SICSA supports Code Your Future (CYF)

by Gianluca Palombo
5 August 2019

CodeYourFuture are a charity who train refugees, asylum seekers and people from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds to become professional software developers. We are already running classes in London, Manchester, Glasgow and Rome – with plans to extend to other cities in the near future. On the weekend of the 27th June, CodeYourFuture students, graduates, applicants, mentors and public guests gathered to celebrate and find out more about our work and, more generally, efforts to use tech as a force for positive social change in society: https://conference.codeyourfuture.io/

Friday 28 June
Over 100 students, volunteers, applicants, partners and guests assembled throughout our first day of the CodeYourFuture Conference 2019 in Glasgow. The venue was the wonderful Sir Charles Wilson building, where we guaranteed a memorable day of work courtesy of the University of Glasgow and the UofG Computing Science department.Thanks to our insightful panels and guest speaker presentations, CYF members and public guests were able to gain fantastic and unique insights into the crossover between tech, community development and social justice.

Highlights included inspiring lessons and testimonies delivered by speakers such as Mel McKendrick, CEO at Optomize Ltd and Assistant Professor in Psychology at Heriot-Watt University, and Pheona Matuvo, co-founder and director at community interest company Radiant and Brighter. Our own CYF graduates shared their incredible stories in their own panel, inspiring current and future students – whilst through gratefully-received tea and coffee breaks, networks were built as new friends were made in addition to a lot of overdue catching up between CYF cohorts from across the UK.

Friday was wound down with a relaxing evening at the home of one of our amazing Glasgow volunteers, Carme! We should give a special thanks to SICSA for covering expenses for the food and refreshments we are able to provide at this occasion and others throughout the Conference weekend for the benefit of our CYF members and guests.

Saturday 29 June
On Saturday, we carried on, as CYF students, graduates, mentors and organisers got to work on technical skills development and strategy planning! On Saturday, we found ourselves in a similarly inspiring conference environment as we were hosted by BBC Scotland in their amazingly impressive Pacific Quay headquarters.

Students on the day were able to learn and share different skills alongside their counterparts and predecessors as well as mentors from CYF cohorts in different cities. Highlights included insightful and valuable workshops by Michael Antczak, experienced software developer and tech meet-up organiser, and Alec McEchran, former Senior Software Engineer at YouTube and Google and now Principal Engineer at KPV LAB Edinburgh.

For mentors and organisers, the day consisted of creative group work and discussions, helping to agree on fundamental universal goals of CYF cohorts and thinking how we can help provide even greater access to life-changing social and professional development for disadvantaged groups in the UK and further afield.

Saturday ended with us gathering at West of Scotland Cricket Club in Glasgow for a final winding down and celebration following a high-octane yet fulfilling two days.

Overall, we were delighted with how the Conference went, and hope that our public guests, in particular, were able to gain extra insight into the valuable and unique work we do at CodeYourFuture. For the CYF community, we come away with renewed energy, inspiration and more coherent aims and strategies. We hope these things will aid us in continuing to channel tech, education and community empowerment in an effort to improve our societies.

We thank SICSA for supporting the conference along with The University of Glasgow, BBC Scotland, Financial Times and our microsponsors who donated online.

SICSA Education – Call for Workshop Proposals in 2019

SICSA Education would like to invite the Scottish Computing community to apply for funds to host SICSA Education workshops or other education focussed events. Some of the more recent workshops that have been funded have included:

• How should we assess group work?
• Skills in entrepreneurial education
• Computational thinking in primary schools

We now invite members of the community to bid to host an event, either to expand on any of these topics; or to propose events on any other Computing Education related topic.

In order to apply please complete the attached pro forma (no more than 2 pages) and return it to admin@sicsa.ac.uk by Friday 31st May 2019. A further call will be made in the Autumn, but we will also accept applications throughout the year.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact admin@sicsa.ac.uk.

Detailed information about SICSA Education can be found at http://www.sicsa.ac.uk/education/education-event-sponsorship/ and http://www.sicsa.ac.uk/education/.

