ABET Accreditation: A Way Forward for PDC Education

Parallel and Distributed Computing (PDC) has increased in importance in recent years, with ABET requiring exposure to PDC topics, and CS2023 recommending at least 9 hours of coverage in required CS courses. However, injecting PDC topics quickly into a course is difficult due to time and expense to set up requisite hardware and lack of readily available materials to adopt for the classroom. In this demo, we -- the CSinParallel project -- present free, web-based, interactive textbooks for learning and practicing various forms of PDC. We developed the backend system and wrote the material based on decades of experience integrating these topics into courses throughout the computer science curriculum. Currently we have two books that educators can readily use: Parallel Computing for Beginners, and Intermediate Parallel and Distributed Computing, along with some additional materials. With just a laptop in class, students can edit and run PDC code examples on remote hardware that is professionally maintained, eliminating the need for instructors to prepare hardware and software. The material spans a range of PDC technology (OpenMP, MPI, CUDA, OpenACC), provides mini assessments as readers work, and is designed so that instructors can add brief modules into existing courses or can be used comprehensively for a course dedicated to PDC. All materials are available on learnpdc.org and the code used in the books is on https://github.com/csinparallel/csinparallel. Additional assignments for a PDC course can be found on https://github.com/csinparallel/pdc-assignments.

Summary form only given. The complete presentation was not made available for publication as part of the conference proceedings. Parallelism and distribution are now fundamentally integrated aspects of nearly all areas of computation. Over the last eleven years, the CDER center has been working to raise awareness of the need to incorporate these concepts in computer science education, starting in the earliest courses, and to sponsor and train instructors in developing novel parallel and distributed computing (PDC) education approaches. CDER recently concluded a study that gathered input from PDC stakeholder communities to identify their needs. The results indicate that lack of early PDC education in undergraduate programs is actually just one sign of a broader failure of computer science education to adjust to the nature of the modern computing ecosystem. This talk will illustrate the problem, and identify directions for addressing it through adopting a more modern underlying model and changing the approach employed in teaching computational problem solving from the beginning.

It is with pleasure that the IEEE Computer Society welcomes this opportunity to participate with ACM members concerned with education of computer scientists and computer engineers. It is hoped that this cooperation will continue in the future. Described in this panel presentation will be the results of two years of concentrated development by members of the IEEE Computer Society Education Committee towards cohesive and flexible model curricula for 4-year computer science and engineering programs. This effort was initiated in May 1974, and since has resulted in eight working sessions, has involved 20 active module developers, has called upon nearly 40 outside reviewers, and has sought cooperation with academia, industry, the ACM and the DISE Committee. The first test of the model curricula was held in June 1976 at a IEEE Computer Society Educators Workshop; a test that seemed to be passed as judged by those attending the workshop.Specifically, this panel presentation will introduce the IEEE Computer Society effort, will place the effort in historical perspective, and will describe in detail the need as seen by many educators. It will dwell briefly on past contributions by similar committees, will provide a definition of computer science and engineering and will provide a pictorial outline of the 17 modules that comprise the five subject areas of the proposed curricula. This will be followed with selected examples of possible implementation strategies. The presentation will close with a summary of future work and a short comparison of the IEEE and ACM efforts.

In May and June 2021, the author conducted a survey of the computing and mathematical graduation requirements of 500 Bachelor of Science in Computer Science ( BSCS ) programs in the U.S. to determine alignment among these requirements and those recommended by ACM/IEEE-CS’s Computer Science Curricula 2013 guidelines and ABET’s Criteria for Accrediting Computing Programs 2021–2022 curricular criterion. Specifically, computing and mathematics credit-hour and course graduation requirements were determined for ABET-accredited and non-accredited BSCS programs within public and private universities. As (i) curricular guidelines are recommendations that do not have to be followed, (ii) curricular accreditation criteria are minimal constraints that may be exceeded, and (iii) non-accredited programs may choose to meet or exceed curricular accreditation criterion, it is possible that graduating computer science students are exposed to similar, or a wide variety, of coursework and associated topics. The survey results presented in this article provide broad answers to these three curricular possibilities. In turn, these results can contribute to future discussions concerning the perceived value of accreditation to students and industry stakeholders, allow educators in computer science departments to compare their curriculum to a large sample of other universities, and provide curricular committees additional insight into how various curricular guidelines are realistically being used.

