We present seven case-studies of undergraduate recruitment to Computer Science courses together with analysis of students' success during the early part of their study. We focus particularly upon qualification on entry, the subjects studied in the early university curriculum, and student grades.We find that while university admissions are complex processes, there exists sufficient commonality to permit some useful comparisons. These suggest that predicting undergraduate performance on the basis of entry qualifications is fraught. Nevertheless, it seems that students who arrive at university with a record of success in earlier studies may be more likely to succeed than otherwise. In particular, good grades in pre-university study may indicate that they are more likely to do well in the mathematical part of the university curriculum. Conversely, we find nothing in entry qualifications to indicate which students will be successful in the study of programming.
Computer science is inherently international but its effective application depends on an understanding of the local culture in which it is being used. Students and faculty need to be prepared to operate in this global environment. This ITiCSE working group report discusses why an international dimension is an important component of a computer science student's education. It describes ways to add an international dimension to student learning and provides several case studies as examples. Barriers to international study are identified, and recommendations for how to do more to expand the international opportunities of computer science students are discussed.
The Bologna process is intended to culminate in the formation of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) by 2010. Its aim is to facilitate the mobility of people, the transparency and recognition of qualifications, quality and development of a European dimension to higher education, and the attractiveness of European institutions for third country students.This paper provides an overview of progress towards implementation in EHEA member states using official documents and interview data from faculty teaching computing in countries represented at the ITiCSE 2006 meeting. The key areas where the structures established by the Bologna process are problematic for computing education arise from the rapidly changing nature of the curriculum. It seems that the maturity and capability criteria, as well as the manner in which learning outcomes are specified, being developed within the Bologna process are too general. This endangers the properties of transparency and mobility that the process intends to promote.Progression and prerequisite knowledge in computing degrees can be very specific. For instance, generic learning outcomes for an introductory programming course quite rightly will not specify the programming language, or languages, used to implement algorithms. However, suppose a student intends to study an advanced algorithms and data structures course in which Java is the language of implementation which has an introductory course in programming as a prerequisite. If the introductory course language was Standard ML it is not clear that the prerequisite course actually provides the student with a suitable background. These types of complexities are typical of computing, where early subject curricula are not standardised nationally or internationally, and create significant hurdles for realising the Bologna objectives.
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