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In this paper, we are interested in the notion of multiple ways of thinking, knowing and transforming life, namely an increasing capacity to intervene in "life" as a "molecular biopolitics," and the changing ways in which "life" can be understood computationally. We identify and speculate on the ways different ideas of life, drawing from humanities, social, life and computing sciences, may impact the ways we think about and know education policy. We focus on key aspects of education policy around self-responsibilisation and choice, new forms of network governance and the move to education data science. The paper examines what is required to understand how advancements in the life and computing sciences may be implemented within educational institutions and organisations, and what political and ethical issues might pertain to the challenges these new advancements bring to educational institutions.

In this paper we have examined the position and roles of Computer Science in curricula in the light of recent calls for curriculum change and we have proposed principles and issues to consider in curriculum design as well as identifying priority areas for further research. The paper is based on discussions within and beyond the International Federation of Information Processing (IFIP) Education Community since 2012 as well as an analysis of curriculum developments in five different countries. Emerging themes have been discussed with reference to important perspectives from curriculum theory including "powerful knowledge" as a key element of entitlement and management of the growth of expertise. Based on this analysis we have identified areas of consensus as well as constraints, risks and issues that are still subject to controversy. There is an emerging consensus of the importance of Computer Science and the nature of its "powerful knowledge". Furthermore current understanding of the opportunities and benefits for starting to learn Computer Science early in primary schools has identified this early start as an entitlement and equity issue. There is a strong consensus that teacher professional development in Computer Science Education is critical for supporting curriculum change and is currently a major challenge in many countries. Other key issues include understanding how the growth of expertise affects potential structure and sequencing in the curriculum and the balance of content. Further considerations include how new technological opportunities interact with pedagogical approaches and can provide new potential for the growth of expertise.

Computer science has been a discipline for some years, and its position in the school curriculum has been contested differently in several countries. This paper looks at its role in three countries to illustrate these differences. A reconsideration of computer science as a separate subject both in primary and secondary education is suggested. At EDUsummIT 2015 it was argued that the major rationales for including computer science as a subject in the K-12 curriculum are economic, social and cultural. The paper explores these three rationales and also a beneficence matrix to assist curriculum designers. It also argues computer science is rapidly becoming critical for generating new knowledge, and should be taught as a distinct subject or content area, especially in secondary schools. The paper concludes by looking at some of the key questions to be considered when implementing computer science in the school curriculum, and at ways its role might change in the future.

The demand for graduates with exposure in Cloud Computing is on the rise. For many educational institutions, the challenge is to decide on how to incorporate appropriate cloud-based technologies into their curricula. In this paper, we describe our design and experiences of integrating Cloud Computing components into seven third/fourth-year undergraduate-level information system, computer science, and general science courses that are related to large-scale data processing and analysis at the University of Queensland, Australia. For each course, we aimed at finding the best-available and cost-effective cloud technologies that fit well in the existing curriculum. The cloud related technologies discussed in this paper include open-source distributed computing tools such as Hadoop, Mahout, and Hive, as well as cloud services such as Windows Azure and Amazon Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2). We anticipate that our experiences will prove useful and of interest to fellow academics wanting to introduce Cloud Computing modules to existing courses. (Contains 3 tables and 11 figures.)

Graduate employability has become an issue since there are broad mismatches between the acquired graduate skills from university and the required skills by employers. While previous researches have outlined the salient skills that need to be embedded in graduate education, to date no studies have attempted to methodically identify and synthesize the literature on graduate attributes. In this paper a total of 39 relevant studies on graduate skills and attributes in the subject areas of business and management, accounting, and computer science were extracted from Scopus® (database). This revealed a total of 53 graduate attributes, with some being highly used, such as communication, teamwork, problem solving, technological skills, creativity, interpersonal skills, leadership skills, self-management and flexibility/adaptability. The majority of studies used a quantitative survey method to collect and rank graduate attributes, and Australia emerged as the most active country in researching the domain.

Within existing ICT degrees there is a widely-held belief that content must be tailored for different "kinds" of students--often two differing student groups: a technical group requiring detailed Computer Science knowledge and a separate group requiring less technical, more strategic ICT knowledge and skills. Our institution has produced a combined degree that contains both technical and non-technical content taught to a single cohort of students and thus requires a deeper insight into the needs of this diverse group of learners. This paper reports on an assessment of learning styles across our first year students, in order to inform our teaching delivery practices. Our findings inform the development of teaching and assessment materials that better support the diverse needs of students, regardless of their self-selected discipline.

