A Handbook for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Enhancing academic and Practice

19
Key aspects of
teaching and
learning in
computing science
Gerry McAllister and Sylvia Alexander
THE COMPUTING PROFESSION
Information and computing skills are an essential component of all undergraduate
programmes and the wider process of lifelong learning. In addressing the key issues
of teaching and learning in computing science it is useful to have an insight into the
short history of the subject in order to put it in context. Certainly no other subject
community can claim that their industry or interest has had a greater impact on
the everyday life of so many in the developed sector of our world. Likewise, no other
subject discipline has been exposed to the rate of change that has occurred within
computing science.
The computing industry itself has grown dramatically since the 1940s and was initially
dominated by technology which provided large number-crunching and data-processing
solutions within major commercial organisations or university research departments.
The evolution of the technology progressed through a phase of lesser machines called
mini-computers in the 1960s and 1970s, which both economically and physically
facilitated functions such as industrial control and smaller commercial administrative
operations, and were within the budgets of academic research projects. Thanks largely
to the development of the single microprocessor chip, today we have desktop computers
on practically every desk in every office and, through the merger of the computer and
communications industries, a worldwide interconnection of computers.
Computing science is thus a discipline that has evolved at considerable pace,
particularly throughout the second half of the past century. The impact of computers on
everyday life may be commonly recognised in web browsing, electronic games and the
everyday use of e-mail, spreadsheets and word processing. However, computing is now
ubiquitous in every aspect of life, often invisible and thus unappreciated in the perception
of the public. The mobile phone, iPod, MP 3 player, ATM machine, airline booking system,
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