SICSA supports the new Teach Computing Science Handbook for Primary Teachers

by Professor Judy Robertson, University of Edinburgh
24 April 2019

SICSA Education has recently sponsored the production of a handbook to help primary teachers to teach the new computing strand of the Curriculum for Excellence in Scotland. For the first time, children aged 3 years upwards will learn about key computing concepts as part of the Technologies curriculum. This is a great step forwards, because it will lay the foundations for understanding the fundamentals of process and information which young people can build on if they elect to study computing in the senior phase of high school. To help primary teachers and early years practitioners get to grips with the new curriculum, and give them lesson ideas, a group of volunteers got together to write a handbook – Kate Farrell (Computing at Schools Scotland, Judy Robertson (University of Edinburgh), Quintin Cutts (University of Glasgow) and Richard Connor (University of Stirling).

The guide has already proved popular with schools – for example, a parent wrote to tell us “I’ve been working with my daughter’s primary school and using the guide to help introduce CS throughout the school. The guide has been instrumental in rolling out a curriculum for P4 upwards”. It has also been adapted for use with West Dunbarton Council. We are currently working on a similar guide for the early stages of high school.

We have posted a paper copy of the guide to all the primary schools in Scotland. Why not check with your local school to see if they received it, or if you can give them a hand to teach some programming lessons? You can download a free copy of the guide at www.teachcs.scot.

 

SICSA Education funding helps PWSAfrica’s goal to empower scientists in Africa with the basic computer programming skills.

by PWSAfrica Team
13 November 2018

PWSAfrica’s goal is to empower scientists in Africa with the basic computer programming skills, which they would need to enhance their research. In August 2018, five computer scientists from the University of Glasgow set foot in Nigeria to run the first edition of this initiative. The workshop was certainly successful in training over 100 participants (a mix of postgraduates and undergraduates from the STEM departments) on the basics of Python programming. The day before the workshop started, we ran an “installation party” where students could bring their laptops and get help following installation instructions for Anaconda on their systems.

The two-week course was split into a few sections: Python fundamentals for the first half of the course (based initially on Dr. John Williamson’s materials for teaching Python at the University of Glasgow). Following this, a few days were spent on packages specifically useful for use in a scientific context, such as Numpy, Pandas and Matplotlib. Finally, participants completed group work where, for two days, they worked together to complete challenging tasks that would test their Python abilities. These were genuinely complex, and included producing animations of fireworks, writing language interpreters, solving mathematical modelling challenges and constructing matching algorithms.

An exciting part of the workshop — from our perspective — was how quickly we had to think to accommodate new information as we received it. Within the first day of teaching it quickly became apparent that the method of teaching we had assumed — providing content in Jupyter notebooks that could be worked through and assisted with by tutors in the room — did not work well with a room of students with mostly mathematical background! Their preference was to begin with a lecturing style, meaning we were constructing our content usually the night before it was delivered.

However, when we did teach with a lecturing style, we were hit with another surprise: students also enjoyed seeing code being run on a projector, and much preferred the tight feedback loop of writing code and seeing it execute to code written on a board, almost as mathematics. This wasn’t what we expected at all, and we found ourselves fitting a blend of the computing science teaching we were used to and the mathematics-style teaching that they were familiar with. This quick turnaround, where we would have to quickly find and implement solutions to problems, kept us on our toes in a satisfying and exciting way.

An aspect of the workshop that also stood out was the way our participants responded to being a part of the workshop. Their enthusiasm for the course was tremendous. Students were eager to ask questions and engage with the materials; the excited students would stay for their morning session, and after their lesson was finished, sit through the repeated lesson in the afternoon session so they could ask further questions. We had to put them in a separate room!

Events like PWSAfrica are only as successful as the people who attend, because ultimately, our “product” is their learning. For all our careful planning, the students’ willingness to engage determined whether our efforts were worth it! So, considering this, the students we happened to train were an absolute gift.

The workshop took place at the Department of Mathematics, University of Ibadan, in Nigeria. Our hosts were very kind and hospitable, and went to every effort imaginable to make sure our experience of Nigeria was the best it could possibly be. It was! We all have our own stories and memories that were taken from the trip. Personally, I still crave “Mr. Dennis’ Very Good Eggs”, have flashbacks every time I have to restart a Jupyter kernel, and reminisce on the heavy Nigerian rain cutting through muggy warm air. I loved the way it would kick up dust, and then angst from our students, who managed to spend most of their year free of precipitation altogether.

