Microsoft Word Class != IT Education

Posted on February 2, 2013 by Mark Stockman

Tim Berners-Lee’s creation of the world wide web is probably the invention that ultimately created the academic discipline of information technology.  As computer networks expanded beyond niche military or academic circles, the need arose for usability, interoperability, security, scaleability, and manageability of the computing resources.  Responding to these needs, universities like RIT, Georgia Southern, BYU, Purdue, and my own UC developed applied computing undergraduate programs.  The faculty of these programs and others like them came together to define the information technology discipline; a group now part of ACM (SIGITE).

So all thanks to Mr. Berners-Lee in the world.  But in an interview recently he showed a lack of understanding about the information technology discipline.  In pushing for more computing education in the K-12 systems, he makes a plea against just teaching kids the basics of using standard software applications.

“It’s very important in education with this computer science, which is understanding the philosophy of computer and the mathematics of computing, and learning to really build stuff, it’s very different from the IT class, and I think making that distinction very clear and maybe early on in schools is very important.”

My assumption here, based on his previous comments in the article about going beyond teaching kids Microsoft Word, is just that Mr. Berners-Lee does not know there is an applied computing discipline out there called IT.  That he has simply mislabeled classes in the use of basic computer applicantions as IT.  This lack of knowledge about the IT discipline is something we IT faculty encounter often.

But it does not help the public’s understanding when our computer science brethren insist, or use slight of hand to suggest, that computer science is 1) the only computing discipline out there, 2) the only one that matters, or 3) best suited to educate all students wanting to go on to careers in the applied computing space.  Computer Science Education week is a great example of this, who’s website claims that Computer Science is:  Computing, Computer Engineering, Informatics, Information Technology, Software Engineering, Information Systems.

If the computing disciplines work together in helping the public understand the differences, students will be more likely to choose computing as a career and less likely to transfer out of computing altogether while in college.  After talking with students about their interests and career goals, I have suggested to some (even my own nephew recently) that computer science, information systems, or computer engineering may be the best fit for them and hope others do the same for IT.

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STEM Hijacked?

Posted on January 28, 2013 by Joseph Kmoch

I’ve gone to a number of STEM conferences locally and a few nationally.  In nearly all cases, all I’ve ever heard about is engineering.  In fact a local STEM conference I’ve attended for 8 years had a single panel discussion on Information Technology this year for the first time. If I didn’t know better I’d think that the only way for a school to be involved with STEM is to teach engineering.

Is engineering sexier?  Is it more interesting?  Is there more money behind engineering?  Is it easier for businesses to support engineering programs in K-12 because kids often produce physical, tangible things as they are developing their engineering chops?

Why when you mention IT do people nod approvingly, but then avoid further discussing this area and including it in STEM?  Do other readers see this?

In fact while on that aforementioned panel, I referred to CS in several slides and afterwards, several university and business folks told me I either shouldn’t talk about CS or I need to combine it with IT, because, they exclaimed, businesses don’t do CS – they do IT and their departments are so named (IT or IS or something similar)…then you discover that most of what those departments do is design, develop and implement software…sounds like CS to me.  But maybe this is for another post.  Maybe I have an incorrect or off-center notion.

Let’s talk!  See you here soon!

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Intro

Posted on January 28, 2013 by Joseph Kmoch

My name is Joe Kmoch from Milwaukee, WI and one of several regular bloggers on the ACM Inroads site. My orientation will be K-12 since I taught math and computer science for 34 years, 28 of those at Washington HS of IT in Milwaukee. I taught all sorts of programming and IT courses along the way including APCS-AB for 21 years. I also was on the APCS Development Committee for 4 years.

Since I retired some years ago, I advise the school and serve on their Advisory Board which is made up of about 20 business people, some post-secondary reps and a few retired staff like me. As some of you know, I’ve kept my “oar in the water” related to CS education. I’ve been involved at the curricular level and as an advocate for increased CS in schools in general both locally and around the nation.  If you want to see some specifics of my involvement, take a look at my LinkedIn page at http://www.linkedin.com/in/joekmoch

Over what I hope will be many blogs and lots of comments, I’m guessing that everything K-12 is on the table.  Advocacy, approaches to beginning courses at the HS level, middle school and elementary computer science (possibly with a guest blogger for elementary), developing a program (i.e., a series of courses at the high school level, perhaps a series of units at the K-8 level), getting support for your program, and probably lots of other things that I’m forgetting at the moment.