This paper investigates the Australian literature relating to female under-representation in the information technology (IT) sphere of careers and education. This summary of the current body of literature presented through the lens of the nature of the discipline includes emerging theories that explore the masculinization of the discipline, followed by a discussion of the lack of a sustainable impact on declining female student numbers of earlier Australian intervention programmes. A position is presented on the marginalization of this line of research within the IT discipline, as well as media representations of gendered messages about IT. Finally, student career choice literature is used to explore the author's premise that many young women in 21st century Australia, when faced with an array of career choices, appear to be exercising this power of choice to exclude IT from their list of possible futures.

In a Finnish study of four different academic disciplines, Ylijoki (2000) found that in Computer Science there was a disparity between the conceptions held by undergraduate students and staff about their discipline; students viewed it as being far more pragmatic and results focused than did their instructors. Not surprisingly, here at our Australian university where the undergraduate Computer Science program emphasizes programming and problem solving skills, the authors had noticed a similar inconsistency between staff and student beliefs. This paper reports on an effort to realign these conceptions and broaden student experience using an assessment task. Centered on solutions to the popular "Sudoku" puzzle (Sudoku, 2005), the task was designed and introduced into an Intelligent Systems course, a final year elective of a Computer Science degree. The goal was to expose students to some of the "pure" rather than applied aspects of the Computer Science discipline (Becher & Trowler, 2001), by using assessment to encourage experimental learning (Kolb & Fry, 1975). The assessment specification instructed students to design and conduct several "in silica" Computer Science experiments to solve and/or create Sudoku puzzles. Importantly, students were asked to keep a Research Diary documenting their thoughts, attempts, backtracking and progresses as they attempted the assignment. Most unique from a student's perspective was that "failure" to solve the given problem by experimentation was a viable option; their efforts would be rewarded given they conducted themselves "scientifically" in their attempt. The inclusion of a Research Diary as part of the assessment proved beneficial to both students and staff, particularly as the Diaries focused students on the doing, rather than on the results achieved. For staff, these journals allowed the privilege of seeing what students were thinking and doing as they engaged in the problem. An early analysis of Diary entries shows evidences of students "thinking scientifically", that is, understanding and thinking about the problem before formalizing an approach to a solution. In addition, Diary entries also show evidences of students "behaving scientifically" as they reported conducting experiments and analyzing their results, before concluding about their experiences. For students, regardless of whether they able to complete the task, the Research Diaries were valuable testaments to their efforts and experimentations. (Contains 1 figure and 2 tables.)

This paper reports preliminary work in an ARC Linkage Project involving collaboration among James Cook University, Education Queensland, and Technology One (a Queensland based company). The project aims to identify and interpret factors associated with low female participation rates in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) professional level occupations and education pathways. Data is being collected using qualitative and quantitative methods. A survey is being administered to over 6,000 year 11 and 12 female high school students in Queensland to provide a comprehensive database that will be augmented with individual and focus group interviews. An online survey will be administered to women working in ICT industries. Reference groups representing EQ and ICT industries have been established to provide consultative advice and feedback throughout the project, and to function as working groups during the data analysis and interpretation phases. Project results will inform the development of strategic response options for education systems and ICT industries and suggest further research and industry-based initiatives designed to enhance female participation rates. (Contains 2 endnotes.)

Teaching future knowledge engineers, the necessary skills for designing and implementing intelligent software solutions required by business, industry and research today, is a very tall order. These skills are not easily taught in traditional undergraduate computer science lectures; nor are the practical experiences easily reinforced in laboratory sessions. In an attempt to address this issue, a software development project, designed to take students through a complete process of knowledge engineering, was introduced in an undergraduate Intelligent Systems subject. In this project, students were required to act as domain experts, knowledge engineers, programmers, end users and project manager in the production of a game-playing expert system. The paper describes the project, its objectives and development, as well as some of the benefits. (Contains 3 figures and 1 table.)

The advantages of centralized and decentralized computing facilities within institutions of higher learning are discussed; arguments for the decentralized but not random distribution of computing facilities for schools of teacher education are presented; and the organizational structure of one "centralized but decentralized" computing plan is described. (Author/IRT)