CS4HS@Sydney
Professor David Lowe
Associate Dean (Education) / Professor of Software Eng.
Faculty of Engineering and Information Technologies
The University of Sydney
CS4HS
Welcome!
› “CS4HS is an initiative sponsored by Google to promote Computer
Science and Computational Thinking in high school and middle school
curriculum … These workshops incorporate informational talks by industry
leaders, and discussions on new and emerging CS curricula at the high
school and middle school level.”
- http://www.cs4hs.com/
CS4HS
Why is CS / SE / IS / ICT Education Important?
› We have:
- Australian UG students enrolled in ICT degrees – declined by 50% over the last decade.
- ICT is one of the bottom two general discipline areas with respect to attracting high
achieving school leavers (ATAR > 90) into tertiary study.
- ICT is one of the top two discipline areas with respect to admitting low achieving students
(ATAR < 50) into tertiary study.
- Less than 50 per cent of ICT professionals possess a degree level qualification in ICT.
› And yet:
- Australia’s digital economy is valued at over $100 billion
- The ICT industry and profession contributes almost 8 per cent of GDP.
-
http://www.acs.org.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0014/9302/ACARA-Draft
-Shape-of-the-Australian-Curriculum_Technologies_June-2012.pdf
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CS4HS
What do we do about it?
› Education
- Teacher development:
e.g. UK “Teach First” program: Google sponsorship of
outstanding ICT graduates to become teachers.
- Curriculum renewal:
e.g. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-16493929
- Student motivation:
e.g. Raspberry Pi?
- http://acce.edu.au/ict-and-australian-curriculum
- http://www.computingatschool.org.uk/data/uploads/I
CT%20and%20CS%20joint%20statement.pdf
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CS4HS
Agenda
Thursday
Visual Programming / Context Free Grammars
Information Visualization and Winner-take all algorithm
NCSS Challenge & Programming in Python
Teaching IT Concepts Through Web Programming
Computers are Dumb, People are Creative
Physics and Maths in Programming?
Careers Panel
Friday
Computation in the data stream model
Multicore programming
Motif Finding
Lab Demos: Robots / Tabletops / Biomed
Survey
Lightning talks
Wrap-up
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Online Education
Threat or Opportunity
Professor David Lowe
Associate Dean (Education) / Professor of Software Eng.
Faculty of Engineering and Information Technologies
The University of Sydney
CEO, The Labshare Institute
President, Global Online Laboratory Consortium
General Chair, REV2013 Conference
Are we using technology effectively?
c2010 class
c1350 class
(Laurentius de Voltolina)
Education vs Learning
What is the difference between e-Learning and online Education?
From OED Online…
› Education:
- culture or development of personal knowledge or understanding, growth of character, moral
and social qualities, etc., as contrasted with the imparting of knowledge or skill.
- The systematic instruction, teaching, or training in various academic and non-academic
subjects given to or received by a child, typically at a school; the course of scholastic
instruction a person receives in his or her lifetime. Also: instruction or training given to or
received by an adult
› Learning
- The action of receiving instruction or acquiring knowledge; spec. in Psychol., a process
which leads to the modification of behaviour or the acquisition of new abilities or responses,
and which is additional to natural development by growth or maturation;
- Knowledge, esp. of language or literary or historical science, acquired by systematic study;
Online Education
Is education changing? Is learning changing?
› Significant area of research
- Loss of analytical skills ?
- Loss of synthesis skills?
- Gain in knowledge integration
skills?
- Enhancement in broad knowledge
frameworks?
- …
› But where to from here?
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Online learning
› Will it affect us?
› How will it affect us?
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Horizon report
Technology Outlook for STEM+ Education 2012-2017
› Time-to-Adoption: One Year or Less
Cloud Computing
Collaborative Environments
Mobile Apps
Social Networking
› Time-to-Adoption: Two to Three Years
Augmented Reality
Learning Analytics
Massively Open Online Courses
Personal Learning Environments
› Time-to-Adoption: Four to Five Years
Collective Intelligence
Internet of Things
Natural User Interfaces
Wearable Technology
- http://www.nmc.org/publications
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Technology and Labs
For the things we have to learn before we can
do them, we learn by doing them: Aristotle
Tell me and I'll forget; Show me and I may remember;
Involve me and I'll understand: Chinese Proverb
Secondary school science labs:
Constrained access; limited relevance; lack of integration
with learning technologies (Goodrum, Hackling, Rennie. 2001)
Lost Learning Opportunities!
But why Labs (rather than, say, simulations)?
They are expensive, cumbersome, inflexible, difficult to evolve, disconnected from reality,
time-consuming, …
Is our lab pedagogy evolving?
c2010 Laboratory
Typical undergraduate facilities
c1900 Laboratory
Cavendish laboratory
http://www-outreach.phy.cam.ac.uk/
camphy/museum/area8/display1.htm
Example labs
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Remote Labs + New opportunities
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MOOCs
Massive Online Open Courses
- “A massive open online course (MOOC) is a category of online course where the
participants are distributed and course materials also are dispersed across the web. …
MOOCs are open and one of their main features has been the level of connection and
collaboration by participants online. … They allow for a single teacher to teach tens or
hundreds of thousands of students. …”
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_open_online_course
› 2011:
- Several course offerings by Stanford University.
Artificial Intelligence  160,000 enrolments
Machine learning  104,000 enrolments
› 2012:
- Coursera: 33+ Universities, 200+ courses, 1.3million students!
- EdX: MIT, Harvard, Berkeley, $90M
- Udacity
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MOOCs
Implications
› “will only be 10 universities left in the world”: Thrun
http://nation.time.com/2012/09/04/mooc-brigade-will-massive-open-online-coursesrevolutionize-higher-education/#ixzz27KpW498m
› Enormous repository of rich content!
Flexibility, but…
› Content is not learning!
› We still need support (teaching?)
› We still need structure (curriculum?)
- How do we weave these together?
› Blended learning?
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Thank You
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