I welcome your response to any future blog posts I write. So let the fun begin!

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Examining failure

Posted on January 18, 2013 by Amber.Settle

I had an interesting experience recently on my personal blog that started me thinking about failure and computing education.  I’m teaching a new class, and I wrote a blog post in which I discussed my preparations for the first lecture and my expectations about the quarter.  Recognizing that teaching a new class inevitably involves setbacks I titled the post ‘Poised for Failure.’  I certainly recognized in advance that this was a dramatic title, but it conveyed both my readiness and my expectation that I would have unsuccessful attempts along the way.  The reaction to my post, and particularly to its title, surprised me a bit.  People admonished me to be more positive, seeing failure as a term that I shouldn’t have used.

The responses led me to think about my attitude toward failure.  While it can be discouraging and disheartening to fail at something, it’s also inevitable.  It is only the most gifted of people who doesn’t experience failure on a regular basis, and those who push themselves experience it more often.  Personally, I see failure as feedback.  It’s a sign that you were doing wasn’t quite right and that you need to try something different.  The only part of failure that reflects on me as a person is my reaction to it.

Since this experience had come about in a work context, I also thought about failure and computing.  It occurred to me that my attitude about failure is particularly helpful in someone who wants to work in a computing-related field.  Problem solving, and the inevitable failure associated with it, is core to computing.  People who are successful in computing are people who handle failure on a regular basis: the program crashes, the network goes down, the algorithm has a problem, the machine dies.  Handling these situations requires a certain acceptance of failure as a natural part of the process.

But my experience teaching has let me see that students don’t tend to develop this attitude about failure until at least midway through their programs.  Students in early classes, typically programming classes, often personalize failure in ways that may not be helpful.  Yes, a student who repeatedly fails at coding probably isn’t going to be a developer, but some amount of failure is part of the process of coding and therefore part of the process of learning to code.  When I teaching CS1/2 I try to convey that failure is natural, as a way of letting the students see that they shouldn’t take their failure personally.  I’m not sure how effective I am at this.

Speaking of effectiveness, all of this led me to consider what the literature has to say about failure and computing education.  In my search I ran across two interesting articles.  In the first, Tony Clear writes about failure in the context of a capstone course, which is a situation on the opposite end of a degree program from CS1/2.  In the second, Klara Benda, Amy Bruckman, and Mark Guzdial examine failure in online courses.  There failure means lack of retention, and I particularly enjoyed their summary of the literature on retention.  It also surprised me how few articles in computing education were displayed in the ACM Digital Library when the keyword failure is provided.  It was a much more common term in the broader computing literature, which is somewhat ironic.

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Can a) b) c) d) Assess Understanding?

Posted on January 2, 2013 by Mark Stockman

As an information technology (IT) faculty member teaching in the systems and networking side of the camp (rather than development), I have always found it important to assess students’ clear understanding of and ability to discuss computing technologies. Because IT is an applied discipline, this understanding is different than what computer science students require.  As an example, IT students need to grasp how DNS functions and how it communicates with clients and other services, then be able to configure it on multiple server operating systems. They do not, however, need to understand the intricacies of shaping the DNS packet to optimize traffic on a network or be able to develop a new DNS application for a network appliance.

Most any college student can press next or follow a step-by-step guide to get some computing technology to work.  But IT students need to troubleshoot problems, apply guides to their own specific environment, integrate technologies, apply security, optimize performance, and be able to quickly adapt to new or changing technologies.  They do this by possessing knowledge of the underpinnings of the computing technology.  As such, labs that I give students are more of a task list to complete rather than a step-by-step recipe.

IT students also need to learn to communicate about computing technologies within an organization and not have to do a Google search in the midst of talking to others (technical or non-technical) about these technologies.  Because of this, exam/quiz questions I give to students are not multiple-choice or true/false in nature.  Much to their chagrin, students are asked to describe some piece of computing technology, how it communicates with the network, how to secure it, and its implications for other services or devices.

