Transcript Nigel Shadbolt

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
BCS Ecosystem
Skills and competences
• Overlapping
• Complementary
CSci
CEng
CITP
8
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