ACM India Education Committee
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ACM India Education Committee Mathai Joseph ACM Education Council, Denver, Mar 2013 1
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ACM India Education Committee. Mathai Joseph ACM Education Council, Denver, Mar 2013. Education Committee. Set up in October 2012 Members from across India Academic and industrial Mandate: W ork to improve CS education in schools & colleges All work by volunteers, needs careful pacing - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
Transcript of ACM India Education Committee
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ACM IndiaEducation Committee
Mathai Joseph
ACM Education Council, Denver, Mar 2013
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Education Committee
Set up in October 2012– Members from across India– Academic and industrial
Mandate: – Work to improve CS education in schools &
colleges
All work by volunteers, needs careful pacingPartnership between Ed Comm and chapters
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Directions
Initial discussions suggested three directions:• CS education in schools• Workshops for college teachers• Use of online courses
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CS in Schools
• Computing taught as computer literacy– Elementary programming, word processing,
spreadsheets, use of CAD• Suitable for schools leavers who get jobs• Poor preparation for serious study of CS• Teachers not equipped to teach CSMeeting planned for June 2013 in Pune with school heads, CS/IT teachers, policy makers
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Workshops for College Teachers
• Most college CS teachers lack a CS background• Some graduated from the courses they teach• Syllabus is nominally adequate• Examination follows prescribed patternSeries of 5-day workshops planned to help teachers with core material:– Hyderabad in May 2013 on algorithms– Trivandrum in September 2013 on algorithms
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Online Courses
Original aim was to develop online materialMajor re-think after creation of Udacity, Coursera, Google Coursebuilder etc. – Content widely available for core material
Discussions with Google, Coursera on platformsSupplementary material:– Problem sets for selected courses– ‘Approach’ courses to bring students to right level
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Early Days
Education Committee has made a start– Long way to go
Being volunteer-driven has limitations– Members with most to contribute are also busy
Need to widen participation furtherNeed to link with similar efforts elsewhere
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ACM India Dissertation Award
International screening committeeEntries invited from all CS departments in IndiaAfter screening, short list of 4-5– Winner: Ruta Mehta, IIT, Bombay
"Nash Equilibrium Computation in Various Games“– Hon mention: Srikanth Srinivasan, IMSc, Chennai
"New Directions in Arithmetic & Boolean Circuit Complexity"
Best dissertation to enter ACM dissertation award