Perhaps this is just my own tired bias against multiple-choice rearing its head.  As a student, I always thought multiple-choice questions fell into two categories; very easy or trick questions.  Knowing an exam was going to be multiple-choice resulted in a lack of studying on my part, assured that a decent grade was within my grasp just because of the exam format.  I tell my students that they will rarely get a multiple-choice question in the real world, and certainly not trick questions; instead they will need to be able to discuss and comprehend computing technologies.

With rising class sizes within my own department and no teaching assistants though, I worry about how long I will be able to sustain my favored assessments.  Can I determine if a student truly understands DNS (or any other type of computing technology) and be able to logically talk about it by using a more efficient grading mechanism?  Do I fail to see the strength of good multiple-choice questions?  What are your experiences?

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Social scientists who want to program

Posted on December 28, 2012 by Amber.Settle

I just returned from a trip to Arizona to visit family, and one of the interesting conversations I had was with my sister.  She is a newly-hired faculty member in the government department at the College of William and Mary.  We were talking about the new Python class I’m going to be teaching starting in January, and she remarked that she’d like to learn to program in Python.  She said that she’d used scripts that other people had written, but that she was interested in trying her hand at writing programs.  I told I was sure she could learn Python on her own, but she said she liked the obligation that a class entails.  I was encouraging about her idea, and I hope she’ll carry through with it.

When I returned I read the article Viewpoint: Computer code frees us to think in new ways by Tom Armitage in the BBC.  In it he very eloquently argues that programming is as much about design as engineering, writing:

A great deal of it is much more like sculpture. Data, technology, code, as a slab of clay, to be manipulated, explored, felt between your fingers, and slowly turned into something substantive.

It’s practically the opposite of engineering. It’s an artistic discipline: beginning with sketching and exploring, and then building on those sketches slowly through iteration, watching a final structure emerge.

He then goes on to argue that everyone needs to know more than just computer literacy, because computers and code are like prostheses for people.  As he says:

The magic of these prostheses – the magic that lies at the heart of true innovation – is not necessarily just doing things faster. It is giving us the ability to think new thoughts.

The convergence of these two things in my life got me thinking about people who aren’t computer scientists, or even identify as programmers, but nevertheless would like to program.  Mark Guzdial has written extensively about this, most recently here, so I won’t rehash a lot of the ideas.  But what strikes me this time is that it’s not just computer scientists who are suggesting that learning to program is worthwhile.  Political scientists, like my sister, recognize that programming would open up new worlds for them, and they want to be a part of it.  I find that to be interesting, since real change only happens when people are ready and embrace it.  The innovation that would arise from social scientists (and artists and others) learning to program makes me excited for the future.

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An Introduction: Andrew Luxton-Reilly

Posted on December 17, 2012 by Andrew.LuxtonReilly

Hi.  Or perhaps, as is more common among us Antipodeans, Gidday!  As with previous posts from Roger and Mark, I’m beginning with a brief introduction.

My name is Andrew Luxton-Reilly (originally Andrew Luxton, but I changed my name when I married, much to the surprise of my students).  I came from a background in the liberal arts, studying subjects like Media, Ancient History, Psychology and Philosophy and I loved it.   I completed a Masters of Arts in Philosophy before eventually conceding that a more applied subject would improve my career opportunities.  I was fortunate to be finishing my studies at a time when student numbers in Computer Science were growing rapidly and I fell into a teaching position in the Computer Science Department at The University of Auckland in New Zealand, more by accident than by design.  I have been a member of the faculty since 1995, but spent the first 10 years teaching, and have only been involved in Computer Science Education Research since 2005.

The majority of my research has related to Contributing Student Pedagogies, which bring the ideas of user-generated content into the Educational ambit.  More recently, I’ve become interested in trying to describe and measure the various things that make programming code difficult to understand.  I’ve also been involved in a few ITiCSE working groups, which I highly recommend to anyone who gets the chance.

I’ve been teaching what are considered to be large classes by our standards, averaging around 400 students (although before the decline in CS enrolments some classes peaked at almost 850 students).  Most of this teaching has been with novice programmers, either in CS0, CS1 or CS2.   Although I love teaching the introductory sequence, I was gratified to have had the opportunity this year to develop and teach a new graduate course in Computing Education.

A new role that I’ve taken on recently has been membership in the University of Auckland Human Participant Ethics Committee – in other words, the institutional ethics review board.  I’ve only been on the committee for a few months so far, but it is fascinating to be on the other side of the fence when it comes to approving research studies.  I expect to write more on some of the issues that arise in future.