Which is to say: between our own incredible experiences, students with a voracious academic appetite, exciting technological challenges, and the eventual success of seeing students solve genuinely complex problems, we all consider PWSAfrica to be a roaring success: for the students’ experience; for the knowledge we impacted; and for our own incredible journey.

Needless to say, we’re excited for 2019!

Welcome to our new SICSA Director of Education

by Dr Rachel Menzies, SICSA Education Director
5 March 2018

In February, I took over as the SICSA Director of Education, a post which had been vacant since Dr Karen Petrie stepped down last year. Already I’ve been really busy, sitting on a number of advisory boards so far, and I’m only two weeks in! I’m currently a lecturer at the University of Dundee and have been a member of SICSA since 2008 in both Education and HCI. Most recently, I was the SICSA PhD Conference Academic Chair for 2017 in Dundee. This was a brilliant event sharing the future of SICSA and Computing Science in Scotland.  This year the conference will be held at RGU – make sure you are signed up, it’s shaping up to be a great few days!

Personally, I have an interest in how social media can be used in education and how we can support our students to take part in group work. However, this is just a very small part of the excellent work being done within SICSA, including links with the SQA on curriculum development, flipped classroom methodologies, early-years computational thinking and involvement in outreach events such as The First Lego League. We have a great base of knowledge, enthusiasm and resources in Scotland to make sure that we are creating technologists of the future, and I’m so excited to be a part of it.

Like many of us, I have been supported by SICSA in many ways over my career, through funding for workshops, away days, all-hands meetings and travel costs. Now I can continue this support for others. I’m planning a great programme that will help us gather momentum as a community to share our ideas and experiences and collectively influence national policies on computing education. This includes a new lecturer induction, a call for workshops, schools engagement and an all-hands education event to showcase what we can do.

If you have any ideas of things that can be done to build the education community, then let me know. I am particularly keen to reach out to universities who may not have been able to engage with SICSA Education in the past, for whatever reasons. Contact me on r.menzies@dundee.ac.uk to get the ball rolling in your ideas. A call for workshop funding will follow in the next few weeks.

EPSRC Diversity and Inclusion in ICT Study

by Professor Carron Shankland, University of Stirling
21 February 2017

We know that women are not well represented in our discipline. The 2016 Women in IT scorecard shows that while all girls get Information and Communication Technology (ICT) at an early age in school, the number of women drops throughout education to 36% at GCSE level, 26% at GCE level, and just 17% at degree level.  This 17% is maintained in industrial jobs, although there is wide variation within different specialisms. In academia we find a similar leaky pipeline: from 17% graduating at first degree level, we rise to 25% at postgraduate level, 22% at lecturer/senior lecturer level, and 12.5% at professorial level (HESA 2013/14 figures).

Clearly there’s a problem getting women into the subject in the first place, but why do many women, having trained in computing, not continue their career?  EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council) are particularly interested in why research careers are not pursued by women, and other under-represented groups, in Computing/ICT (Information and Communication Technologies). If we assume women are equally able to do computing research (and why wouldn’t we?) then the implication is that there are barriers faced by under-represented groups. In which case, what are those barriers and how can we break them down?  It seems clear that for the health of our discipline we need to get better at retaining talented people.

These are among the questions being considered in a diversity and inclusion study commissioned by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). https://www.epsrc.ac.uk/newsevents/news/ictdiversityinclusionresearch/

The review is investigating what the barriers are, how they manifest themselves and what can be done to support underrepresented groups in ICT.  Some issues may cut across minority groups, whether those groups are identified by gender, race, sexuality, age, disability, religion, pregnancy and maternity, or married or partnership status. Therefore the study starts with an an inclusive online survey across the whole ICT research community.

We need to hear from everyone to get a full picture of our research environment (postgrad students to professors, and not only representatives of minority groups). We’re also interested to hear the experiences of those who have left academia: if you are still in touch with ex-colleagues please forward the survey to them.

Take the survey today – right now:   https://www.research.net/r/diversityICT

The survey will be open until 28 February and takes around 15 minutes to complete. Questions are around career aspirations and the support you get to pursue your career, your day-to-day environment, the effect of your life on your career, and so on.

