Transcript The ACM Education Policy Committee and Issues in Computer

The Education Board and Education Council
– an update on activity
Andrew McGettrick
The ACM SIG Governing Board
Chicago
16th March, 2012
Outline
• Provide an overview of the Education Council and Education
Board activities
• List Education Board current priorities and include an update on
these
• Indicate ways in which the SIGs might provide further support for
Education Board / Education Council work
• Mention additional issues briefly – PACE, European developments
The ACM Education Board – its Charter
Scope
The general scope of the Education Board is to promote computer
science education at all levels and in all ways possible. The
Board will be an executive-like committee overseeing the
Education Council and will initiate, direct, and manage key ACM
educational projects. This includes activities such as the
promotion of curriculum recommendations, the coordination of
educational activities, and efforts to provide educational and
information services to the ACM membership.
The Board will oversee the work of the Education Council. This
body will include representatives of all ACM committees
concerned with accreditation, curricula, aid to educational
institutions, and other educational activities. …
ACM Education Board
• Andrew McGettrick, Strathclyde University
• Lillian N. Cassel, Villanova University
• Daniel D. Garcia, UC at Berkeley
• Mark Guzdial, Georgia Tech
• John Impagliazzo, Hofstra University
• Margaret L. Johnson, Google
• Jane Prey, Microsoft
• Eric Roberts, Stanford University
• Mehran Sahami, Stanford University
• Larry Snyder, University of Washington
• Heikki Topi, Bentley University
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
Strategic Objectives - 1
• To provide a focus for ACM activity and leadership in the general
area of computing education
• To support be ACM’s strategic objectives through activities and
initiatives in computing education; this includes providing support
for ACM’s various Councils
• To understand the education related needs and aspirations of
ACM members – students, academics, practitioners (and their
managers) and employers - and to respond appropriately on
behalf of ACM
• To provide leadership for the computing community in curricular
development and curricular guidance; the community is to
include all levels of education (specifically including K-12 and
Two-Year College activity) with the emphasis being on higher
education
Strategic Objectives - 2
• Where possible to act on behalf of the computing community to
increase the status and standing of computing education
• In recognising ACM’s role as an international organisation, to
understand the differing needs of the international community
and to address these in Education Board and Education Council
considerations
• To organise and manage meetings of the Education Council, to
keep the Council members up-to-date with significant
developments and generally to manage the work of the Council
• To approve ACM appointments to education-related bodies such
as ABET, and to keep informed about and engage in significant
related activity
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
• Support for CS 2013 (the slides that follow on this owe much to
Mehran Sahami, leader of CS 2013 activity)
• The Advanced Placement initiative and the related 10k teachers
issue
• An educational initiative involving ACM India is gathering
momentum
• Statistics gathering for all CS institutions
Computer Science 2013
To review the Joint ACM and IEEE/CS Computer Science volume
of Computing Curricula 2001 and the accompanying interim
review CS 2008, and develop a revised and enhanced version for
the year 2013 that will match the latest developments in the
discipline and have lasting impact.
The CS2013 task force will seek input from a diverse audience
with the goal of broadening participation in computer science.
The report will seek to be international in scope and offer
curricular and pedagogical guidance applicable to a wide range of
institutions. The process of producing the final report will include
multiple opportunities for public consultation and scrutiny.
CS 2013 Steering Committee
ACM
IEEE-CS
•
Mehran Sahami, Chair (Stanford)
•
Steve Roach, Chair (UT, El Paso)
•
Andrea Danyluk (Williams
College)
•
•
Sally Fincher (Univ. of Kent)
Ernesto Cuadros-Vargas
(Universidad Católica San Pablo,
Peru)
•
Kathleen Fisher (Tufts University)
•
•
Dan Grossman (Univ. of
Washington)
Ronald Dodge (US Military
Academy)
•
Robert France (Colorado State)
•
Beth Hawthorne (Union County
Coll.)
•
Amruth Kumar (Ramapo College
of NJ)
•
Randy Katz (UC Berkeley)
•
Brian Robinson (ABB corporation)
•
Rich LeBlanc (Seattle Univ.)
