IT|ITC|Computing|Computer Science

Skills

Professor Nigel Shadbolt

BCS President

BCS@ nearly 50

Record membership - 60,000

Sound finances

New products and services

Increasing numbers of candidates taking our exams

Leading a successful Professionalism Programme

Raising our Learned Society Profile

Created a dynamic Thought Leadership Programme

Expanding our work with business, government and academia

Improving our infrastructure - physical and digital

The Good News

Better and more enthusiastic at adopting information technologies compared with European competitors; cited by leading economists as a major factor in recent GDP growth.

A net exporter in IT services to the tune of £1Bn.

Second only to the US in computing research, with high levels of knowledge transfer into specific industry sectors.

Reliant on information technology for delivery and reform in healthcare, education, social inclusion, transport and policing; every major policy initiative has an information technology component.

Real trends speak of current and long term increases in the demand for high skill information technologists and CS

Crisis! What crisis?

The numbers of students studying computing at University has fallen dramatically – by more than 40% since 2001

Government and HEFCE - we are strategic not vulnerable

What we need to understand

The role of IT/Computing in education up to 18

The relationships between computer science, IT/computing as a discipline, and IT Professionalism– what they are, – what they should be, – and how they need to change.

Updating and potentially redefining the role and relationships of the BCS for the different segments of the community

The IT and CS ecosystems

Industry Ecosystems

IT Industry and IT Staff– Growing Digital Economy– Public Sector

IT-enabled business– Growth faster than average UK – Gartner results

Worldwide knowledge economy– Impact of shortages

Demographics

Education and Research Ecosystems

IT and Computing Experience in schools– Often only seen as literacy– Can and should it be a first class subject – The Critical Period

Most HEI teach IT– Large number of species, different niches

and a food chain– All depend on their own output

8

BCS Ecosystem

Skills and competences– Overlapping

– Complementary

8

CEngCSci

CITP

The threat of extinction…

We face a real problem - shared by all STEM subjects

IT and computing are vital parts of society and culture

Our subject cannot flourish without support of wider community

Cannot flourish without a pipeline

The public image is…

A poor one

Kids bored at school

Seen as a world of geeks and nerds

Profession associated with IT failures

Switch off at School and falling numbers at University

This varies from country to country; interesting differences in emerging economies

Reasons advanced include…

The public doesn’t care

The IT school curriculum

The media

The technology

Us

Reality check…

In the UK public appetite for SET exists

Urgent need to review IT and computing in schools

We need to engage with the media

We are in possession of inspirational technology

The challenge lies with us

Computational Thinking: A revolutionary paradigm

A large part of modern STEM is all about; computational models, representations, abstractions

But it goes wider into social sciences and humanities, and business!

This is a well kept secret and we need to let it out...

Characteristics of CT and why it matters

Complexity and computatbility – how hard is the problem and can it or parts of it be computed

The Nature of solutions – what sorts of outcomes will do – approximate or exact, are we able to tolerate false positives and negatives allowed

Reformulating a more difficult problem into one we can solve – perhaps using methods such as transformation, simulation

Approaches such as recursion and parallel processing

Viewing code as data/data as code

The role of abstraction and decomposition

The search for appropriate representations

An appreciation of elegance and aesthetics

Anticipating disaster - prevention, protection and recovery in worst case scenarios

The constant utilisation of heuristics, planning, scheduling, search, trade offs

This is not just a BCS challenge ...

Working with other Learned Societies and Professional Bodies

Working with e-Skills

Work with CPHC and UKCRC

Working with our own volunteers

We need your help