July 2007 - Volume 6 Issue 3
Informatics Education Europe
Papers
- Lillian Cassel - Understanding the entirety of modern informatics
- Su White & Alastair D. Irons - Informatics in the UK: current perspectives
- Stanley J. Oldfield & David R. Morse - Exploiting connectedness in the informatics curriculum
- A. J. Cowling - A systems model for the field of informatics
- Roumen Nikolov & Sylvia ILieva - Education in informatics at Sofia University current status and future plans
- Agostino Cortesi & Enrico Nardelli - Towards an European certification of computer science university curricula
- Klaus Bothe, Zoran Budimac, Rebeca Cortazar and Hussein Zedan - Developing a joint software engineering masters curriculum across countries
- Vincent Ribaud & Philippe Saliou - Towards an ability model for software engineering apprenticeship
Editorial by Andrew McGettrick
University of Strathclyde
It seems appropriate to comment on the background to this first Informatics Education Europe conference which was held in Montpellier in the south of France on 9th and 10th November 2006.
Back in October 2005 the first meeting of the Heads of Computing in Europe took place at ETH in Zurich. The intention of the organizers then was to set up a group modelled on CRA (Computer Research Associates) in the US. The focus was very strongly research.
It seemed to a number of us that there was a serious need for a coming together of folk whose main concern was computing education – after all, there was Bologna, there were huge problems in computing education and there seemed to be a need for dialogue. So the notion of an education-based computing conference for Europe and planned by Europeans was hatched. That is essentially the origins of the Informatics Education Europe conferences.
In the intervening year, i.e. during the implementation phase of this first conference, in other quarters events have moved on. A second Heads of Computing conference took place again in Zurich in October 2006. At that event there seemed to be a greater emphasis on educational matters than a year earlier, though the original intention was still apparent. In the US, a summit took place in January 2007 to discuss the setting up within CRA of an activity on educational computing research. As a result CRA-e was duly formed. So generally there has been an increased realisation that education in the context of computing is very important.
What were we hoping to get as a result of this conference? In the US it was clearly recognised that there was a crisis in computing education, evident by a fall off of around 60% in enrolments to programmes of study between about 2001 and 2006, and yet an increase in the number of jobs to be filled; the ACM and IEEE Computer Society had responded by sending out some 280,000 copies of a brochure to some 61, 000 high / middle schools. In the UK the academics were in no doubt there was a crisis, but it proved difficult to convince others. In Europe the European Software Association reported serious shortages in skills in the general area of software engineering. So perhaps this Informatics Education Europe conference would lead to clarification and / or greater detail about the picture throughout Europe; of course, it would be surprising if the picture was precisely the same in each country.
As the conference progressed it was fascinating to note that within each country there were groups who had been thinking deeply about computing education as it applied in their context. Within Europe there was great diversity and that was a richness and something that should be celebrated. The long-term goal must be to retain that richness; by sharing a better understanding eyes and minds would be opened to new possibilities. Provided comparability of provision could occur (as Bologna suggests), students could more easily move between countries.
Over the time of the conference, it was wonderful to see the many discussions taking place and to see folk from one country recognising strengths in the systems that operated in other countries. Such activity needs to be encouraged and needs to continue. Importantly this had the potential to lead to joint projects, of course, but also to arrangements whereby students could move between countries. It just seemed essential that this conference would not just be a one-off, but something that needed to continue into the future.
The papers presented here form a representative subset of the entire collection of those papers presented at the conference. The initial five papers - by Lillian Cassel, Su White and Alastair Irons, Stanley Oldfield and David Morse, Tony Cowling, Roumen Nikolov and Sylvia ILieva - all address issues associated with the broad field of informatics. The last three – by Agostino Cortesi and Enrico Nardelli; Klaus Bothe, Zoran Budimac, Rebeca Cortazar and Hussein Zedan; and Vincent Ribaud and Philippe Saliou - all address particular aspects of the field of informatics ranging from accreditation in Italy to particular programmes of study with an international flavour.