•
•
Dave Reed (Creighton)
Remzi Seker (U. of Arkansas,
Little Rock)
•
Alfred Thompson (Microsoft)
High-level Themes for CS 2013
• “Big Tent” view of Computer Science
– “Outward” looking view of the field
– Able to bridge to multi-disciplinary work (“Computational X”)
• Managing curriculum size
– Aim to not increase required hours from CS2001
– Greater flexibility with respect to local needs/resources
• Course exemplars as opposed to stylized courses
– Pointers to existing courses that incorporate knowledge units
– Not creating a set of reference classes
• Be aware of institutional needs
– Variable goals, resources, and constraints
– Variety of school sizes, school types, and available resources
Principles for CS 2013
1.
Identify essential skills and body of knowledge for CS
undergraduates.
2.
CS is rapidly changing field, drawing from and contributing to
variety of disciplines. Must prepare students for lifelong
learning.
3.
CS2013 is serving many constituents, including: faculty,
students, administrators, curricula developers, and industry.
4.
Curricular guidelines must be relevant to a variety of institution
types (large/small, research/teaching, 4-yr/2-yr, US/int’l)
5.
Provide guidance for level of mastery for topics, and show
exemplars of fielded courses covering topics.
6.
Provide realistic, adoptable recommendations that support novel
curricular designs, and attract full range of talent to field.
7.
Should include professional practice (e.g. communication skills,
teamwork, ethics) as components of undergraduate experience.
Timeline (that had been identified)
• December 2011: kick-off
– Surveyed 3500 departments (200+ responses)
– Monthly conference calls
• March 2011: SIGCSE conference
– Public consultation at conference
– cs2013.org launched
• August 2011: Further in-person meeting
• December 2011: Towards report
– Complete draft of body of knowledge
– All knowledge areas updated with external vetting review
• February 2012: Strawman draft – public release
Planned contents of report
• Guiding principles and rationale
• Body of knowledge
– Topically organized set of “knowledge areas”
– Knowledge areas provide list of topics and learning outcomes
• Curricular structure
– Guidance on how Body of Knowledge translates into curriculum
– Institutional challenges
• Professional considerations
– Characteristics of CS graduates
– Professional practice
• Curricular exemplars
– Pointers to and discussion of example curricular/courses reflecting
diverse ways of covering the Body of Knowledge
CS2013 Strawman Version
• Strawman version completed in February 2012
• It is now out for public consultation
• It could be very helpful for the SIGs to comment on areas of
particular interest
• Now available at
http://cs2013.org/strawman-draft/cs2013-strawman.pdf
Knowledge Areas – the first 9
• AL - Algorithms and Complexity
• AR - Architecture and Organization
• CN - Computational Science
• DS - Discrete Structures
• GV - Graphics and Visual Computing
• HC - Human-Computer Interaction
• IAS - Information Assurance and Security
• IM - Information Management
• IS - Intelligent Systems
Knowledge areas – the second 9
• NC - Networking and Communications
• OS - Operating Systems
• PBD - Platform-based Development
• PD - Parallel and Distributed Computing
• PL - Programming Languages
• SDF - Software Development Fundamentals
• SE - Software Engineering
• SF - Systems Fundamentals
• SP - Social and Professional Issues
Body of Knowledge – some highlights
• New knowledge areas
– Parallel and distributed computing
– Information assurance and security
– System fundamentals
• with cross-cutting systems concepts such as caching, locality, latency,
parallelism
– Platform-based development
• e.g. web, mobile, game consoles, robots
• Updating of Knowledge areas
– Reorganizing topics in many areas, e.g. programming fundamentals,
programming languages, algorithms, some software engineering
Community engagement
• Discussions with various SIGs
– SIGART, SIGCAS, SIGCHI, SIGPLAN, SIGCOMM, etc
• Web site created
– For dissemination and engagement
• Multiple opportunities for community involvement
– To review draft documents
– For mapping exemplar courses to Body of Knowledge
– For other suggestions
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
• Other members are involved in giving advice on AP committees
• All members of the Education Council have been involved in the
successful attestation activity
• Additional activity has involved thinking about the associated 10k
teachers problem
Beyond NSF Support
• Certain matters now need to be addressed. Some fall within the
scope of CE21, namely
– Additional course models
– Standards and assessment issues
• Others are beyond NSF support and indeed NSF mission:
– Teacher preparation – scaling up to 10 000
– Making contact with and gaining entry to high schools
• Ed Board /Council setting up subcommittee to take certain ideas
forward
• There is also the issue of public/private partnership to support
aspects of this CS 10k project.
