Ragnhild Kobro Runde

Computing education (CE), the scientific foundation of the teaching and learning of subject matter specific to computing, has matured into a field with its own research journals and conferences as well as graduate programmes. Yet, and unlike other mature subfields of computer science (CS), it is rarely taught as part of undergraduate CS programmes. In this report, we present a gap analysis resulting from semi-structured interviews with various types of stakeholders and derive a set of arguments for teaching CE courses in undergraduate CS programmes. This analysis and the arguments highlight a number of opportunities for the discipline of CS at large, in academia, in industry, and in school education, that would be opened up with undergraduate CE courses, as well as potential barriers to implementation that will need to be overcome. We also report on the results of a Delphi process performed to elicit topics for such a course with various audiences in mind. The Delphi process yielded 19 high-level categories that encompass the subject matter CE courses should incorporate, tailored to the specific needs of their intended student audiences. This outcome underscores the extensive range of content that can be integrated into a comprehensive CE programme. Based on these two stakeholder interactions as well as a systematic literature review aiming to explore the current practices in teaching CE to undergraduate students, we develop two prototypical outlines of such a course, keeping in mind that departments may have different preferences and affordances resulting in different kinds of CE offerings. Overall, input from external stakeholders underscores the clear significance of undergraduate CE courses. We anticipate leveraging this valuable feedback to actively promote these courses on a broader scale.

This working group concerns the adoption of computing education (CE) in undergraduate computer science (CS) programmes. Such adoption requires both arguments sufficient to persuade our departmental colleagues and our education committees, and also curricular outlines to assist our colleagues in delivery. The goal of the group is to develop examples of both arguments and curricular outlines, drawing on any prior experience available.

This chapter discussed the relationships between students' self-beliefs and interest in mathematics, their exposure to ICT in school and mathematics lessons, and their achievement levels. The authors linked data from the PISA 2012, comprising both paper- and computer-based mathematics assessments to data from student questionnaires for 16 European countries participating in both assessment formats. LPA was applied to identify and distinguish between six student groups. The results indicated that self-beliefs were more strongly related to achievement than the level of ICT use was. Students with the highest reported self-beliefs and moderate ICT exposure outscored other students. The same patterns were observed for both assessment formats. For most of the countries observed, nearly 50% of the students were characterized by average self-beliefs and low or no use of ICT. On average, these students had achievement scores close to the OECD mean. Across all countries, students with low self-beliefs also had the lowest average achievement scores, regardless of their extent of exposure to ICT.