ACM SIGCSE Special Project Grant - From Student to Working Computer Science and Software Engineering Professional: Bridging the Gap

A SERL team has been successful in gaining a grant from ACM's SIGCSE (Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education). The project aims to share some of the insights of SERL members into both the education of future software professionals and industry collaborations in their preparation for practice. Details and selected excerpts from the application follow:

Grant

2021 December - 2021 ACM SIGCSE Special Project Grant - From Student to Working Computer Science and Software Engineering Professional: Bridging the Gap, with Jacqueline Whalley, Tony Clear, Stephen Thorpe, Ramesh Lal & Jim Buchan – an award of USD$5000

Expected outcome

An online and published digital guidebook including curricula plans, Capability Maturity Models and frameworks for initiatives to onboard graduates. The guidebook will be a living document that provides an adaptable toolkit of options grounded in evidence that can help organisations to find an approach, process, or techniques that can 'fit' based on their changing needs.

Start date/duration

10 Jan 2022 for one year.

Benefit to community

The challenge in developing industry ready computing graduates is clear. This project will contribute a living resource that will help academics to create and run informed and successful industry partnered onboarding initiatives. This digital guidebook is also expected to be a resource that increases practitioner awareness of the options for supporting/onboarding a diverse group of new computer science graduates.

In addition, the project will build computer science education research skills within the research team and propose a solution to a problem facing all institutions in terms of graduate outcomes and employability.