Remember, we want to hear from everyone in this survey

SICSA Education Director… a look back at the last four years.

by Dr Karen Petrie, SICSA Education Director

On the 1st of September 2013 I (Dr Karen Petrie, University of Dundee) replaced Professor Greg Michaelson (Heriot-Watt University) as the SICSA Director of Education.  This included taking over as HE representative on a number of boards including the Skills Development Scotland ICT Investment Plan implementation group and the Advanced Higher Qualification Development Team.

It has been a very busy 4 years, but I feel that we achieved a lot. Some of the highlights for me were:

  • Admission Criteria Round-Table: The majority of the University admissions tutors for computing in Scotland met with representatives of the school sector (including computing teachers and the SQA) to discuss admission criteria. Following this meeting 7 Universities in Scotland decided to endorse the new Curriculum for Excellence qualifications by recommending Higher Computing Science for entrants.
  • SICSA Education Ministerial Visit (Women in Computing). A women in computing event was held in the University of Dundee as part of the Scottish Government focus on Young People week that coincided with the launch of the ICT Skills Investment Plan. The speakers at this event included Shona Robison MSP who has Equality within her portfolio.  Members of the computing industry and academic also shared best practice for recruiting and retaining women in the ICT industry.
  • The inception of Education Short themes; the first two short themes were:
    1. Towards a Continuum in School to University Computing Education which is lead by Richard Connor, University of Strathclyde along with Quintin Cutts, University of Glasgow and Greg Michaelson, Heriot Watt University;
    2. Recruiting and Supporting Women in Computing. Which is lead by Ishbel Duncan, University of St Andrews and Alison Pease, University of Dundee. It will STEM secondary school activities, which are being coordinated by Natalie Coull, University of Abertay.

This morphed in to our current workshop call which is open to all.

  • We organised an education conference in partnership with SICSA Education, Computing at Schools, Scotland, BCS, College Development Network, ScotlandIS, Education Scotland and the School of Computing at the University of Dundee. All these education based groups joined forces to organise an education conference in Dundee on Saturday 7th of November, 2015.  This followed on from the success of three annual conferences looking at Computing Science in Primary and Secondary schools.  The partnership with SICSA Education provided an academic and research strand, and partnering with ScotlandIS and College Development Network provided an industry and vocational strand. This was the first ever conference in Scotland to bring people together with interests in computing education from primary teachers to HE academics including those from industry.
  • We organised a CPD event for Computing school teachers with Education Scotland to cover the new topics in the new Advanced Higher Computing Science syllabus.

We provided sponsorship for several events aimed at school children including:

  • Transport for young people to be able to attend the YRS Festival of Code
  • A bus to get attendee to the SICSA Christmas Cyber-lectures.
  • The First Lego League
  • A digital response to a Green Year

There have also been more workshops organised by members of the SICSA community than I can recount and at least 3 new lecturer inductions!

I have represented SICSA on several committee including:

  • The Data Lab (an SFC funded innovation centre) Education board
  • The Scottish Government Digital Skills: Industry – Education and Training Strategy boardThe Digital Skills academy advisory board (became Code Clan)
  • E-placement Scotland advisory board
  • Computing at Schools, Scotland
  • SQA Computing Qualifications steering group
  • Skills Investment Plan for ICT (in Scotland)
  • SFC Digital Skills working group
  • BCS Scotland committee

It has been a very busy 4 years for me, but I do not think I have ever learned so much in such a condensed period of time!

That brings me to the main point of the blog which is to say a huge thank you to all of the people I have worked with throughout the years. There have been times when it has not been easy but your support has always helped me through.

I am especially grateful to Aileen and Steven, who have never said we do not have time to help you with another one of your “good ideas”, even though they would have been more than justified in doing so!

Positive steps for gender equality in STEMM….but there’s still much to be done

Women In Computing

By Professor Carron Shankland, University of Stirling

This Ada Lovelace Day we will see the launch of an initiative to celebrate women in Maths and Computing, rather fittingly at Bletchley Park. As a new branch of the existing Suffrage Science scheme, it will encourage women into science, and to reach senior leadership roles.  “Suffrage Science” aims to make a difference. The MRC Clinical Sciences Centre (CSC) at Imperial College London formed the scheme five years ago. There are currently two sections, one for women in the Life Sciences, and one for those in Engineering and the Physical Sciences. The event today launches a third specialism, for women working in Mathematics and Computing.

