By Mark Guzdial. We do have to make our message clear, and it should be a message that’s supported by research.  If the computing education policy-and-PR machine ignores the research, we’re showing more disrespect for the field of computing education research and makes it even harder to establish reforms. More...

A new report aims to fill a major gap in knowledge and understanding of the development of research-based curricula, focusing on college-based higher education (CBHE).
“Higher education is in a period of significant change and we are beginning to see some of the traditional distinctions and differences between CBHE and the rest of the higher education sector breakdown.” (Healey, Jenkins and Lea, 2014).
Developing research-based curricula in college-based higher education, written by Mick Healey, Alan Jenkins and John Lea for the Higher Education Academy (HEA), argues that a broader form of research and scholarship than is common in higher education (HE) is needed for the CBHE sector – and that this may have implications for the rest of HE. More...

By Julia Tyler. Big data will rapidly revolutionise the business school curriculum; students and schools will need to adapt quickly to stay ahead, says Julia Tyler.
It is estimated there are more than 2.5 quintillion data bytes of “big data” moving among us every day. Every time we use Facebook, Twitter, Google, the Web, YouTube, a tablet device, a mobile phone, GPS, email, or any digital social media platform to communicate, make purchases, or conduct business, we are manoeuvring the virtual tsunami of data bytes washing across the globe. Read more...

By Shane Lynn. At my workplace, I get asked the question above. The question is usually posed by people typically with a finance background, who’s working as a management consultant. In this post I propose a learning path for such people to “get into data analysis”.  I will assume that the prospective student someone with decent Excel skills, not afraid of a VLOOKUP or a touch of VB, and can throw together decent plots / dashboards using the same Microsoft package, but has little or no knowledge of programming / command line operations. A data scientist can be defined by Drew Conway‘s Data Science Venn diagram which suggests that data scientists must have a solid mathematical background, skills in coding and computer hacking, and a healthy mix of subject matter expertise. More...

More information, including how to apply, is available on the HEA website.

The call is also currently open for the HEA’s Reward and recognition: promotion, process and policy change programme. More details can be found on the HEA website here.