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.
Following the course of the first very successful
Informatics
Education Europe conference in Montpellier, 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. Despite the
significant developments in East and South-East European countries in recent years, including the changes in their technological infrastructure and the emergence of
competitive software companies, academic staff in the region have not always responded efficiently. The conference will investigate the reasons for this, address problems
common among educators related to the development, improvement, delivery and evaluation of Informatics curricula and provide an opportunity for sharing experiences and
best practice examples from all over Europe.
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.
Conference
Proceedings are
available from this
link
Conference Conclusions
The second Informatics Education Europe conference, IEEII, took place
on 29-30 November 2007, in
Thessaloniki
. The conference was organized by
CITY
College
, an
Affiliated
College
of the
University
of
Sheffield
and SEERC, the South-East European Research Centre and it was mainly
sponsored by ACM through its Education Board.
All participants expressed the opinion that this was a very successful
event. Indeed, IEEII was able to successfully meet its initial aim to
bring together Informatics Educators from all over Europe and to
provide an opportunity for sharing experiences, innovative ideas and
addressing issues of concern related to the state of Informatics
Education in
Europe
. The main theme of IEEII this year was “Developments in South-East
and
East Europe
” and this was greatly reflected in the presentations, since 40%
of them were Informatics Educators coming from this region.
There
were three keynote speakers. Prof Eric Roberts from
Stanford
University
talked about the crisis in Computer Science education as far as the
number of potential students attracted to the discipline. He presented
a number of reasons and actions that Universities and staff should
take to "make Computer Science fun again". Dr Maria Fasli
from
Essex
University
talked about how games can be employed in an educational context and
the benefits from incorporating gaming elements into the learning
process to improve the students' motivation and engagement. Finally,
Dr. Patrick Jermann, from Centre de Recherche et d'Appui pour
la Formation et ses Technologies in
Zurich
, demonstrated how interactive learning technologies and tools as well
as pedagogical innovation can favour problem-solving over exercising.
The
tutorial held on ACM Java Libraries by Prof Roberts was extremely
interesting. The tutorial was addressed to Computer Science educators
who teach Java programming language as the first language in new
comers. The material discussed in the tutorial attempts to motive
first year students and attract their interest to programming.
The
conference was attended by about 80 participants who had the
opportunity to attend 40 presentations on many different areas
in Informatics Education such as Teaching Methodologies, Profession
& Skills Development, Teaching Methodologies and Support Tools,
E-Learning, Curriculum Development. All presenters focused on
pedagogical issues and technologies that are aimed towards facilitated
student learning in Informatics.
Participants
also had the chance to attend the very successful South East European
Workshop in Formal Methods, SEEFM 2007, a satellite event to the IEEII.
We
would like to take this opportunity to express once more our
appreciation to Andrew McGettrick, Chair of the Programme
Committee, Gordon Davies, Chair of the Organizing Committee,
and Gerry McAllister,
University
of
Ulster
for their invaluable contribution to the event. Moreover special
mention has to be made to our colleagues in the Computer Science
Department,
CITY
College
and SEERC for their hard work and effort that contributed to the
success of the conference. In addition, we would like to thank all the
members of the Programme Committee for their significant input in the
reviewing process.
Finally,
we would like to thank ACM for its financial support as well as
Microsoft for sponsoring the IEEII dinner, the British
Computer Society (Hellenic Section) for the best paper award and
the UK’s Higher Education Academy (Information and Computer
Science) and the Greek Computer Society for supporting the
dissemination of the event.
All
of us now look forward to the Informatics Education Europe III, which
will take place in
Venice
next year.
Anna
Sotiriadou, Petros Kefalas
On
behalf of the Organising Committee
