Gordon Davies

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.

Quality in distance education

1 Gordon Davies, Moderator, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, UK g.davies@open.ac.uk 2 C. Fay Cover, Sun Microsystems, Denver, CO. fay.cover@SUN.COM 3 Wendy Lawrence-Fowler, University of Texas-Pan American, Center for Distance Learning, Edinburg, TX, wfowler@panam.edu 4 Mark Guzdial, College of Computing, Georgia Tech, Atlanta, GA, guzdial@cc.gatech.edu Abstract  The discussion last year at the annual convention of the American Federation of Teachers and the subsequent resolution that was passed highlights the concern felt by many about the quality of distance education programs. There are many who feel that the quality of the teaching, the support that students receive and the information provided to students is not as good in a distance education environment as in a conventional face-to-face situation.The panelists come from varying backgrounds, coming from a variety of academic institutions and industry. The panelists will explain how quality is assured at their institutions and claim that students who do learn at a distance receive as good an education as those in the faceto-face environment. Evidence to justify the claim will be produced. Factors such as the cost of the provision and the scalability of the operation are factors that will also be discussed.

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.

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.

A synthesis of computing concepts

This is the report of Working Group 4 of the ITiCSE Conference of 2005. The working group met to introduce some new participants into an ongoing project designed to explore the representation of all the computing and information related disciplines in a single, comprehensive, graphical and interactive structure. The goal of the work is to support the classification of research work, the development of curriculum recommendations and accreditation criteria, and the analysis of proposed programs of study.

Quality Education @ a Distance

The working conference of Working Group 3.6 (Distance Education) under the Technical Committee on Education (TC3) of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) was held in Geelong, Australia from 3 to 6 February, 2003. The theme of the conference was Quality Education @ a Distance (QED) and we shared presentations and discussions about establishing quality online environments for distance education. QED attracted some of the key people in the field both internationally and from within Australia and participants worked both as a large group and in more specifically diverse stream discussions which developed the ideas presented by authors. The outcomes are summarised in the overviews included in each section of this book, in which you will also find the fiinal papers submitted by the presenters.

Computing: The Shape of an Evolving Discipline

The task of defining a computing curriculum that has wide international application is a difficult one. Defining a common core among computing disciplines is complicated by the continuing growth of more diverse subdisciplines within computing and connections to a wider array of fields. The question whether we will be able to create a common understanding of excellence in our discipline is crucial for the quality of our education. In this report, we present an analysis of the current state of computing curriculum design and propose the development of a standard framework for looking at computing curricula, which could be used worldwide. For this purpose, a large-scale, multi-national effort will be necessary.

Virtual universities: are dual mode universities the solution?

In a dual mode university, identical programs can be offered on campus and at a distance. In both cases the economies of scale mean that the cost per student is significantly lower for distance students than for campus based students. In the United States, increasing potential student numbers in some states has led to an increase in demand that cannot be met by the conventional universities and many are now realizing the advantages that distance learning can bring. In the paper we discuss the reasons why the single mode system is successful in the UK and how Deakin University in Australia has managed to provide high quality distance education from a dual mode university. Both systems have strong student support systems in place and this is one of the major reasons for their success. The current increase and availability of electronic communications, particularly conferencing systems, is enhancing the support that students receive as well as the style of learning material, so that the concept of a virtual university is now even closer to fruition. We then look at how distance learning can be used in the United States to create dual mode universities and to establish such a virtual university, using, as an example, the association between the Open University, Florida State University and the Community Colleges in Florida to provide a BSc Program.

History in the computing curriculum

Summary form only given. Instructors often ignore or diminish the inclusion of history in computing when teaching courses. This is unfortunate, because students and teachers can learn much from the history of computing. In this paper, the authors present several models that instructors can use to place history as a curriculum component. They share their findings and provide handout summaries for comment, discussion and feedback. The authors strongly encourage audience participation and interaction.

The joy of software—starting with objects

This paper briefly describes the evolution and content of the Open Universitys new introductory course in Computing which has been designed for delivery internationally to over 3500 students per year. It replaces a conventional procedural programming course and introduces computing through object technology---specifically, through Smalltalk. Unlike its predecessor it is being designed to be accessible by non-computing majors and with an intention to address the gender imbalance in our student population. Multimedia technologies are used in the delivery of this distance learning course which is being developed by the course team for presentation in 1997.