Academic Programs Adequate For The Software Profession?

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, close to 1.8 million people, or 77% of all computer professionals, were working in the design, development, deployment, maintenance, and management of software in 2006.  The ACM model curriculum for the BS in computer science proposes that about 42% of the core body of knowledge be dedicated to software engineering, including programming.  An examination of the curriculum of a typical computer science department shows that, excluding programming courses, no courses specific to software engineering are required for the BS, although several are available as elective courses.  Academics typically resist the demands of the industry, in part because some of them are for specific software tools, design methods, or programming languages whose use does not last.  Under market pressure, more required software engineering courses may slowly be included in the curriculum.  The usual solution is for businesses to offer their software professionals needed courses in software engineering

Basic parallel and distributed computing curriculum

International audienceWith the advent of multi-core processors and their fast expansion, it is quite clear that parallel computing is now a genuine requirement in Computer Science and Engineering (and related) curriculum. In addition to the pervasiveness of parallel computing devices, we should take into account the fact that there are lot of existing softwares that are implemented in the sequential mode, and thus need to be adapted for a parallel execution. Therefore, it is required to the programmer to be able to design parallel programs and also to have some skills in moving from a given sequential code to the corresponding parallel code. In this paper, we present a basic educational scenario on how to give a consistent and efficient background in parallel computing to ordinary computer scientists and engineers

A testbed for teaching Industrial Automation 4.0

Capstone Project submitted to the Department of Engineering, Ashesi University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Engineering, April 2019This paper explores the current flaws of the undergraduate syllabi treating Industrial Automation and Control. It elaborates on the disparities between the current syllabi and what is used in Industry; particularly the current trend of Industrial Automation. It looks at the effect of not meeting this trend in Industry and thus offers a solution in the form of another curriculum, which incorporates concepts of Industrial Automation 4.0 which are necessary for the workplace. It uses the core topics of this syllabus to build a testbed to help familiarise students with how all these concepts work together. This testbed is simply a system to monitor and control the temperature and the flow of water between two containers using a programmable logic controller and an AC Drive. It concludes with the limitations of the curriculum and concepts which could be used to expand the curriculum further to facilitate other topics which are used in Industry.Ashesi Universit

ACM/IEEE-CS information technology curriculum 2017: A status update

The IT2008 Curriculum Guidelines for Undergraduate Degree Programs in Information Technology has been showing its age, and in 2014, the ACM Education Board agreed to oversee the creation of a revision, now being referred to as IT2017. Much progress has been made, and a version 0.6 will be ready by Oct 2016. All proposed panel members are members of the IT2017 Task Group

Communication and leadership skills in the Computer Science and Information Systems curricula: A case study comparison of US and Bulgarian programs

In this paper we present results from our curriculum research on the behavioral educational topics being in the computer science (CS) and information systems (IS) academic programs in two countries USA and Bulgaria. Specifically, we address learning outcomes as they pertain to IT Project Management. Our research reveals that the two countries approach undergraduate education from different vantage points. The US universities provide a flexible general education curriculum in many academic areas and students have the opportunity to strengthen their soft skills before they enter the workforce. Bulgarian universities provide specialized education in main CS subject areas and the students are technically strong upon graduation. Is there a way to balance out this divergent educational experience so that students get the best of both worlds? Our paper explores this aspect and provides possible solutions

ACM Curriculum Reports: A Pedagogic Perspective

In this paper, we illuminate themes that emerged in interviews with participants in the major curriculum recommendation efforts: we characterize the way the computing community interacts with and influences these reports and introduce the term “pedagogic projection” to describe implicit assumptions of how these reports will be used in practice. We then illuminate how this perceived use has changed over time and may affect future reports