What is Skill? (and why does it matter?).

This Research-to-Practice Full Paper seeks to investigate the concept of Skill within a Competency Framework, such as that described by the CC2020 document. The notion of skill is fundamental to modern educational discourse. As educators, we strive, not only to impart knowledge, but to help students acquire the skills that they need to flourish in the modern academic and professional environments. We admire skillful practitioners and strive to become more skilled at what we do, recognising that skill is tied to an aesthetic sense - that there is something attractive and deeply satisfying about the process and output of skillful practice. Together with knowledge and disposition, the term is also used to denote one of the constituent components of competence. In computing, for example, the CC2020 document proposes curricular development models which promote skills as key ontological elements and emphasises skill acquisition as a major focus in the educational process. While this is undoubtedly an important, evolutionary development in discipline-based pedagogical practice, we feel that there are still foundational questions to be asked about precisely what is meant by definitional terms that form the core vocabulary of this approach. In this paper, we look at the notion of skill and provide a conceptual analysis which tries to distinguish it from other related ideas. We provide an overview of how skill has been seen historically as both a philosophical and sociological construct and what this means for using the term in educational theory. We examine how to usefully define skill, discuss the part it plays in teaching and assessment, and make recommendations for how it can be viewed operationally within a competency framework, such as that proposed by CC2020

Phronesis: deliberative judgement as a key competence in the post-Covid educational environment.

The global Covid19 pandemic which began in early 2020 is one of the most socially disruptive events to have occurred since the Second World War. It has left a profound mark on the institutions of society, including those charged with education, and its effects will be felt for many years. In this paper, we discuss some of the effects that public health policies have had on the practice of teaching, learning and assessment in the United Kingdom. We review at some of the literature on how current students have coped with the experience of education during Covid and look at potential difficulties that new students may now face when entering university. We suggest that the concept of phronesis, that is practical wisdom or prudential judgement, which can also be thought of as the faculty for making deliberative and evaluative judgements about courses of action, will be a crucial element of any recovery pedagogy since the problems faced are context-dependent and generally involve finding the most effective solutions among a range of options

Influencing student academic integrity choices using ethics scenarios.

Academic misconduct seems to have increased substantially during the pandemic, with a worldwide upsurge in reported cases. The aim of this project is to construct a framework for helping students engage with issues concerning academic integrity and avoid academic misconduct. This Work-In-Progress paper reports on the construction of a scenario-based framework to investigate the beliefs and attitudes of university stakeholders when confronted with decisions about potential academic misconduct. The framework will be based on using scenarios to spur individual reflections and discussions among the students regarding values related to academic integrity focusing on Uppsala University context. A repository of "misconduct" scenarios related to different cultures, including different views and regulations, is intended to support teachers to develop modules tailored to their current need. The underlying idea is to provide students with an understanding of what constitutes academic misconduct in Uppsala University setting and to help them find honest alternatives when faced with temptations to "cheat". Our view is that students, in general, want to behave honestly, and that this framework will provide a means to help students follow their moral "compass" and avoid dishonest behaviour

In search of a philosophy of computing education.

In this paper, we present a preliminary description of the field of inquiry encompassed by the philosophy of computing education. We first attempt to identify a general framework for investigating characteristic questions of a philosophical nature that arise within the STEM application domains. We describe the categories such questions fall under and use the philosophy of computing to illustrate this process. We also consider an alternative approach to identifying philosophical issues within a practical field, using the philosophy of education as an example. We consider the related subject of the philosophy of engineering education and see how this has recently emerged as an object of study in its own right. We investigate the similarities and differences between this field and the philosophy of computing education, and provide an initial description of the latter subject area. We also discuss how it relates to the subject referred to as Computing Education Research. Finally, we draw some conclusions about why there is this puzzling, apparent lack of interest in current work in this area, and suggest reasons why the pursuit of philosophical inquiry into computing education should be an important aspect of scholarly study in the subject

Subject-level quality assurance in computing: experiences from three national perspectives.