Introduction The computing sciences are complex fields that combine both theoretical and practical components. Students successfully completing an undergraduate computer science program should have instruction in both the mathematical and theoretical foundations of computing as well as the more practical aspects of how to effectively use computers to solve problems. Software engineering, as its name implies, is more directed toward the practical aspects of how to successfully develop complex systems that meet user requirements and are reliable, usable, and maintainable. Computing Curricula 2005 recognizes the need for more extensive education to produce professional engineers than what can be reasonably provided in a typical computer science program (ACM, 2005). As such, they propose engineering be treated as a totally separate discipline within computer science education. However, while there has been some debate about the exact role engineering should have in a computer science program (Curran, 2003), the ACM Curricula has maintained the importance of engineering to all computer science students and has kept it as a core element in computer science education (ACM, 2008). For purposes of this paper, we will focus on the teaching of engineering within the computer science discipline. Unlike other topics in the computer science major, the techniques and principles taught in engineering are often first developed and refined in industry before arriving in the classroom. As commercial development techniques and tools evolve, so pedagogical methodologies change. Computer science educators have taken different approaches to teaching engineering over the years, both as a result of changing methodologies as well as individual beliefs about what teaching methods work best in a particular academic environment. This paper is a case study in applying current productivity tools (specifically Redmine) in a engineering course at our institution. The objectives of the study are to investigate how to integrate the tools into the existing structure and evaluate their impact. We describe our experience in recently changing our approach to teaching engineering to be more aligned with current tools and how to effectively use them in an academic environment. The paper begins with an overview of engineering teaching methods, then describes our traditional approach and motivation for changing, how the new approach was integrated into the course, our experience with the change, and, finally, our plans for the future Software Engineering Education Background Software Engineering is defined as the application of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to the development, operation and maintenance of software (Petkovic, Thompson, & Todtenhoefer, 2006, p. 294). The need to teach engineering in colleges has been identified for decades. Stiller & LeBlanc (2002) point out as far back as the early 1990's, ACM Computing Curricula suggested that the at least one engineering course should be required in accredited computer science programs. They point out that the number of large projects in industry demand this and suggest that the proof of the success of these accredited computer science programs should be seen in the reduction of failure in the design and operation of large computer programs. Software engineering programs can be thought of as a replacement for the old apprenticeship programs which taught the trades to workman (Stroulia, Bauer, Craig, Reid, & Wilson, 2011). The issue, however, is how to bring this effect into the classroom. Many educators feel that current practices of teaching engineering are not adequately preparing students for the real world of development. Nurkkala & Brandle (2011) summarize the problems with current teaching approaches: * No product--students are creating projects, not commercial grade products * Short duration--single semester, or two-semester, courses impose an artificial time constraint * High turnover--new students each semester means the talent pool remains shallow and student skills are not developing based on previous experience * Low complexity--by necessity given time constraints and skill sets * No maintenance--as a result of short duration, students do not experience a key aspect of development, the maintenance phase * No customer--most engineering projects do not interface with a real customer To address these shortcomings, different approaches to teaching engineering have emerged and been proposed in the literature. …

Providing stimulating and real-life experiences is a key component in teaching software project management in Computer Science or Software Engineering programs. The diversity of topics that need to be addressed and restrictions that should be considered in university courses make a challenging task of it. This paper presents a serious game, called “White Crow PM” whose objective is to make students aware of the risks they might face during software development projects. The paper describes the game design steps and provides results of its validation in Computer Science programs in two Mexican universities. The collected data showed that the participants had fun playing the game and its content is relevant for software project management courses. Although the game needs to be validated in other settings with more participants, we conclude that it fulfills the goal of motivating discussion and increasing awareness of project management concerns among students.

