Web Science: expanding the notion of Computer Science

Academic disciplines which practice in the context of rapid external change face particular problems when seeking to maintain timely, current and relevant teaching programs. In different institutions faculty will tune and update individual component courses while more radical revisions are typically departmental-wide strategic responses to perceived needs. Internationally, the ACM has sought to define curriculum recommendations since the 1960s and recognizes the diversity of the computing disciplines with its 2005 overview volume. The consequent rolling program of revisions is demanding in terms of time and effort, but an inevitable response to the change inherent is our family of specialisms. Preparation for the Computer Curricula 2013 is underway, so it seems appropriate to ask what place Web Science will have in the curriculum landscape. Web Science has been variously described; the most concise definition being the ‘science of decentralized information systems’. Web science is fundamentally interdisciplinary encompassing the study of the technologies and engineering which constitute the Web, alongside emerging associated human, social and organizational practices. Furthermore, to date little teaching of Web Science is at undergraduate level. Some questions emerge - is Web Science a transient artifact? Can Web Science claim a place in the ACM family, Is Web Science an exotic relative with a home elsewhere? This paper discusses the role and place of Web Science in the context of the computing disciplines. It provides an account of work which has been established towards defining an initial curriculum for Web Science with plans for future developments utilizing novel methods to support and elaborate curriculum definition and review. The findings of a desk survey of existing related curriculum recommendations are presented. The paper concludes with recommendations for future activities which may help us determine whether we should expand the notion of computer science

Innovative methods of teaching and harmonization of educational standards in the sphere of computing

Competence-based approach to education (unlike traditional qualification) reflects requirements not only to the content of education, but also to a behavioral component. Recommendations about drawing up curricula for training of specialists in the computing sphere are considered. New pedagogical methods, proposing creative combination of the theory and practice which is reached in the course of direct professional activity are analyzed. The analysis of the problems arising at creation of educational standards is also given. It has shown that professional standards are primary link in high-quality training of various areas of economy specialists (including for computing area), and also ensuring their competitiveness have to be a basis for their development. Thus, problems when developing professional standards complicate prospect of harmonization of professional and educational standards which demands necessary methodological, methodical and expert completion at the first design stage

Missing Elements of Computer Science Curricula 2013

Rapidly expanding computing domain has forced educational institutions to up-grade existing curricula of computing degree programs. Recently, a joint task force of Association for Computing Machinery and IEEE-Computer Society has published the Strawman Draft of Computer Science Curricula 2013. The Draft has introduced some new ideas to keep computing curricula modern and relevant. The recommended curricula have designed in the light of 6% response rate of the conducted survey. This paper has pointed out some important aspects which need attention to meet the challenges of the 21st century. These aspects include an Ad-hoc approach towards the core body of knowledge, incomplete curriculum guidelines, over-ambitious contents and learning outcomes. Some other missing aspects include computing dispositions, global education, 21st century skills, guideline for inclusion and the hidden curriculum. It is believed the recommendations of this paper may generate some thought provoking ideas to make the computing curricula more robust and effective

An information technology competency model and curriculum

This paper addresses the progress made by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the IEEE Computer Society (IEEE-CS) in developing a competency model and curricular guidelines for four-year degree programs in information technology. The authors are members of an international task group representative of academic institutions, industry, and professional organizations. The task group is to develop a competency model, called IT2017, for information technology education within two years based on earlier guidelines and other perspectives. This paper provides a brief background of the project, some activities undertaken, the progress made, and expectations for future developments. IT2017 seeks to produce a futuristic model of academic excellence so information technology graduates will be prepared for new technological challenges in a global economy

Four Opportunities for SE Ethics Education

Many software engineers direct their talents to- wards software systems which do not fall into traditional definitions of safety critical systems, but are integral to society (e.g., social media, expert advisor systems). While codes of ethics can be a useful starting point for ethical discussions, codes are often limited in scope to professional ethics and may not offer answers to individuals weighing competing ethical priorities. In this paper, we present our vision for improving ethics education in software engineering. To do this, we consider current and past curricular recommendations, as well as recent efforts within the broader computer science community. We layout challenges with vignettes and assessments in teaching, and give recommendations for incorporating updated examples and broadening the scope of ethics education in software engineering

Latin American perspectives to internationalize undergraduate information technology education

The computing education community expects modern curricular guidelines for information technology (IT) undergraduate degree programs by 2017. The authors of this work focus on eliciting and analyzing Latin American academic and industry perspectives on IT undergraduate education. The objective is to ensure that the IT curricular framework in the IT2017 report articulates the relationship between academic preparation and the work environment of IT graduates in light of current technological and educational trends in Latin America and elsewhere. Activities focus on soliciting and analyzing survey data collected from institutions and consortia in IT education and IT professional and educational societies in Latin America; these activities also include garnering the expertise of the authors. Findings show that IT degree programs are making progress in bridging the academic-industry gap, but more work remains

A Generic Curriculum Model for Computing Degree Programs

The current literature shows the existing curriculum models are unable to meet the needs of the today2019;s dynami

Holistic Cyber Education

This paper provides a multi-level, multidisciplinary approach for holistically integrating cyber into a student’s academic experience. Our approach suggests formally integrating cyber throughout an institution’s curriculum, including within the required general education program, in electives from a variety of disciplines, as multi-course threads, as minors, and in numerous cyber-related majors. Our holistic approach complements in-class curricula with both a pervasive cyber-aware environment and experiential, outside-the-classroom activities that apply concepts and skills in real-world environments. The goal of our approach is to provide all educated individuals a level of cyber education appropriate for their role in society. Throughout the description of our approach, we include examples of its implementation at the United States Military Academy.https://digitalcommons.usmalibrary.org/books/1024/thumbnail.jp

Comparison of Existing Computing Curricula and the New ACM-IEEE Computing Curricula 2013

The ACM-IEEE Computing Curricula 2005 was published by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the Association for Information Systems (AIS) and the Computer Society (IEEE-CS). After few years and many updates, the new version was published at the end of 2013 year. This last version can be named ACM-IEEE Computing Curricula 2013 (CC2013). In this paper, we present a comparison of the computing curricula degree programs from five countries (Ecuador, France, Germany, Poland and Spain) and the CC2013. The comparison takes into account both the duration and the content of the studies. This comparison can provide several benefits. Firstly, this comparison highlights the differences that exist among the five analysed countries; it can be used to define correspondence tables between different degree programs. Secondly, this comparison also shows the differences from the CC2005 and the following updates (e.g. CC2013) and it shows what should be changed to align with the latest updates.This work has been partially supported by the Prometeo Project by SENESCYT, Ecuadorian Government. This work has been partially supported by the GEODAS-BI (TIN2012-37493-C03-03) project from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness

Curriculum for an Introductory Computer Science Course: Identifying Recommendations from Academia and Industry

The purpose of this study was to define the course content for a university introductory computer science course based on regional needs. Delphi methodology was used to identify the competencies, programming languages, and assessments that academic and industry experts felt most important. Four rounds of surveys were conducted to rate the items in the straw models, to determine the entries deemed most important, and to understand their relative importance according to each group. The groups were then asked to rank the items in each category and attempt to reach consensus as determined by Kendall\u27s coefficient of concordance. The academic experts reached consensus on a list of ranked competencies in the final round and showed a high degree of agreement on lists of ranked programming languages and assessments. The industry experts did not reach consensus and showed low agreement on their recommendations for competencies, programming languages, and assessments