Partnership
• Involves ACM, NSF and Google, and is
– Based around the new AP CS Principles course
– Has a focus on developing training and professional development
materials
– Involves securing significant funding from the private sector for the
training of up to 10 000 teachers
– Seeks to find ways of engaging the appropriate folk (teachers, school
authorities, etc) and pursing the goals of the project
Initiative with ACM India
• Following discussion, a proposal has been received from ACM
India (Mathai Joseph) seeking support for activity that would
contribute towards the improvement of CS education in India
• The Education Board has wrestled with this and progress is being
made (almost all effort to date coming from ACM India):
– Five courses have been identified: introduction to programming,
functional programming, modern automata theory, machine learning
/ data mining, foundation of systems
– Initial course is being developed by ACM India; important for these to
be developed locally
– An initial way of presenting the material has been agreed; online
education is highly relevant here
• A workshop involving Education Board members is being planned
for September 2012
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
• There is an initiative with ACM Europe, passed to SIGCSE for
consideration; the topic is a high profile Computing Education
conference in Europe and for Europe.
• In conjunction with Informatics Europe, ACM Europe is
undertaking a computing-in-schools (pre-university) study; note
that a report on computing-in-schools in the UK has just been
produced by the Royal Society in London
TauRus
• TauRus = Taulbee for the Rest of Us
• Project sponsored by SIGCSE; presentation given at Ed Council
meeting by Jodi Tims; builds on initial work by Michael Goldweber
• Aim is to gather statistics from a wide range of institutions on the
state of computing education … so survey of the landscape
• Results based on responses, and response rate poor (around 65
out of 2500); initially Taulbee responses were poor
• Various results: on enrollments to BS degrees, increases in 20072008 was 2.40%, in 2008-2009 was 9.02% and in 2009-2010
was 32.26%
• Ed Board / Council challenges on how to extend this and fund it.
• ACM has now agreed to sponsor this as it goes forward (with
support from Google). Hence the ACM Taurus project.
PACE –
Partnership for Advancing Computing Education
•
Recall that a summit of professional societies was held in June 2009 in
Washington DC
– An outcome of this was a proposal to set up a Computing Education
Coordinating Council (CECC)
– An inaugural meeting of CECC took place in Washington DC on 26th April 2011
– At the meeting it was felt that CECC, as a name for the organization, lacked
buzz and aspiration. The name PACE was chosen instead
•
The member organizations present were ACM, the Association for
Information Systems (AIS), the Computer Society (IEEE CS) , the
Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) and the National Center
for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT)
•
Mark Guzdial (from Georgia Tech) was selected as the PACE
Administrative Director.
•
NCWIT will provide the first Chair of the PACE board of directors (Lecia
Barker).
PACE – an overview
• Goals and Objectives
– High quality, diversity, and capacity of the computing workforce
– High quality of computing education at all levels
– Increased stability of enrollments at levels compatible with demands
• Membership provides opportunities to
– Advance the state of computing education
– Share strategies and innovations
– Build partnerships to support and enhance current and new initiatives
– Reduce expense and increase impact
• Formally not yet launched
– Web site being developed
– Immediate tasks being considered
Very recent concerns
• Online education has arisen as an important matter that we need
to better understand. This could be relevant to
– the ACM India initiative
– the 10k teachers problem
– Promoting ideas from CS2013
– and beyond …
• Education on cyber security has also featured heavily in recent
discussions
• Keen to know of expertise or interest within the SIGs on both
these matters
Summary
• Strategic priorities identified, with top three selected for
immediate attention
• Progress on all, all of these having an international perspective
and reach
• Additional important activities
• Involvement with ACM India and ACM Europe, supporting them in
their goals