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A strategic approach to computer science curriculum

Published: 18 March 2005 Publication History

Abstract

Computer Science enrollments are off nationwide, due in part to the tech downturn, and due in part to the well-publicized movement of tech jobs overseas in a global economy with instantaneous communications. Program coordinators and curriculum committees are in a quandary: the organization and content of a science education should not be dependent upon the whims of the employment marketplace. Yet this new technology environment contains forces beyond the control of governments, let alone curriculum committees, and the employment marketplace is effecting academic environments through student enrollment, with a consequent effect on faculty positions. Current research analyzed the effectiveness of outsourcing concluded that IT-related business enterprise functions differ markedly in the ease and success in which they can be outsourced. Functions and knowledge areas that are of strategic importance to the enterprise and those that are critical to a firm's competitive-advantage, are less likely to be successfully out-sourced. Unfortunately, the traditional entry-level career step for computer science graduates in basic programming has been identified as relatively easy to move offshore with success, though there are challenges to that claim.By examining advanced CS knowledge areas in light of this observation, a potential strategy to position CS curriculum in order to counter the outsourcing movement is revealed: CS programs can use a portion of their upper-level and elective hours to emphasize high-level "Strategic Knowledge Areas" that build on a standard CS curriculum, yet are both critical and strategic to a business enterprise, and therefore more difficult to outsource. This work extends that which was previously published [5], by developing the concept of a curriculum "Strategic Knowledge Area", along with the development of model curriculums at graduate and undergraduate levels, and discussion of implementation in both graduate program and undergraduate programs at the author's home institution.

References

[1]
ABET accreditation web site, http://www.abet.org.
[2]
Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2004-05 Edition, Computer Software Engineers, on the Internet at http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos267.htm
[3]
Computing Research News Annual Taulbee Survey, http://www.cra.org/reports/taulbee/0203.extract.html
[4]
Georgia Electronics Design Center http://www.gedcenter.org/
[5]
Hoganson, K. Computer Science Curricula in a Global Competitive Environment, Journal of Computing Science in Colleges, Vol. 20, No. 1, October 2004.
[6]
Kennesaw State University B.S. in Computer Science program, http://science.kennesaw.edu/csis/bscs.html
[7]
Kennesaw State University Master of Science in Computer Science program, http://msacs.kennesaw.edu/
[8]
Sargent, John, An Overview of Past and Projected Employment Changes in the Professional IT Occupations, Computing Research News, May 2004, Vol. 16, No. 4, http://www.cra.org/CRN/online.html
[9]
Schlichting, Cort, Mason, John, Certification Training in the Academy, The Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges, Volume 20., No. 1, October 2004.
[10]
Straub, D., Weill, P., Schwaig, K. S., "Strategy and IT Outsourcing, A Test of the Strategic Control Model", under review at The Journal of Information and Organization.
[11]
Swayne, D. A., Hahmoud, Q. H., An "Offshore-Resistant" Degree Program, IEEE Computer, August 2004.

Cited By

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  • (2009)Weighted game developer qualifications for consideration in curriculum developmentACM SIGCSE Bulletin10.1145/1539024.150899141:1(347-351)Online publication date: 4-Mar-2009
  • (2009)Defining the expectation gapProceedings of the 4th International Conference on Foundations of Digital Games10.1145/1536513.1536542(129-136)Online publication date: 26-Apr-2009
  • (2009)Weighted game developer qualifications for consideration in curriculum developmentProceedings of the 40th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education10.1145/1508865.1508991(347-351)Online publication date: 4-Mar-2009
  • Show More Cited By

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cover image ACM Conferences
ACMSE '05 vol 1: Proceedings of the 43rd annual ACM Southeast Conference - Volume 1
March 2005
408 pages
ISBN:1595930590
DOI:10.1145/1167350
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 18 March 2005

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Author Tags

  1. curriculum design
  2. curriculum issues
  3. global-sourcing
  4. out-sourcing
  5. strategic knowledge area

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ACM SE05
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ACM SE05: ACM Southeast Regional Conference 2005
March 18 - 20, 2005
Georgia, Kennesaw

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Overall Acceptance Rate 502 of 1,023 submissions, 49%

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Cited By

View all
  • (2009)Weighted game developer qualifications for consideration in curriculum developmentACM SIGCSE Bulletin10.1145/1539024.150899141:1(347-351)Online publication date: 4-Mar-2009
  • (2009)Defining the expectation gapProceedings of the 4th International Conference on Foundations of Digital Games10.1145/1536513.1536542(129-136)Online publication date: 26-Apr-2009
  • (2009)Weighted game developer qualifications for consideration in curriculum developmentProceedings of the 40th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education10.1145/1508865.1508991(347-351)Online publication date: 4-Mar-2009
  • (2008)Information Systems, Offshore Outsourcing, and Relevance in the Business School CurriculumOutsourcing and Offshoring of Professional Services10.4018/978-1-59904-972-4.ch017(303-320)Online publication date: 2008
  • (2008)Critical skills for game developersProceedings of the 2008 Conference on Future Play: Research, Play, Share10.1145/1496984.1497000(89-96)Online publication date: 3-Nov-2008

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