NOTE: The first page of text has been automatically extracted and included below in lieu of an abstract Attracting and Retaining Women in Computer Science and Engineering: Evaluating the Results Abstract Computer science and engineering communities have been exploring a variety of activities and techniques to attract and retain more students, especially women and minorities, to computer science and computer engineering degree programs1. This paper briefly describes the efforts and results of a plan for actively recruiting young women into undergraduate computer engineering and computer science programs hosted by the University of North Texas (UNT). It also describes a series of activities aimed at improving the retention rate of students already in our programs, particularly during the freshman year. Such recruitment and retention efforts are critical to the country’s efforts to increase the number of engineering professionals, and are a priority for the Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) Department at UNT. We initially designed a three-part plan to achieve our recruitment and retention goals: • Sponsorship of portable and mobile summer computer engineering robotics camps for middle and high-school women students, coordinating with the regional Girl Scouts councils and other organizations to help with the recruitment; • Creation of an Ambassador program using young women currently enrolled in the upper division of current computer science and computer engineering programs as a form of outreach to area high schools and junior colleges; and • Expansion of our successful undergraduate mentoring program by using the Ambassador cohort mentioned above as mentors for incoming freshman and first-year transfer women entering our programs. This paper will focus primarily on the summer camp program and present an analysis of the results we have seen to date after 2 years of camp activities. Results from student surveys and parent surveys will be presented. The paper concludes with recommended changes and improvements in the program, as well as a discussion of adaptations that would create programs suitable for implementation at other institutions as well as programs aimed at a different target population. The three phases previously enumerated each build upon currently accepted educational practices. The robotics summer camp in particular used problem-based learning approaches, similar to those described in The Power of Problem-Based Learning2. This study clearly demonstrates the significant benefits of teaching students how to think by using a problem-based approach. We also developed a mobile laboratory so that the summer camp can be held at several locations, thus broadening and expanding the reach of the camps to traditionally underserved populations and geographical regions. Similarly, both the ambassador and mentoring programs derive from research showing how the recruitment and retention of women in engineering- related fields can be increased by providing opportunities to develop student-to-student relationships3, 4.

In 2005, the ACM, together with the IEEE Computer Society and the Association for Information Systems, released Computing Curricula 2005: The Overview Report[1]. This document has proven to be one of the most widely circulated and influential documents ever produced on the topic of computing curricula, and included computing programs in computer engineering (CE), computer science (CS), information systems (IS), information technology (IT), and software engineering (SE). This document was recently updated and released as Computing Curricula 2020: Paradigms for Global Computing Education[2], and included the first 5 computing programs as well as cybersecurity (CSEC) and some of data science (DS). This paper takes an IT-centric look at this updated document, highlighting the changes and the additional insights this significant reference provides the computing educational community.

The subject of computer architecture as currently taught in most computer engineering and computer science programs is a mixture of architectural principles, organizational strategies, and implementation techniques. This blurring of the hierarchy of system levels that characterize the structure of a computer has made it very difficult for students (and often instructors as well) to determine what were the forces that led to the design decisions they have seen reflected in machines.In view of these circumstances, a task force was established by the IEEE Computer Society to prepare a detailed specification for a course of study in computer architecture for students whose major interest is in computer engineering or computer science.

This white paper argues that formal methods need to be better rooted in higher education curricula for computer science and software engineering programmes of study. To this end, it advocates improved teaching of formal methods; systematic highlighting of formal methods within existing, ‘classical’ computer science courses; and the inclusion of a compulsory formal methods course in computer science and software engineering curricula. These recommendations are based on the observations that formal methods are an essential and cost-effective means to increase software quality; however computer science and software engineering programmes typically fail to provide adequate training in formal methods; and thus there is a lack of computer science graduates who are qualified to apply formal methods in industry. This white paper is the result of a collective effort by authors and participants of the 1st International Workshop on Formal Methods – Fun for Everybody which was held in Bergen, Norway, 2–3 December 2019. As such, it represents insights based on learning and teaching computer science and software engineering (with or without formal methods) at various universities across Europe.

