Committees: A New Initiative To Support Computing Education Through SIGCSE-Member Involvement

The SIGCSE-committees initiative was presented at a forum held at the 33^rd SIGCSE Symposium in Cincinnati. The forum opened with a presentation by Henry Walker (copies of the handout are available from: http://www.math.grin.edu/~sigcse/sigcse-committees.html) from which the following paragraphs are extracted:

SIGCSE has a rich heritage, based on talented and energetic members who are deeply committed to computing education. Building on this distinguished history, SIGCSE announces a new initiative: the creation of Committees to support the computing-education community. These Committees will draw upon the active involvement of interested SIGCSE members.

In dialog with its membership, SIGCSE will identify important current topics of interest to the computing-education community. For each topic, through its elected officers, SIGCSE will create a separate Committee.

While these Committees will be largely self-directed, some guidelines will provide structure and guidance:

Membership on any Committee will be open to any SIGCSE member, although
The SIGCSE Board will appoint 2-4 facilitators for each Committee to help in discussions and in the preparation of draft materials.
Each Committee will have its own LISTSERV for communication.
Each Committee will study its topic with the intent of producing a report.
While formal Committee work would proceed electronically, Committee members might meet informally at conferences (e.g., at Birds-of-a-Feather sessions), for those members who can attend
Committees are invited to present draft reports at conferences or to post their drafts on the Web in order to receive feedback.
Final reports may be presented at conferences and/or published in the SIGCSE Bulletin.
After issuing a report, a Committee normally would dissolve, although a new Committee might be formed (possibly with new facilitators) to address related matters.

The idea was then thrown open to the floor for comments. The comments are presented here in thematic groupings, not in the order in which they were generated:

Comments/Feedback/Suggestions

Issues on construction of committees and production of reports:

What should be the lifetime (duration) of a committee?
If reports are to have a lasting impact—something that defines the “state of the art” in a field—there needs to be a way for people to continue to work and do updates. Some kind of currency mechanism.
What is the purpose of a committee report:
- Support in addressing a problem?
- Support for faculty/courses?
- A view of the future?
Will the SIGCSE Board provide a framework for committees and their reports?

Issues concerning the relationship between SIGCSE and the committees:

Who authorises and approves reports:
- Can a report be authoritative if it is only the view/work of a few people?
- What if a report is BAD?
- SIGCSE committee reports will be published by SIGCSE, not endorsed by SIGCSE.
- Would it be possible for committees to have (or request) a self-defined level of sanction? (opinion/authority/endorsed/adopted)
What is the relationship of a committee to an organisation? An ITiCSE working group, for example, is very loosely coupled to SIGCSE as an organisation.
Real-world committees can be something to be taken on as extra work: in this model they probably meet only a few times, but the work is very prestigious. However, they can also be things with a more focussed structure meeting frequently, perhaps every two weeks. This model is tedious, but gets the work done. Perhaps SIGCSE committees could have a hybrid structure? They will need a plan/objectives/deadlines/structure. They will also need to have an established and stable (not rolling) membership.

Issues of membership, and meeting:

CC2001 and ITiCSE working groups are successful because the members meet face to face.
- Might there be some budget allocated to this activity?
- Might groups meet informally, at a conference?
Could you apply a logistics metric to membership? (i.e. only choose members from areas which are close geographically, to assist face to face meetings)
Work in other contexts suggests that there will always be differences: active vs passive members; “paid” vs volunteer members. Additionally, it seems likely that an initial face-to-face meeting is a pre-requisite to effective remote work.
Something stronger than a LISTSERV is needed. Perhaps something that supports threaded discussions?

Issues of topic selection:

How do topics get chosen for implementation? Who chooses? Perhaps there might be an iterative cycle of the presentation of topics followed by members indicating interests in them: those topics which did not get enough interest to form a viable group size on the first round would be dropped or replaced. There is no such thing as a one-person committee.
What is the proposed mechanism for generating topics?
A topic is different from the end-result.

Issues of overall management of committees:

Some topics might attract external funding. SIGCSE should establish a mechanism through which such requests could be guided.
Can we join more than one committee?
- Is there a need for a hierarchy of committees?
- Do we need a meta-committee?

Issues not covered elsewhere:

“Committee” is a word that already has a strong meaning. How about “subset”, “discussion group”, “panel” or “virtual panel”?
Let us not re-invent the wheel. There are models already in our discipline, for instance the ITEF and Java.

Then the floor was thrown open for solicitation of topics. After they had been generated, a quick, indicative, “straw-poll” was taken as to general interest in joining a committee on each subject (there were about 60 people in the room). Those numbers are shown in the right-hand column of the following table. Unlike the comments, above, these are presented here in the order in which they were generated.

Possible Topics	Voting
What is CS?	2
IT Curricula	4
The growing importance of scientific computing—bioinformatics etc.	13
What are the 10 most important books that should be on the bookshelf of a computing graduate?
Dictionary of a field (for example, “collaborative learning”)	2
A study to support graduates in their first jobs … getting them into academia	1
Help to attract grad students into CSEd by looking at the issue of the value of publications in this field (is there such a thing as a “tier one” CSEd paper?)	3
Ethics—with a potential SIGCAS collaboration (Special Interest Group on Computers and Society)	9
Teaching faculty:
Teaching faculty in large institutions: how do you attract them, how do you keep them?	1
Teaching faculty in small institutions: how do you attract them, how do you keep them?	8
Contexts and constraints in hiring and retaining teaching faculty
Forming and running a “faculty programs”
Mentoring
CS Ed Research: defining an area	8
Boom and bust in admissions: we’re never prepared	2
Pre-college outreach programs	5
Models of security education: a “survey” collection of models and ideas	3
How to support oral and written communication (in the computing curriculum)	5
Guidelines for Professional development of ACM members:	0
What Professional Development is required for those in education?
How much? What kind? Whose authority?
Is a SIGCSE tutorial Professional Development? And for those who can’t get to the Symposium …?
Cheap (or free) on-line courses
Implementation of CC2001	13
Not Just CS: definition of the discipline and sister disciplines (e.g. IT and IS). Are there commonalities?
ACM Ed Board self-assessment program: what does it mean for SIGCSE members?
A condensed history of the Symposium. Main themes, main heros. A repository for history.	3
Help on the fuzzy area between CS and IS and the conflicting ground of what material is taught in each program, and who teaches it and how it is taught.	8

These were the original ideas brought to the meeting (and available from http://www.math.grin.edu/~sigcse/sigcse-committees.html, as above). They have been annotated with the comments that were generated during the meeting, which are shown here in square brackets.
An Essential Book List for Undergraduate Libraries [combine with “10 books”, as above?]	7.5
The High-School/College interface.	5
The Two-Year College/University interface [CC2001. The University/Grad School interface]	4
Distance learning issues affecting computing faculty [What software, what works etc. What compensation should a faculty member get for this kind of work? What release time? What is reasonable? What about Intellectual Property Rights?]	5
Issues impacting under-represented groups in computing	10
The role of mathematics in computing [and the task of getting Math faculty to “buy in”]	18
Faculty Vitality	4
The use of collaborative learning in Computing Education	11
Student Assessment	11
Training material on accessible software, hardware and web design—with a potential SIGCAPH collaboration (Special Interest Group on Computers and the Physically Handicapped)	2 (but 10 would be interested in reading such a report)

Finally, a suggestion was made about how topics should be presented to the membership:

Topic Presentation

“Topics” need to consist of:

a name
a short outline (at least one paragraph)
possibly some pointers to other material
contact details for one (or more) “responsible persons”