The Education Board and Education Council – an update on activity

1. The Education Board and Education Council – an update on activity Andrew McGettrick The ACM SIG Governing Board Chicago 16th March, 2012

2. 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

3. 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. …

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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.

10. CS 2013 Steering Committee ACM • Mehran Sahami, Chair (Stanford) • Andrea Danyluk (Williams College) • Sally Fincher (Univ. of Kent) • Kathleen Fisher (Tufts University) • Dan Grossman (Univ. of Washington) • Beth Hawthorne (Union County Coll.) • Randy Katz (UC Berkeley) • Rich LeBlanc (Seattle Univ.) • Dave Reed (Creighton) IEEE-CS • Steve Roach, Chair (UT, El Paso) • Ernesto Cuadros-Vargas (Universidad Católica San Pablo, Peru) • Ronald Dodge (US Military Academy) • Robert France (Colorado State) • Amruth Kumar (Ramapo College of NJ) • Brian Robinson (ABB corporation) • Remzi Seker (U. of Arkansas, Little Rock) • Alfred Thompson (Microsoft)

11. 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

12. Principles for CS 2013 • Identify essential skills and body of knowledge for CS undergraduates. • CS is rapidly changing field, drawing from and contributing to variety of disciplines. Must prepare students for lifelong learning. • CS2013 is serving many constituents, including: faculty, students, administrators, curricula developers, and industry. • Curricular guidelines must be relevant to a variety of institution types (large/small, research/teaching, 4-yr/2-yr, US/int’l) • Provide guidance for level of mastery for topics, and show exemplars of fielded courses covering topics. • Provide realistic, adoptable recommendations that support novel curricular designs, and attract full range of talent to field. • Should include professional practice (e.g. communication skills, teamwork, ethics) as components of undergraduate experience.

13. 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

14. 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

15. 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

16. 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

17. 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

18. 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

19. 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

20. 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

21. 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.

22. 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

23. 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

24. 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

25. 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 2007-2008 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.

26. 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).

27. 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

28. 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

29. 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