ABET accreditation adds a real value to an educational program by meeting the essential requirements that enable it to produce ready graduates for the market. We at the Computer Science and Information Systems Department in the American University of Kuwait (CSIS-AUK) recognise this value after we have gone through restructuring and enhancing our program to meet CAC-ABET standard requirements and completing the self-study report. In this paper, we will present a complete and detailed documentation of our work in establishing our ABET compliant program. Special focus will be given to a case study of three student outcomes SOs A, B and J where, a thorough assessment process is presented including: data collection, reporting and assessment forms, analysis, justification, recommendations and finally data graphical representation for individual performance indicator (PI) trend tracking among different assessment cycles. We believe that our approach to ABET accreditation is unique from different aspects that will be very clear in the body of the paper. The CSIS-AUK department has a great confidence of the deigned, implemented and tested process and strongly believes that it will be a great source for learning, adoption and inspiration for institutions seeking ABET accreditation.

There is an emphasis today throughout many academic programs on developing and sustaining information assurance (IA) programs. While we often refer to such programs collectively as information assurance, they tend to be decidedly different in approach and content depending on many factors. This paper does not attempt to differentiate between such approaches but rather outlines a discovery approach to information assurance pedagogy – regardless of course content or curriculum. Such an approach is applicable whether or not the IA curriculum is a standalone degree or contained within a computer science, business information systems, or computer engineering program. The examples given in this paper were from a computer science and engineering program.

Aim/Purpose: The purpose of this study is to identify how Advanced level Mathematics and Mathematics course units offered at university level do impact on the academic performance of theoretical Computer Science course units. Background: In Sri Lankan state universities, students have been enrolled only from the Physical Science stream to do a degree program in Computer Science. In addition to that, universities have been offering some course units in Mathematics to provide the required mathematical maturity to Computer Science undergraduates. Despite of this it is observed that the failure rates in fundamental theoretical Computer Science course units are much higher than other course units offered in the general degree program every year. Methodology : Academic records comprised of all 459 undergraduates from three consecutive batches admitted to the degree program in Computer Science from a university were considered for this study. Contribution: This study helps academics in identifying suitable curricula for Mathematics course units to improve students’ performance in theoretical Computer Science courses. Findings: Advanced level Mathematics does not have any significant effect on the academic performance of theoretical Computer Science course units. Even though all Mathematics course units offered were significantly correlated with academic performance of every theoretical Computer Science course unit, only the Discrete Mathematics course unit highly impacted on the academic performance of all three theoretical Computer Science course units. Further this study indicates that the academic performance of female undergraduates is better than males in all theoretical Computer Science and Mathematics course units. Future Research: Identifying other critical success factors contributing to the students’ academic performance of the theoretical Computer Science through empirical studies

Programmes in “Software Engineering” have become a source of contention in many universities. Some Computer Science departments, many of which have used that phrase to describe individual courses for decades, claim software engineering as part of their discipline. However, Engineering faculties claim “Software Engineering” as a new speciality in the family of engineering disciplines. This paper discusses the differences between traditional computer science programmes and most engineering programmes and argues that we need programmes that follow the traditional engineering approach to professional education and educate engineers whose speciality within engineering is software construction. One such programme is described.

Beginning over 40 years ago with the publication of Curriculum 68, the major professional societies in computing--ACM and IEEE-Computer Society--have sponsored various efforts to establish international curricular guidelines for undergraduate programs in computing. As the field has grown and diversified, so too have the recommendations for curricula. There are now guidelines for Computer Engineering, Information Systems, Information Technology, and Software Engineering in addition to Computer Science. These volumes are updated regularly with the aim of keeping computing curricula modern and relevant. In the Fall of 2010, work on the next volume in the series, Computer Science 2013 (CS2013), began. Considerable work on the new volume has already been completed and a first draft of the CS2013 report (known as the Strawman report) will be complete by the beginning of 2012. This panel seeks to update and engage the SIGCSE community in providing feedback on the Strawman report, which will be available shortly prior to the SIGCSE conference.