A computing perspective on the Bologna process

Fuller, Ursula; Pears, Arnold; Amillo, June; Avram, Chris; Mannila, Linda

doi:10.1145/1189215.1189181

Cited by 6 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Second, the Bologna accord Fuller et al (2006), which most European countries are signatory to, ensures minimal equality between universities and the guarantees that courses (modules in Bologna terms) are based on explicitly stated learning outcomes, along with course weights expressed in ECTS (European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System). As evidence that this can affect searches such as ours, Becker and Fitzpatrick found that their global search of syllabi, looking for learning outcomes, were skewed towards European Universities.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Soft Skills: What do Computing Program Syllabi Reveal About Non-Technical Expectations of Undergraduate Students?

Groeneveld

Becker

Vennekens

2020

Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Industry expectations of computing graduates are higher than ever. Not only are candidates required to be highly skilled in a variety of technologies, but they also need to come equipped with non-technical skills -often called soft skills or professional skills. This puts a lot of pressure on computing programs, as educators try to integrate these requirements into already full curricula. Despite the fact that incorporating some of these skills into programs is seemingly common practice, little is known about what skills are being taught and why, outside of isolated case studies. In this research, we ask: What non-technical skills are expected of undergraduate students according to computing programs? To answer this we manually curated 278 non-technical course syllabi from 110 universities in 30 European countries. We then analysed them to identify trends and expose gaps. The most frequently identified skills are teamwork, ethics, written/oral communication, and presentation skills, while the development of one's own values, motivating others, creativity, and empathy feature least frequently. By providing a detailed analysis and an interactive website visualising this data, we hope to aid the community in reviewing which non-technical skills are taught with an aim to teaching the right skills to the right students. This work sheds new light on recent trends in what is expected of undergraduate computing students in terms of non-technical skills and identifies areas where more coverage might be needed.

show abstract

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We wanted to get a representative picture, free from biases such as dominating US institutions. Fuller et al (2006) and Becker and Fitzpatrick (from which our methodology is derived) found that European institutions report learning outcomes explicitly (as the Bologna accord mandates).…”

Section: Threats To Validitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Soft Skills: What do Computing Program Syllabi Reveal About Non-Technical Expectations of Undergraduate Students?

Groeneveld

Becker

Vennekens

2020

Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Students are assessed on their knowledge and cognitive skills but not on the attitudes that will lead them to practice in the workplace what they have been taught in the classroom." [Ful2] Hence the assessment of dispositions, and particularly student performance of the integration of disposition, skill and knowledge provides significantly more power to curricula designers working to improve the definition of outcomes at different levels of abstraction.…”

Section: E5: Assessing Competenciesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Computing Curricula 2020

Force¹

2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…As a very brief example of the kind of analysis that can be done with this tool, Table 5 shows the countries (with 4 or more syllabi) with the highest percentages of syllabi containing explicit learning outcomes. The fact that European countries rank so highly is most likely due to the fact that explicit learning outcomes are an integral part of the Bologna Process [4].…”

Section: A Tool For the Communitymentioning

confidence: 99%

What Do CS1 Syllabi Reveal About Our Expectations of Introductory Programming Students?

Becker

Fitzpatrick

2019

Proceedings of the 50th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

PublisherACM PressLink to online version https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3287485Item record/more information http://hdl.handle. ABSTRACTA well-received ITiCSE 2016 paper challenged the orthodox view that programming is hard to learn. It contended that CS1 educators' expectations are too high, which can result in poor teaching and learning, and could impact negatively on diversity and equity. The author posed a challenge to the community to collect researchbased evidence of what novice programmers can achieve, and use evidence to derive realistic expectations for achievement. We argue that before rising to this challenge we must determine: What exactly do educators expect of introductory programming students? This paper presents our efforts toward answering this question. We manually curated hundreds of CS1 syllabi, providing a fresh perspective of expectation in CS1 courses. We analyzed learning outcomes and their concepts, in addition to languages utilized and other useful CS1 design and delivery information.This work contributes to a current picture of what is expected of introductory programming students, and provides an interactive online tool linked to all collected syllabi and containing all learning outcomes and other associated information. We hope this will aid the community in deciding whether or not we have unrealistic expectations of our CS1 students and if so, our contributions provide a starting point for the community to adjust them.

show abstract

A computing perspective on the Bologna process

Cited by 6 publications

References 0 publications

Soft Skills: What do Computing Program Syllabi Reveal About Non-Technical Expectations of Undergraduate Students?

Soft Skills: What do Computing Program Syllabi Reveal About Non-Technical Expectations of Undergraduate Students?

Computing Curricula 2020

What Do CS1 Syllabi Reveal About Our Expectations of Introductory Programming Students?

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About