Informatics
as a subject discipline in universities has seen considerable
turbulence within the last ten years and indeed it is unlikely that
any other subject discipline has been subjected to such extremes in
demand over such a short period.
Many
would argue that it is still an emerging discipline, which has not
reached a ‘steady state'. The reasons for the fluctuations are
thought to be related to a number of issues, particularly related to
the year 2000 issue, the development of the Internet and the
concurrent rapid expansion of the information technology industry.
Although
this created a significant demand for Informatics courses across
Europe the situation started to changed around 2001 and there has been
a steady decline in applications to universities since then. Many
reasons have been postulated for this, including the image of the
discipline, job prospects and the experience of the subject at high or
secondary school level.
Informatics
can therefore be viewed as a discipline at a crossroads juncture with
inherent problems. In the USA , professional bodies such as IEEE-CS
and ACM have been proactive in identifying these global problems and
providing guidance in the form of curriculum recommendations; apart
from isolated efforts by few Computer Societies in European countries
no such common body exists within Europe.
Following
the course of the first very successful Informatics
Education Europe conference in Montpellier last year, the IEEII
conference in 2007 will take place in Thessaloniki. IEEII aims to
bring together Informatics Educators across Europe and to provide a
forum for sharing experience, innovative ideas and identifying common
issues to be addressed within Europe.
IEEII
will include all the thematic areas of the previous conference but it
will also focus on “Developments in South-East and East Europe”
as its main theme. During the last 10 years there have been
significant developments in East and South-East European countries
through the changes of their technological infrastructure and the
creation of competitive software companies. However, it is evident
that academia did not respond efficiently to the changes of the
socio-political map and the East and South-East European Universities
have not yet formed a solid framework for industrial liaison. The
conference will investigate the reasons for the above, and propose
ways, using experiences of America and Europe as well as best practice
examples in this region, in which the academia will improve their
curricula and services in such a way to facilitate professionalism of
graduates as well as to increase their employability. The role of
local Informatics Societies will be investigated and how these could
benefit from collaboration with European or American Computer
Societies in order to play a significant role for the students,
professional and Universities in this region.
We
believe the conference will be of interest to all involved in
Informatics education in Europe, from the lecturer teaching daily and
whose interest may be in the pedagogy to the Heads of Department and
Deans who shape policy and curriculum within their Universities.
