Andrew McGettrick

ACM Education Council

San Francisco

June, 2012

The Education Board and Education Council – an update on activity

Outline

• Provide an overview of the Education Council and Education Board activities

• Provide a brief update on activity

• Make some comments on the agenda for the meeting

• Give an outline of some European developments (as appropriate)

The Education Council

• Education Council is internal to ACM and brings together all the computing education interests within ACM

• Contains representatives from

– Various SIGs, e.g. SIGCSE, SIGITE, SIGPLAN, SIGGRAPH, SIGCHI, SIGCAS

– CSTA and the Computing Education Policy Committee

– Editors of computing education publications

– CSAB and ABET representatives

– Industry

– Education Board members

• There are around 30 members in total

• Meetings held every 8 months approximately

Identifying Immediate Priorities

At a meeting of the Education Board in Seattle on 10th and 11th December 2010, the Board agreed its strategic priorities but also felt that it needed to provide a focus for current activity. The following priority areas were identified

• CS 2013, the next major version of the Computer Science guidelines

• The Advanced Placement initiative and the related CS 10k teachers issue

• An educational initiative involving ACM India has been developing

• Statistics gathering for all CS institutions

CS2013 Strawman Version

• The Strawman version was completed in February 2012

• It is now out for public consultation

• It is important that this is reviewed and a major part of the Education Council’s deliberations will centre on this

• Now available at

http://cs2013.org/strawman-draft/cs2013-strawman.pdf

The new AP exam and the 10k teachers project

• Several members of the Education Board / Education Council have been involved in pioneering particular implementations of the new Advanced Placement (AP) exam

• Owen Astrachan (on the Education Council) is the PI on this

• Other members are involved in giving advice on AP committees

• All members of the Education Council have been involved in the successful attestation activity

Initiative with ACM India

• Following discussion, a proposal had been received from ACM India (Mathai Joseph) seeking support for activity that would contribute towards the improvement of CS education in India

• A visit to India took place in January this year in Pune, India; this helped to increase ACM’s understanding of the issues as well as its visibility; developments are ongoing

Additional ongoing activity

• Ongoing support for CCECC, which is

– following up on the outcomes of an earlier summit, and

– planning an IT initiative for two year colleges

• Reviews have taken place to help decide on updating 2004 publications on Software Engineering and Computer Engineering. Interim reviews are about to go ahead

Education Council Meeting of June 2012

• Agenda to include the usual matters of keeping everyone up-to-date about what is happening educationally in other parts of ACM and beyond

• There will be updates on areas of current concern, e.g. Taurus

• Important topics will be

– online education – recent and current developments

– the CS 2013 report; Education Council members have been ‘given homework’ and are being asked to provide input on particular areas

Cyber Security Education

• The Education Board has been approached by the National Science Foundation (NSF) with a request to become involved in shaping and stimulating cyber security education in colleges and universities

• The Education Board has accepted this

• A proposal has been sent to NSF for some initial studies

ACM Europe - Educational Developments

• First initiative involves working with Informatics Europe and SIGCSE (Special Interest Group in Computer Science Education) to consider creating a highly prestigious computing education conference in Europe for Europeans

• Again the second initiative also involves working with Informatics Europe and to create a report on computing in schools for Europe

Membership of Joint Team

• ACM SIGCSE representatives

Renee McCauley, Chair of SIGCSE

Guido Rößling

Andrew McGettrick

• Informatics Europe representatives

Carlo Ghezzi, Chair of Informatics Europe

Antoine Petit

Gregor Engels

Progress

• No official decisions but looking like …

• Informatics Education Europe conference on the broad theme of informatics education at all levels (from schools through to university)

• Co-locating it with ECSS, European Computer Science Summit, which is run by Informatics Europe; typically this takes place each year around October, November

• Co-sponsorship by SIGCSE and Informatics Europe with equal responsibilities

• Some important details still to be resolved but good progress

The Schools Project - Team Membership

• ACM Europe

Andrew McGettrick (UK), Roger Boyle (UK), Michele Drechsler (France), Avi Mandelsohn (Israel), Chris Stephenson (CSTA, US)

• Informatics Europe

Walter Gander (Switzerland), Barbara Demo (Italy), Antione Petit (France), Gerard Berry (France)

UK Royal Society Report – Shut Down or Restart?

• http://royalsociety.org/education/policy/computing-in-schools/report/

Recommendations (1 – 4)

1. The term ICT as a brand should be reviewed and the possibility considered of disaggregating this into clearly defined areas such as digital literacy, Information Technology and Computer Science …

2. The government should set targets for the number of Computer Science and Information Technology specialist teachers, and monitor recruitment against these targets …

3. Government departments with responsibility for education in the UK should seek industry support to extend existing funding

4. School infrastructure service providers, working with others, should prepare a set of off-the-shelf strategies for balancing network security against the need to enable good teaching and learning

Recommendations (5 - 7)

5. Suitable technical resources should be available in all schools to support the teaching of Computer Science and Information Technology.

6. The Department for Education should remedy the current situation, where good schools are dis-incentivised from teaching Computer Science, by reforming and rebranding the current ICT curriculum in England.

7. In order to redress the imbalance between academic and vocational qualifications in this area – and to ensure that all qualifications are of value to those who take them – the departments for education across the UK should encourage Awarding Organisations to review their current provision and develop [..] qualifications in Computer Science in consultation with the UK Forum […], universities and employers.

Recommendations (8 – 11)

8. The UK Forum […] should advise Awarding Organisations on appropriate assessment methods for qualifications

9. The UK Forum […] should put in place a framework to support non-formal learning in Computer Science and to support teachers

10.Awarding organisations should consult with the UK Forum […] and HE departments to develop rigorous […] academic qualifications in Computer Science.

11.The Computing community should establish a lasting UK Forum for joint working and coordination between the many Computing bodies, in order to progress the recommendations within this report.

Important Reference

• Important reference to CAS - Computing at School

http://academy.bcs.org/category/16655

Progress to Date

• Informatics Europe wished to set up a small Executive group consisting of Walter Gander, Antoine Petit and Andrew McGettrick

• This has happened

• The thrust of this was to be sure that there would be something substantial to discuss at any meeting / call

• The small group would hammer out some ideas and then pass them to the full group for their consideration

• Considerable progress has been made in formulating ideas

Some comments

• It is proposed that the study of computing is seen as digital literacy and informatics

• Digital literacy

is what all students must know; this is not seen as forming the basis of a pre-requisite for university entry but it is assumed that education here will start at an early age and by the time of university entry (or preferably earlier) all will be competent in this area

• Informatics

is the basic discipline with which we are familiar

Proposed Report Outline

1. Introduction

2. Examples of current Informatics Education in Europe

3. Strategy Adopted by the Working Group

4. Digital Literacy

5. Education in Informatics

6. Pedagogical considerations, Teachers and CPD

7. Recommendations

Summary of activity

• Strategic priorities identified

• Progress on all; all of these having an international perspective and reach

• Depending on progress at this meeting, there may be a need to revisit these – comments on that would be welcomed

• Additional important activities mentioned

• Involvement with ACM India and ACM Europe, supporting them in their goals