Analysis: secondary school students have many misconceptions about a career in computing so how can these be fixed?
By Karen Nolan and Keith Quille, TU Dublin
Ireland is a solid player in the global computing sector and has done a great job attracting high-tech names to Ireland, with eight of the ten top global information technology companies establishing a important presence here. Computing as a career can be financially and personally rewarding and, coupled with prospects across diverse industries, who wouldn't consider it?.
But there is concern among employers in the sector about the inability to fill computing jobs. Even with tech companies realigning their overall workforce and ongoing redundancies, there are so many vacancies at the moment. Falling numbers taking computing courses at third level and low female uptake really don’t help the problem.
Are parents and educators unconsciously introducing the wrong idea of what computing is to our children - and does this inadvertently steer them away from a career in computing? Why are our children saying that they do not want a job in computing?
"Heard it could be boring", "you sit behind a desk all day, it isn't very exciting", "unsocialable - lack of interaction with people"
Our research with over 10,000 students reports some of the misconceptions: "Heard it could be boring", "you sit behind a desk all day, it isn't very exciting", "unsocialable - lack of interaction with people ", "Looking at a screen for too long hurts my eyes", "Looking at a computer screen for too long is bad", "Mental health effects of staring at a screen for a large amount of time", "My eyes would get strained". These are just a small sample of the reoccurring reasons, we have been given from Irish secondary school students as part of our research. Our research also discovered that Irish students have a misconception that general IT and computing are the same things.
Can parents and educators talking negatively about students spending too much time on devices and screens be leading students to also think negatively about computing? We need to ensure our children see and explore what computing really is. How do we do this and ensure that we do not blur the lines between time spent on social media and/or gaming with time spent on computing problem-solving tasks that can show what the area of computing is really like?
Breaking down these barriers and misconceptions and fixing this problem is the mission of the Computer Science Inclusive (CSinc) research group, comprising computing lecturers based out of the School of Enterprise Computing and Digital Transformation in TU Dublin. We currently run several student and teacher outreach initiatives to promote computing nationally, all completely free for students, teachers and their schools.
There's a need to broaden perceptions of who does computing
One of our longest-running initiatives is an inclusive computing outreach programme that incorporates a large number of schools and varying student profiles. It aims to address negative perceptions of the subject and has been delivered to over 10,000 students to date, most of whom have never done computing before.
It's clear to us that there is a need to broaden perceptions of who does computing, and ensuring there are inclusive and accessible resources made available to students. Our research group hopes to encourage both junior and senior secondary school students to participate in either the newly established Leaving Certificate Computer Science subject, or university-level computing by allowing students to make up their owns minds, based on facts and experiences, and not misconceptions, if it's for them.
We recently began to roll out an online student immersive platform for computing called CSLinc to secondary schools across Ireland. The platform consists of several modules to provide long-term exposure to computing to students and is built upon international best practices with varying university and industry collaborators. Funded by Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) and the Department of Education, we have already reached over 150 schools and are aiming for more.
Karen Nolan is a lecturer in Computing in the School of Enterprise Computing and Digital Transformation in the Faculty of Computing, Digital and Data at TU Dublin. Dr. Keith Quille is a Senior Computing Lecturer in the School of Enterprise Computing and Digital Transformation in the Faculty of Computing, Digital and Data at TU Dublin.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
