Dr Jacqueline Campbell

Gender issues persist in the computing industry, with women representing only just over 20 percent of the workforce, despite numerous initiatives to encourage their wider participation. This paper explores gender inequalities within the computing industry by adapting the sociological lens of Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of capital, habitus and field to understand why inequalities arise and persist in the computing industry. Using interviews with both men and women in the computing industry, the research explores the gender perceptions and systemic experiences from both perspectives. The findings indicate that while inequalities persist, women can and do demonstrate agency in creating their own social support networks to assist in negotiating the male dominated workplace. Promisingly, there is also an increasing awareness among men in the industry regarding the importance of inclusivity, coupled with the positive impact of such developments for them personally.

The purpose of this paper is to describe and discuss the initial evaluation of specifically developed inquiry based learning materials for Computing and Forensic Computing students. Small applications have been developed which require investigation in order to: de-bug applications, analyse data issues and discover 'illegal' behavior. The applications are based around industry case studies and are functioning systems. Applications have been designed with a view to supporting the teaching, learning and assessment within the database curriculum at Leeds Metropolitan University. The students are required to use investigative methods to discover and address the issues. Additionally the exercises are intended to give experience of industrial work such as evaluation, testing and de-bugging of software. The initial feedback is that students like the exercises; they initially may not realize there is anything 'wrong' with the applications and enjoy the investigation and discovery of issues. It has raised their awareness of data quality, data integrity and improved their confidence to question outputs from reports and queries. © 2011 IADIS.

The Computing industry has criticized the University curriculum as not producing graduates ‘fit for the job’ (Department for Education, 2013). As a vocational course it seems reasonable that students would wish to enter the Computing Industry, yet graduates with Computer Science degrees currently have the highest level of unemployment (at 14%) (HESA, 2012). Second year (level 5) computing students at Leeds Beckett University are offered a series of lectures designed to encourage, promote, motivate and support them in finding a year’s work experience placement to undertake between their second and third year of study. In order to encourage engagement and ensure students have given their career and the opportunity to take a placement some consideration, they are required to complete an online quiz which involves answering questions regarding the work experience they have to date and their aspirations. This paper analyses and presents the initial findings of the ‘quiz’ data using a comparative analysis and interpretative analysis the format of short ‘vignettes’ provided by the students. The findings show that 75% of the students have generic work experience and out of those a third have spent time in IT related roles. The vignettes provide evidence of themes such as ‘fearfulness’ in approaching work experience and ‘delusion’ in their perception of the industry. The intention of this initial analysis is to give direction to further research in order to support the students in finding a placement and course related work experience. Areas of particular interest arising from related literature include the role of situated learning in the form of work experience, experiential learning and legitimate peripheral participation (Lave and Wenger, 1991; Grenfell, 2008).

This is the fifth in the series of Workshops on the Teaching, Learning and Assessment in Databases (TLAD'07), which once again will be held as a workshop of the British National Conference on Databases (BNCOD). This year the workshop will be held on the 2nd July at the University of Glasgow, just before BNCOD, and hopes to be just as successful as previous workshops.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of formative online quizzes, as a form of individual self-assessment on students' awareness of their own ability in the database area. An important element of a student's experience of becoming an independent learner is to be able to judge one's own abilities in order to be prepared for the assessments. In the described case study, the teaching staff received a number of student queries regarding their final grade. An initial survey indicated that there was a divergence between the students' judgment of their performance and that of the teaching staff of the Advanced Database Management module. We have undertaken an empirical study in the form of surveys and interviews to evaluate the use of formative online quizzes to improve the learners' abilities to judge their performance. Initial findings of this on-going research project indicate that online quizzes can help students' awareness of their own ability, ideally leading to independent self study. However the delivery and management of the students' expectations of the online quizzes requires consideration. The paper concludes by recommending the use of online quizzes but also considers their limitations. © 2009 IADIS.