It is almost Christmas, which means long days on the beach and BBQs in the sun.  Once again, I have to explain to my (5 yr old) son that it won’t snow on Christmas, regardless of what he sees on cards, books, TV shows, movies and merchandise.  What is normal for one culture doesn’t always apply in another, and it is only through exposure to a diversity of views that we realize how much we inherit from tradition, and how different things could be!

I hope that my contributions here will add to the diversity of views on CS Education from around the world – but not until I get back from my summer holidays :)

Ciao,
Andrew

 

Posted in Andrew Luxton-Reilly, Introduction | 1 Comment

An Introduction: Roger McDermott

Posted on December 14, 2012 by Roger.McDermott

Hi Everyone! Since Amber asked that this first post should be an introduction, I thought I would let you know something about me, my background and what I would hope to contribute in this blog.

My name is Roger McDermott and I am a faculty member in the School of Computing Science and Digital Media, at the Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, Scotland. This is a relatively new (i.e. post 1992) British university of the type that grew out of the older regional UK Polytechnics and these type of institutions generally see themselves as having a more vocational or “professional” focus in their degree courses than the older universities.

I have to confess that I approach submitting to this blog with a little trepidation since, as I constantly remind my colleagues, I am not really a Computer Scientist. My academic background is in mathematics, specifically mathematical physics, and when I was originally appointed as a lecturer almost twenty years ago, it was to teach applied mathematics in, what was then, a School of Mathematical Sciences. Since that time, my academic department has responded to the vagaries of undergraduate recruitment by transforming itself first into a “School of Mathematics and Computing”, then to a “School of Computing and Mathematics” (that was a tough change!), then to a “School of Computing”, with an (aptly named) “Division of Mathematics and Statistics”, and now to our current incarnation as a “School of Computing Science and Digital Media”. No doubt an enterprising PhD student will one day carry out a research project on the social history revealed by these name changes, but one obvious fact is that, whatever our background, my colleagues and I live and work in a world where everyone needs to react to a changing educational environment. I still lecture in applied maths but nowadays I spend a lot of my time teaching various aspects of programming, as well as modules on collaborative and professional skills.

My students too have changed. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, the introduction of tuition fees appears to many to be changing fundamentally the relationship between student and university. Even in Scotland, where the government still pays this cost, almost all students have part-time jobs and many are working long hours to pay for their living expenses, despite being registered as studying full-time. This is a complete change from when I was an undergraduate and the issues associated with it have a direct impact on my teaching.

What do I hope to contribute to the blog? Firstly, I hope to be able to provide a reasonably well-informed commentary on the UK approach to the subject. These are both difficult and exciting times for the sector, with new secondary school curricula being developed on both sides of Hadrian’s Wall. The changes aim to reverse the lack of opportunity for pupils to study Computer Science and Information Systems prior to university. The plans are good but the implementation may well prove difficult without the provision of extra resources, and I hope to report on this process.

Secondly, I have my own opinions about computer science education, and my own list of topics that I think are interesting and important. The relationship between different parts of the discipline, maths in the curriculum, teaching programming languages and paradigms, the significance and impact of MOOCs, … these are some of the things that I think raise important issues for the subject and deserve wider discussion.

Finally, I would like to invite conversation on the pedagogical issues with which I am currently involved. While I see myself first and foremost as a teacher, I have in recent years applied myself more to CS education as a research field. My own introduction to this has come through involvement with the UK Higher Education Academy subject centres, and participation in the ITiCSE conferences. Almost without exception, the people I have met there have been both intellectually stimulating and kind to me personally as a newcomer to the field. I have always come away from such interactions with my interest in the subject re-invigorated and I hope that this process can continue with the Inroads blog.

Roger McDermott

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Are technology companies ready for a culture change?

Posted on December 13, 2012 by Amber.Settle

A convergence of events has me thinking about a possible cultural change for technology companies.  But it will take me a while to explain what I mean, so forgive a personal digression.  I hope that it will be worth the wait.

Yesterday I made a rare trip downtown for a work-related meeting.  Normally December is a time spent with quietly writing away in my home office since our quarter system does not have regular classes between Thanksgiving and the start of the new year.  But a technology company in Chicago is interested in recruiting students from the College of Computing and Digital Media at DePaul, and the staff member who handles employer relations likes to have a subject-matter expert with her.  I left the meeting with a lot of new information, but two pieces stand out to me: 1. Employers are desperate to hire computer science graduates and 2. technology companies are most interested in people who blend into the (somewhat unique) culture of their workplace.

