Ernest Ferguson

Offshore outsourcing: current conditions & diagnosis

2. ERNEST FERGUSON Shock waves still resonate after the widely cited 2002 Forrester Research report predicted at least 3.3 million white-collar jobs and

Conference grading of computer programs

136 billion in wages are expected to shift overseas by 2015 [8]. The report predicts nearly 1 million IT-related jobs will move offshore over the course of the next 15 years [4]. For computer scientists between 2000 and 2001, the jobless rate jumped from 2% to 5% [8]. Programming and general software development is no longer a specialized or rare skill. IT unemployment has resulted in decreased computer science / information systems enrollments throughout the United States.

Impact of offshore outsourcing on CS/IS curricula

Two methods of grading computer science programs in a CSI course were evaluated in terms of (1) benefit to the student, (2) advantages for the instructor and (3) plagiarism. The two methods compared were conference grading and grading using written comments. Results indicate that students thought the grading was more fair when graded by one-on-one conference than when graded with written comments. The time required by the instructor was nearly the same. More was communicated orally in this time than in writing. There was less plagiarism in programs graded by conference, and the students whose programs had been graded by conference performed better on a programming test than those who had their programs graded by written comments. There was no significant difference between the two groups on the written examinations.