The purpose of this paper is to share innovative teaching methods at Leeds Metropolitan University in the Innovation North Faculty of Information and Technology (INN Faculty). The paper provides an account of the use of integrated assessment with a focus on the area of database teaching at Level 2 in the INN Faculty. Integrated assessments are also known as synoptic assessments. This type of assessment helps students to make connections between modules and aims to raise the level of student engagement with the curriculum. An explorative study has been undertaken to provide an initial evaluation of the use of synoptic assessments within the Computing subject area. The analysis of the interviews indicates that students and also staff perceive the delivery pattern of block teaching and pairing of modules as beneficial. The paper concludes by offering an account of the benefits and issues to consider for those aiming implementing integrated assessments. © 2007 IEEE.

The purpose of this poster is to share innovative teaching methods at Leeds Metropolitan University in the Innovation North Faculty of Information and Technology (INN Faculty). An explorative study has been undertaken to provide an initial evaluation of the use of synoptic assessments within the subject area of Computing. Synoptic assessments, also known as integrated assessments, help to enable students to make connections between modules, to increase the level of student engagement and to provide teaching staff with the opportunity to adopt a holistic approach to delivering modules. This type of assessment pulls together independent assessments from a number of modules into a single assessment exercise. Synoptic assessment is driven by providing an environment for synoptic earning via a supporting course structure. For this reason, the course structures of the Innovation North Faculty are described for all three undergraduate levels. See Table 1 for an example of the course structure for Level 2. A series of semi-structured interviews were conducted to learn about staff and students' perspectives on integrated assessments and their views of the learning environment in general. Twenty computing students were approached to talk about their experience with and opinions of integrated assessments. In addition to the student interviews, ten members of academic teaching staff were interviewed. The findings are the result of an exploratory study and should be taken as indicative. The use of synoptic assessments within the INN Faculty is currently evaluated in depth as part of the CETL ALiC project [1, 2] and results will be published in the near future. The analysis of the interviews indicates that students perceive the delivery pattern of block teaching and pairing of modules as beneficial. The main reason for this is that it enables students to concentrate on two subject areas at a time in comparison to the traditional semester structure of four modules. Potential areas for concern are the nature of modules that are paired and a fair marking scheme. Teaching staff feel that the synoptic assessment enabled by a case study has worked well for the students. However, issues with timetabling need to be considered, and dependencies between the paired modules need to be avoided.

Work experience is a valuable experience for all students. It can be hard for students to find work experience and sometimes challenging for them to understand the job market. Students at Innovation North have an opportunity to undertake a Placement year between L5 and L6 and this is something we wish to actively promote, support and encourage. Innovation North had a website which held the details of the work opportunities, it was very dated, contained no images and was cumbersome to search. The project was to create a new website for Innovation North students holding details of all work placements (short, long term, voluntary, paid). Specification for the site included search facilities, providing information and giving reflections from students who had undertaken work opportunities. The website has been developed by three INN students. It has been live since September 2009.

This paper aims to critically reflect on the processes, agendas and use of Big Data by presenting existing issues and problems in place and consolidating our points of views presented from different angles. This paper also describes current practices of handling Big Data, including considerations of smaller scale data analysis and the use of data visualisation to improve business decisions and prediction of market trends. The paper concludes that alongside any data collection, analysis and visualisation, the ‘researcher’ should be fully aware of the limitations of the data, by considering the data from different perspectives, angles and lenses. Not only will this add the validation and validity of the data, but it will also provide a ‘thinking tool’ by which to explore the data. Arguably providing the ‘human skill’ required in a process apparently destined to be automated by machines and algorithms.

Databases often receive an uninspired and uninterested response. The curriculum content of a database module generally involves the design of entity-relationship models, SQL programming, application development and advanced database applications such as data warehousing and data mining. These are often taught within the tired and relatively worn case studies of purchase order systems, retail or health care systems. However the current trend for crime scene investigation drama and the frequent stories in the news of personal tragedies involving incorrect data, missing data or data mix-up capture the attention of many. The truth is that crimes require data investigation and expert database witnesses to provide evidence and this requires database knowledge and skill. This project involved the introduction of a ‘forensic flavour’ to the teaching of databases as part of an undergraduate Computing Degree to students. The ‘forensic flavour’ involved introducing investigative and enquiry based learning techniques as well as selecting case studies based around real-life crimes and crime data. The learning objectives remained unchanged for the modules as did the curriculum content. The initial findings are that the students engaged on average 40% better and enjoyed the experience more.