curriculum, and identifying working exemplars of courses and curricula along these lines.

The computing ontology project: the computing education application

An ontology of computing has been attempted with the intention of supporting, among other things, the development of curriculum. Computing is unusual in having 40 years of curriculum recommendations that have been very influential in determining what is taught in a large number of programs. The ontology offers an objective base on which to build a curriculum recommendation. The ontology is still evolving and the use in curriculum development is entering its first experiments. This paper describes the challenges of developing the ontology and the plans for its application in curriculum development.