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Increasing academic diversity and inter-disciplinarity of Computer Science in Higher Education

Authors:

Paul Dempster,

Daniel Onah,

Lynne BlairAuthors Info & Claims

CEP '20: Proceedings of the 4th Conference on Computing Education Practice

Article No.: 10, Pages 1 - 4

https://doi.org/10.1145/3372356.3372366

Published: 10 January 2020 Publication History

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Abstract

Computer Science education has changed significantly over the last decade, including UK national curriculum changes and the Office for Students' Institute of Coding, resulting in an increased focus on widening participation. Key stages 3/4 have moved away from ICT provision towards more rigorous Computer Science, while Higher Education has sought to draw in students who do not see themselves as future Computer Scientists nor see the relevance of those skills to their future careers.

We present the design for a 40 credit, whole-year programme at Lancaster University comprising one-third of a student's first year. Targeting non-Computer Science students with no previous experience, the objective is to develop realistic, practical Computer Science skills that students can independently apply to relevant problems in their major degree programme and future career. We focus on two significant aspects of the programme.

Firstly, the overall programme requires flexibility to accommodate studying in parallel with a student's major. Blended learning replaces lectures with online videos, slides, and quizzes, supported with face-to-face staff time in weekly studios designed around collaboration. We discuss overcoming the challenges this presents around motivation, engagement, equality, student support, and general course design. We also compare our year-long course design, intended to give practical inter-disciplinary skills across Computer Science topics, with recent literature mostly involving short-duration workshops or modules, usually heavily focused on programming.

Secondly, recruitment materials were carefully designed to encourage interest from an academically diverse range of major programmes that typically do not take Computer Science modules. Core to this was addressing the gender and social diversity challenges present, and to illustrate the impact Computer Science skills could have on other majors and society. We discuss the impact of our re-designed learning spaces and curriculum, along with the student diversity data, and staff feedback.

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Cited By

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Seyam MAbu-Elkheir MLaakso MMonga MSimon Sheard J(2023)Diversity-focused Course Design for Computer Science Students: Incorporating Diversity Conference Attendance into Course Design and DeliveryProceedings of the 2023 Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3587102.3588801(40-46)Online publication date: 29-Jun-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3587102.3588801
Bhardwaj J(2022)Exploring CS Entrants’ Expectations of Friendship in their First Year Studies2022 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)10.1109/FIE56618.2022.9962470(1-8)Online publication date: 8-Oct-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE56618.2022.9962470
Tarling GMelro AKleine Staarman JFujita T(2022)Making coding meaningful: university students’ perceptions of bootcamp pedagogiesPedagogies: An International Journal10.1080/1554480X.2022.207733818:4(578-595)Online publication date: 2-Jun-2022
https://doi.org/10.1080/1554480X.2022.2077338
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Index Terms

Increasing academic diversity and inter-disciplinarity of Computer Science in Higher Education
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computing literacy
      2. Model curricula
  2. User characteristics

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Published In

CEP '20: Proceedings of the 4th Conference on Computing Education Practice

January 2020

69 pages

ISBN:9781450377294

DOI:10.1145/3372356

Conference Chairs:
Steven Bradley
Durham University, UK
,
Marie Devlin
Newcastle University, UK

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

In-Cooperation

University of Durham, UK: University of Durham, UK
SIGCSE: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 10 January 2020

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Short-paper
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CEP 2020

CEP 2020: Computing Education Practice 2020

January 9, 2020

Durham, United Kingdom

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CEP '20 Paper Acceptance Rate 16 of 38 submissions, 42%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 32 of 71 submissions, 45%

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Cited By

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Seyam MAbu-Elkheir MLaakso MMonga MSimon Sheard J(2023)Diversity-focused Course Design for Computer Science Students: Incorporating Diversity Conference Attendance into Course Design and DeliveryProceedings of the 2023 Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3587102.3588801(40-46)Online publication date: 29-Jun-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3587102.3588801
Bhardwaj J(2022)Exploring CS Entrants’ Expectations of Friendship in their First Year Studies2022 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)10.1109/FIE56618.2022.9962470(1-8)Online publication date: 8-Oct-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE56618.2022.9962470
Tarling GMelro AKleine Staarman JFujita T(2022)Making coding meaningful: university students’ perceptions of bootcamp pedagogiesPedagogies: An International Journal10.1080/1554480X.2022.207733818:4(578-595)Online publication date: 2-Jun-2022
https://doi.org/10.1080/1554480X.2022.2077338
Joyner DBernstein LDittamo MEngelman BNaran AOtt ASuh JThien AGiannakos MSindre GLuxton-Reilly ADivitini M(2020)Attitudinal Trajectories in an Online CS1 Class: Demographic and Performance TrendsProceedings of the 2020 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education10.1145/3341525.3387429(335-341)Online publication date: 15-Jun-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3341525.3387429

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Recommendations

Higher Education Computer Science: A Manual of Practical Approaches

TEALS's Plans for Addressing Social Justice in Computer Science Education: Creating Inclusive CS Communities

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