Paula Gabbert

Support communities for women in computing

This article highlights the many activities provided by the support communities available for women in computing. Thousands of women actively participate in these programs and they receive many benefits including networking and professional support. In addition, the organizations and associations help promote the accomplishments of women computer scientists and disseminate valuable information. This article surveys some of these organizations and concludes with a list of suggestions for how faculty members can incorporate the benefits of these organizations in their own institutions.

Globalization and the computing curriculum

One of the guiding principles of Computing Curriculum 2001 was to ensure that the computing curriculum was international in scope. This article provides a model for achieving this objective by identifying globalization issues that are relevant to computer science. The underlying premise of the model is that technology has enabled globalization while globalization drives technology. The article also proposes three implementation models for integrating the material into the curriculum.

Inquiry-based computer science instruction: some initial experiences

In computer science, as well as in other disciplines, it is critical to the success of the educational process that students become actively engaged with the material, rather than passive recipients of it. Ideally, this interaction will begin before the class meets on a particular topic, in a process known as inquiry-based learning. This paper describes some initial experiments with using technology to implement an inquiry-based learning paradigm.

Experiments with the use of popular press in the computer science curriculum

With the objective of encouraging and supporting more critical thinking about broad issues of computer science throughout the curriculum, we propose the widespread use of popular press (non-academic) books as supplemental texts for a variety of courses. Our hypothesis is that such books, which address topics including the history, current issues, and future implications of computing technology, as well as ethical issues, technical details and even fictional treatments, can greatly contribute to a students education in a variety of courses.

Women in Computing

The history of computer science is composed mainly of male achievements and involvements, even though women have played substantial roles. Although women are a significant part of computing history, the numbers of women in computing still have yet to reach parity with men. This article covers womens experiences and impact in the computing history of the United States and in several other nations and explores some of the reasons for the disparities between the number of men and women in this field. Keywords: women in computing; pipeline shrinkage problem; early computing history; gender equality; support; recruitment; retention

ACM-W's new programs for recruiting and retaining women in computing

This special session will provide an overview of the programs that ACMs executive committee on Women in Computing (ACM-W) coordinates for the recruitment and retention of women in computing. The overview will include projects in all areas of ACM-W with special focus on those projects impacting the educational environment.

BioSPRINT: classification of intron and exon sequences using the SPRINT algorithm

An important problem for computer scientists as well as geneticists involves classifying particular items into common groups. This paper focuses on classifying sequences of DNA as either an intron or an exon. Insights from this classification can reduce the time needed for laboratory work to distinguish between introns and exons. Using a classification tree based on the SPRINT algorithm, sequences from the Drosophila melanogaster and the Caenorhabditis elegans genomes were used for training and testing. A large test sample error rate of 15% was shown for the Drosophila melanogaster, whereas the Caenorhabditis elegans was only 1.6%.

Information Technology Training in Developing Countries

It is well known and well documented that there is a severe shortage of information technology professionals around the world. In an approach to address this shortage, Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina and the University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica haw developed a training program to help produce and sustain an information technology workforce in Jamaica. This paper describes the Caribbean Institute of Technology (CIT), a software training institute that was started in Jamaica in 1999. The institute consists of a main centre in Montego Bay and several satellite centres distributed across the island of Jamaica. These centres provide an intense ten-month training program for up to 100 Jamaicans at each site every year. The paper describes the organisation of the centres, the curriculum of the program, the co-operative efforts between Furman University and the University of the West Indies, and the future direction of CIT. Although this paper describes a case study within Jamaica, such an institute night well be duplicated in other developing countries.

Simulation of Real-world Development Processes in Computer Science Classes

Educators have long recognised that learning takes place most effectively in an environment in which the student is engaged in the process of their own education. One method for doing so is to put more control over the teaching and learning of course material into the hands of the students themselves. This paper describes an approach to learner-centred learning that involves the simulation of industrial software development practices as the central teaching technique. Our initial experiences with two courses — Web programming and systems analysis — are discussed in this paper.