This paper examines some aspects of the Quality Assurance processes in Computing departments in three European universities. We first examine the operation of a quality assurance activity in the School of Computer Science in Iceland. The next case is an example from Sweden and finally we present a case from the United Kingdom. In each case, we examine the motivation for the outcome-based assurance methodologies that predominate in countries that are engaged in the Bologna Process in terms of the use of competence-based assessment. We compare the application of these processes to departmental review, focusing on the aims and objectives, who controls the process, the areas covered, the methodology and the use to which the information is put. We discuss some of the implications for teaching when different quality assurance processes are used and finally, we make some observations about the relatively sparse literature on Computing Education subject-specific quality assurance

Quality assurance using international curricula and employer feedback.

The focus of this paper is the quality assurance process for the bachelor program in the School of Computer Science at Reykjavik University, which is a combination of outcome- and process-oriented quality assurance. Faculty members and employers of graduates provided information for the quality assessment. The results provide both detailed quantitative data and more qualitative information that give all stakeholders a variety of ways to interpret the status of the quality of education. This type of assessment has raised the awareness of the faculty members on how abstract topics and learning outcomes from an international standard can be used when revising the curricula of a particular course. A notable feature of this type of analysis is its use of employer-generated data to examine graduate knowledge and skills. The contribution of the paper is to provide an example of how a quality assurance process can be made more valuable to both faculty and degree stakeholders by combining outcome- and process-oriented quality assurance strategies

Categorizing how students use collaborative technologies in a globally distributed project.

Possibilities for collaboration in globally distributed projects have radically changed with the introduction of new Collaborative Technologies (CTs) in the Web 2.0 era. The use of such technologies in the context of students collaborating in a globally distributed project is little explored in research. A better understanding would provide opportunities for improving the collaboration, and more importantly is that a better understanding would improve the possibility of scaffolding, and student learning in general. In this paper we present results from a study of students' use of CTs in a globally distributed project with a focus on the challenges encountered in trying to collaborate using this technology. The study is focused on a few aspects of how a combination of CTs could be utilized and issues associated with their set up and adaption for use. We discuss potential reasons for the observed patterns of technology use and how they influenced the collaboration environment around a globally distributed student project

When is quality assurance a constructive force in engineering education?

Quality assurance processes in education have been a key area of engineering education development for several decades. ABET, ENQA - The European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education, as well as other agencies in Europe and the Asia Pacific have largely converged on a set of high level graduate outcomes, widely considered to be those most relevant to the engineering professions. We suggest that outcome assessment can be classified into four major approaches, education as a service (with the focus on identifying customers), as a process (with a focus on describing the formative impact of curriculum on learners), as a Body of Knowledge (with a focus on transmission of that knowledge and the generation of artefacts), and finally as expansion of the individual (focusing on holistic development of the intellect)

Critical thinking, peer-writing, and the importance of feedback.

Critical thinking is one of the key competencies listed by OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) [1], a central European Community organization, and is also mentioned as a learning outcome for higher education by international organizations, such as ABET, ACM, and IEEE, as well as in numerous national and university legislations regarding higher education degrees. The ability to communicate, not least in writing, is another important competence our students are supposed to gain during their education. There is thus high agreement regarding the importance of these competencies, but it is not clear how to achieve this

Är anonyma tentamina objektiva och rättvisa?

"Anonyma tentor är just nu en av de hetaste trenderna i högskole-Sverige" skrev Svenska Dagbladet i mars 2008 (http://www.svd.se/nyheter/inrikes/artikel_964731.svd ) Frågan har under några år drivits av studentkårerna, men verkar i de flesta fall ha införts av universitetens och högskolornas ledning utan diskussion och förankring i lärarkåren och utan analys av relationen mellan fördelar och nackdelar eller plan för utvärdering. Vi saknar djupare analys av omfattningen av de problem systemet förväntas lösa i relation till de kostnader och nackdelar det skapar. Inte någonstans har vi sett en diskussion om huruvida de föreslagna åtgärderna är den bästa resursanvändningen för att mildra problemen. I ett försök att fördjupa diskussionen skrev vi en debattartikel i Universitetsläraren (Daniels och Pendrill 2008). Vi bad vi att få genomföra en spontansession under konferensen om högre utbildning i maj 2008. Som förberedelse för sessionen fick vi också möjlighet att genomföra en enkät bland deltagarna som delades ut i anslutning till en av plenarsessionerna. Vi presenterar här resultaten av denna enkät, diskussionerna och en kort analys