At the launch today I am honoured to be one of 12 women, including also Professor Muffy Calder OBE, who will receive awards to celebrate our scientific achievements and our ability to inspire others.  This is a very positive step towards addressing the issue of gender inequality in the Sciences and across society as a whole – but we need to continue the momentum if we want to see significant culture-change.

Two years ago, I wanted to send a message out to my undergraduate class advertising the annual Lovelace Colloquium, an event mainly for young women in computing. It’s rather anti-social to spam a whole group, therefore I set about the slightly tedious task of filtering the women from the class lists, and I found just 3 in in our final honours year. And another 3 in the third year. But, hallelujah, 4 in the second year. I was genuinely shocked at these low numbers. Although I stand in front of these classes all the time, I hadn’t really absorbed that the proportion of women in our degree programme had fallen to something around 10% of the total and this is not just a feature of my university.

Women are under-represented in computing in the UK, at all levels, across the industry, across the academy, across training in schools and colleges. BCS Women produce the Women in IT Scorecard each year, highlighting the numbers. For example, the proportion of females accepted to higher education courses has declined in IT and Computing related courses to just 12%. But female students are outperforming male students in IT-related GCEs and GCSEs: 15% of female students achieving grades A/A* grades in GCE (compared with 9% of male students), and 32% of female students obtaining A/A*grades in GCSE (compared with 17% of male students).

Similar patterns are repeated in the IT workforce. Women represent 17% of IT specialists, and that level has been fairly stable for a decade. In the academy 22.2% of lecturers are female. There’s a two-fold problem: clearly there aren’t enough women coming into Computing, but there aren’t enough women in senior roles either. Women represent 10% of IT directors, and 13.1% of Computing Professors.

Addressing these problems requires effort from many different groups. In higher education in the UK, one of the main drivers for change is the Athena SWAN charter. The charter was established in 2005, supported by the Equality Challenge Unit (ECU), to encourage and recognise commitment to advancing the careers of women in science, technology, engineering, maths and medicine (STEMM) employment in higher education and research. In May 2015 the charter was expanded to recognise work undertaken in arts, humanities, social sciences, business and law, and in professional and support roles, and for trans staff and students. The charter now recognises work undertaken to address gender equality more broadly, and not just barriers to progression that affect women.

Of the 105 computer science departments in UK institutions, 24 have Athena SWAN bronze awards either on their own, or as part of a larger faculty group. There are no gold awards, but there are three silver awards: Computer Science at University College London, the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh, and the School of Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Queen’s University Belfast. Many of the remaining 78 are preparing applications. Initiatives carried out as part of Athena SWAN typically include mentoring and training for women to develop their potential, training for managers to ensure unbiased decision-making, and policy development to support maternity leave and flexible working. Departments also recognise the importance of using female role models in recruitment materials and in outreach activities such as public lectures and school visits.

The BCS Academy with the Council of Professors and Heads of Computing and the BCS women in computing research group are supporting departments to come together to share best practice through the CygnetS network. Cygnets is just a hatchling at the moment, but it will allow us to create a, mainly online, community to share information and experience.  Within SICSA we have an active group of Athena SWAN representatives from all 14 institutions who are coming together to discuss the main issues.  There are clearly some important questions to ask ourselves here: What initiatives really work in getting women into computing? How can careers be best supported while maintaining family life (still primarily a women’s issue)? What other organisations can we work with to achieve greater visibility of female role models?

It’s important to point out that these questions do not just rest at the feet of the senior academics, strategists and policy-makers.  For the positive steps to turn into in giant leaps, everyone needs to get involved, regardless of your position or gender…Do all that you can to encourage women around you: be a mentor, or a sponsor. Champion an open and transparent culture in your workplace. If you want to get involved with Athena SWAN activities, talk to your local university: you might be able to support outreach events such as science fairs and hackathons, or you may be able to visit students to share your experience. Talk to your own family and friends…tell them what a great profession you work in!

This piece by Professor Carron Shankland (University of Stirling) is based upon an article that she wrote for ITNOW, originally published in June 2016. 

Addendum: As of the November 2016 round of Athena SWAN departmental awards there are 28 computing departments with bronze and 5 computing departments with silver