I then spent today reading most of the latest issue of ACM Inroads, for a paper I’m writing on diversity in gaming.  There are many fascinating articles in that issue, but one theme stood out to me.  Computer scientists have put, and continue to put, a lot of energy into improving diversity in the field.  From college-level initiatives like those at Harvey Mudd College, to NSF-funded programs to improve access to computing among the disabled, to a transformation of the high-school curriculum, computer scientists are deeply interested in seeing women and underrepresented minorities participate at higher numbers.  The hope, of course, is that these projects and programs will succeed, resulting in a transformation of computing into a field where gender parity is within reach.  In that process and with that goal, I think that computer science is serving as a model for other technology-focused disciplines.

The interaction I had with the employer-relations staff member after our visit yesterday made me wonder if technology companies are ready for this change, should it actually occur.  She and I started discussing the need that technology companies have for employees to fit their culture, and how their culture can be very different from other industries.  In response she told me a story about a visit she paid to a large technology company based on the West Coast (that will remain anonymous for reasons about to become obvious).  A representative for this company emphasized that adapting to the culture was important, causing the DePaul staff member to ask how the representative would describe the culture.  The response: The average employee age was 26 and the culture was like a “frat house”.  (Note that this company has been around for at least 8 years, so this is not a small start-up).  I rolled my eyes when I learned this and commented that I certainly would not be recommending the company to any of my female students.  She countered that this company was particularly interested in hiring female graduates.  We noted that the lack of reflection on this situation was intriguing.

Now I understand many technology companies are encouraging of and enthusiastic about the goal of broadening diversity in computer science.  But I think it takes more than a diversity initiative, which I know that the company described above has, to make the workplace welcoming.  It particularly remains unclear to me whether technology companies are ready to deal with the changes that would come from a pipeline that begins to approach gender parity.  On the other hand, technology companies are nothing if not adaptable, so maybe they would surprise me.

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An Introduction, Mark Stockman – Information Technology

Posted on December 6, 2012 by Mark Stockman

Thanks to Amber and Inroads for the opportunity to contribute to this blog. As an information technology (IT) educator, it is encouraging when ACM practices inclusion of all computing disciplines, beyond just computer science, as it has with this invitation. I look forward to being part of a, hopefully, impactful and ongoing discussion of computing education.

My name is Mark Stockman, for the past eleven years I have served as a faculty member at the University of Cincinnati in the IT bachelors degree program. Prior to that, I worked in several computing capacities within industry (networking, software/web development, database management, systems administration, technical support, management). Also an active member of ACM’s Special Interest Group for IT Education (SIGITE) from its inception, I served as Chair of the SIG till summer of this year.

IT is an applied computing discipline. The membership of SIGITE has worked with ACM over the past several years to define the distinctiveness of IT within the spectrum of computing. In a nutshell, while computer scientists construct the software technologies and computer engineers build the hardware technologies, IT professionals develop strategies to deploy, integrate, secure, and administer computing technologies. For more details of how the disciplines are distinctive (and overlap) see the ACM Computing Curricula 2005, the ACM IT 2008 Curriculum Guidelines, or a summary produced by SIGITE.

My teaching revolves around the networking/systems side of IT rather than development, primarily teaching courses in the applied nature of system administration, cloud computing (server virtualization), cybersecurity, cyberforensics. The focus of my past research centered on the pedagogy of creating and delivering IT curriculum, specifically in the development and use of hands-on activities/labs.

More recently I have jumped into a cross-disciplinary academic path; now in the second year of a PhD program in Criminal Justice, specifically studying criminology and crime prevention with an emphasis on cybercrime. As a discipline that can impact many (most) others, IT research can move forward through domain induction like this. My hope is that this marriage of computing and criminology/crime prevention allows for substantial knowledge creation for cybersecurity.

Certainly, my background will influence what you will see from me on this blog. I hope you will speak up in the comments and/or through Twitter (@putrnrd). Discussion, even (especially) disagreement, is a great thing as we continue towards a common goal; the advancement and promotion of computing education.

Mark

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