Strategic Directions in Computing Research
Education Working Group
Draft Report -- 8/26/96

Academia and technology are both changing rapidly. The transition of modern society to a near-complete dependency on technology is imminent. Within this climate, the traditional relationships among research, education, and government support are being scrutinized and criticized anew. The importance of education as a strategic future direction in computer science and engineering (CS&E) research is reaffirmed both in the 1992 report Computing the Future (2), and by its appearance as a distinct subject area in this 1996 SDCR Workshop.

The distance between the foundations of computing and its research and application frontiers is considerably shorter than in many other fields. As a result, our curricula are constantly evolving to integrate what has become critical among these new developments. At the same time, technology is changing the ways in which education can be delivered. Moreover, computation is becoming a critical piece of general education, especially within the science and engineering communities.

CS&E educators are positioned to play a key role by helping to direct the changes that are implied by all of these events. To remain effective, CS&E education -- both in method and in content -- needs to evolve rapidly. Educators need to champion methods that exploit new technologies so as to ensure the safety, privacy, empowerment, and competencies of future citizens. This will require fundamental changes in the way in which faculties represent the principles and practice of CS&E, at all educational levels. Five key strategic areas of fundamental change in CS&E education are identified and discussed below.

1. Undergraduate education Different institutions have different educational priorities and constituencies, and thus must shape their programs accordingly. Some are driven more by industry's needs, while others are driven more by the more general goals of liberal arts and science education. The relationship between education and research must be reexamined by college and university faculties, as well as the entire profession. New interactions between research, education, and industry are needed, so that students, faculty, and computing practititioners can maximize the utility of education throughout the broad range of intellectual and practical interests that it serves.

2. Curriculum Our core subjects have been stabilizing over the last 10- 20 years (3), and they should continue a slow evolution in the future. Yet, changes in technology, education, and research priorities require continuing reevaluation of the curriculum. We must find a way to strategically add new subjects and remove obsolete ones, while maintaining a coherent core at each level.

3. K-12 education Many issues apply specifically to the primary and secondary school levels of computing education, as well as the undergraduate level.

4. Graduate education Most PhD programs are exclusively targeted for full-time students who seek to develop credentials for university-level research and teaching. Evidence suggests that the market for these types of PhDs is at (or past) a steady state, but there is a stronger demand from industry for new MS and PhD degrees that have a more applied research orientation. (3)

5. Leadership issues in education There are many computer science education communities, and their interests are represented by different organizations:

ACM Education Board
ACM SIGCSE (Computer Science Education)
ACM SIGGRAPH Education Committee
ACM SIGCUE (Computer Uses in Education)
ACM SIGACT Education Committee
ACM Pre-College Committee
IEEE-CS Educational Activities Board
CRA (Graduate education, faculty issues)
CSAB/CSAC (accreditation)
ISTE Computer Science Society (technology in secondary school education)
CEEB (AP Curriculum Committee)
IFIP TC3 (European undergraduate curricula)
AACE (advancement of computing in education)
EDUCOM (computing and technology in higher education)

These communities have many common interests. and yet they don't interact much at all. At the moment, the members of the ACM Education Board are appointed entirely by the discretion of its chair. Thus, few of these different educational interests are not directly represented at the highest levels within ACM.

A New Grand Challenge Altogether, these concerns suggest the identification of a new grand challenge for computing education (2). If met, this grand challenge would create an international "Virtual Computing University" whose resources and course materials would be comlementary to those of any existing (undergraduate or graduate) computer science department. Ideally, such a virtual university would augment and expand the reach of existing departments rather than replace them. Its course materials would be freely available to all who can connect to the Web. Other special resources, including advanced computing facilities, graphical environments, and faculty expertise in narrow subject areas, would be similarly pooled. Some of its courses would be developed for on-line consumption, as well as at specific geographical sites. This grand challenge would contain the following elements, whose development would simultaneously help address many of the concerns identified above.

A great deal of exploratory research is needed before this grand challenge can be effectively met. A difficult goal will be the assurance that a Virtual University can provide adequate and meaningful human interaction to support its educational functions. For instance, experts will need to answer student questions in a timely manner, as well as evaluate student work.

The need for support will be great, both from public sources and from the industries that will benefit from these initiatives. Some new programs at the National Science Foundation (especially in the EHR Directorate) seem to be supporting explorations like the ones discussed above. The accomplishment of a Virtual Computing University may emerge as an exciting, complex, and fundamentally important idea that can help ensure the future vitality and meaningful extension of computing education into the next millenium.

Education Working Group Members:

Allen Tucker, Bowdoin College (Chair)

Owen Astrachan, Duke University
Kim Bruce, Williams College
Robert Cupper, Allegheny College
Peter Denning, George Mason University
Scot Drysdale, Dartmouth College
Tom Horton, Florida Atlantic University
Charles Kelemen, Swarthmore College
Cathy McGeoch, Amherst College
Yale Patt, University of Michigan
Viera Proulx, Northeastern University
Roy Rada, Washington State University
Richard Rasala, Northeastern University
Eric Roberts, Stanford University
Steven Rudich, Carnegie Mellon University
Lynn Stein, MIT
Charles Van Loan, Cornell University

References:

  1. ACM/IEEE Joint Curriculum Task Force. Computing Curricula 1991. ACM Press, New York, 1991. Abridged versions reprinted in Communications of the ACM (June 1991) and IEEE Computer (November 1991).
  2. ACM Model High School Computer Science Curriculum, Communications of the ACM 36,5 (May 1993), 87-90.
  3. AP Curriculum...
  4. Astrachan, O. L., http://
  5. Computer Science and National Research Council Telecommuncations Board. Computing the Future: A Broader Agenda for Computer Science and Engineering. National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 1992.
  6. Stein, L. A., "Rethinking CS101: Innovations in Introductory Computer Programming," http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/cs101
  7. Tucker, A., J. Bradley, R. Cupper, R. Epstein, C. Kelemen, G. Scragg, Fundamentals of Computing I and II, McGraw-Hill Computer Science Series, 1995.
  8. Tucker, A. and P. Wegner, "Computer Science and Engineering: The Discipline and the Profession," to appear in CRC Handbook of Computer Science and Engineering, CRC Press, 2500 pages, December, 1996.
  9. Van Loan, C., http://