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Transcript of ACM Europe Update on Educational Activities Education Council Meeting, Portland, Oregon 16 th...
ACM Europe Update on Educational Activities
Education Council Meeting, Portland, Oregon
16th September 2014
Andrew McGettrick
Outline
• Background to Educational Efforts
• Main Activities
• The Athens ACM Europe Meeting
• Summary
Background to Educational Efforts
• Context
– Around 15% of ACM membership is European (approx 16,000)
– 60% of ACM student members are from outside the US
– ACM Europe is now a legal entity within Europe and its aim is to serve the needs of ACM membership in Europe
– In the educational sphere it aims to advance the status, standing, and role of informatics education across Europe
– In its educational activities it works with Informatics Europe (IE)
• Informatics Europe (IE)
– This is a coming together of (some) Heads of Computing in Europe; some 74 institutions are involved
– Originally set up to be a CRA for Europe
– Membership costs 2500 euros (zone 1), 1000 euros (zone 2)
– 5 universities from the UK are members
;
Schools report - published
• Joint Report produced by ACM Europe and Informatics Europe:
Informatics Education: Europe Cannot Afford to Miss the Boat– Draws a clear distinction between education in digital
literacy and informatics– Argues informatics is a major enabler of technology
innovation, the principal resource for Europe's drive to become an information society, and the key to the future of Europe's economy.
– Calls for all students within Europe to have access to a high-quality education in informatics at the secondary (schools) level
Committee on European Computing Education (formerly the Joint Advisory Committee)
ACM
Michael Caspersen Denmark, SIGCSE
Michael Kolling UK, SIGCSE
Serdar Tasiran Turkey , ACM Europe
Informatics Europe
Barbara Demo Italy
Antoine Petit France
Jan Vahrenhold Germany
Immediate projects
• Refine and further develop the schools report
• Undertake a two-year study to conduct a deep assessment of the state of informatics education within each European country; note the parallel with the ACM study
Running On Empty: The failure to Teach K-12 Computer Science in the Digital Age
See runningonempty.acm.org
• Give consideration, with Informatics Europe, to creating anew high profile computing education conference within Europe
Some Observations
• ACM Europe and Informatics Europe now jointly fund Mirko Westermeier who is based at the University of Munster, to assist with these plans, e.g. the survey, but this is at an early stage.
• Engaging the membership of Informatics Europe has been seen to be of particular importance
• With respect to the conference,
– Within ACM conferences have traditionally been seen to be the responsibility of the SIGs; hence SIGCSE involvement has been important in the Joint Advisory Committee
– the intention is to have a conference that is European in character, run by Europeans, primarily for Europeans
– ITICSE has tended to take place in Europe, but in 2015 is going to Peru; this was seen by SIGCSE as an opportunity for the European conference to ‘take off’
CaMIES Project
• CaMIES = Creating a Map of Informatics Education in Schools
• Project duration: runs from 1st April 2014 until 31st March 2016 (24 months)
• Four work packages are envisaged:
– WP 1: Mapping
– WP 2: Identification of Case Studies
– WP 3: Data Collection and Interpretation
– WP 4: Reporting
More Details
• Mapping
Goal is ‘to map out the state of informatics education across Europe in a high-level fashion’. Authors from special issue of ToCE on Computer Science Education in Schools being used as primary contacts in countries
• Identification of Case Studies
Aim is to compile a list of 5 – 10 countries to provide case studies for the report, countries being selected to provide broad geographic coverage and diversity of approaches
• Data Collection and Interpretation
Seen as the major part of the project and involves collecting date from case studies and interpreting it
• Reporting
The Athens ACM Europe Meeting
• The ACM Europe Council will meet in Athens, Greece on 19th September, 2014
• At its meetings it often holds a panel discussion on a topic of particular relevance to that country
• On this occasion there will be a panel discussion on education; there have been problems in Greece over recognition of and acceptance of computing at school level.
Details of Athens panel
• Topic: Status of CS education in Europe
• Chair of panel: Wendy Hall, former ACM President
• Members of panel
– Alex Wolf, ACM President
– Kathy Kikis-Papadakis from FORTH, a national research centre in Greece
– Muffy Calder, Scottish Chief Scientific Officer
– George Metakides, former EC Esprit Director
– Michael Caspersen, Committee on European Computing Education
– Andrew McGettrick, ACM Europe Council