The FullStack Education Paradox

In this talk Hannes, who is a young lecturer at the University of Applied Sciences Salzburg, will share the story on how his department (now 6 years old) evolved, and what they did to address at least a dozen issues they had with their department within the academic system.

Hannes is passionate about teaching. At his university there is a department dedicated to web engineering, so he is lucky enough to teach something fancy and new every year, but the basics of computer science still need to be explored in the courses.

At Hannes' department they are deeply in love with new technologies and they try to be as progressive as possible. Node.js/io.js, Ruby on Rails, Continuous Delivery with docker, agile workflows and all the stuff you have never heard of during your computer science classes, are part of their identity. The department's goal is to teach people everything they need to become a full-stack developer someday.

This talk explores topics such as getting science and economics together, how they translate theoretical computer science topics into something useful for web developers, and how they manage to not be like any other academic institution.

Transcript

1. The FullStack Education Paradox 1
2. Hannes Moser – @eliias University of Applied Sciences Salzburg 2
3. Austria 3
4. I ! teaching! 4
5. And ! 5
7. The spaceship university 2 2 http://www.fh-salzburg.ac.at/ 7
8. Web Development & Engineering MultiMediaTechnology3 3 Bachelor degree program 8
9. 60+ Lecturers (47 external) 9
10. 120 Students 10
11. 40+ projects/year 11
12. Bachelor 3 years since 2008 12
13. Master 2 years since 2011 13
14. Where is the !? 14
15. Where is the !? 4 Web development is not an important part of Computer Science. 4 Learning programing might not even be part of computer science at all! 4 Most of the technology we use as web developers, has been invented/researched 20 years ago. 4 The FullStack developer is a myth6 6 http://andyshora.com/full-stack-developers.html 15
16. Where is the !? Languages used in computer science programs 4 1990: Modula, LISP, Prolog, Smalltalk 4 1993: Ada, Occam, Smalltak 4 1995: Java, Java, Java 4 1998: Java, Java, Java 4 2000: Java, Java, Java 4 2005: Java, Java, Java 4 2013: Java, Java, Java 16
17. Where is the !? The good news 4 Python as first language (at some universities) 4 Acceptance of script languages 17
18. Formal education systems vs. Informal education systems 18
19. Formal education systems They have got a bad reputation: 4 Not innovative 4 Bureaucracy 4 Teaching the wrong stuff 4 Theory over Applied Sciences 19
20. Formal education systems But there are some positive things too: 4 An environment dedicated to learn 4 You get time to learn (years) 4 Intense networking 4 You can build relationships that last a lifetime 20
21. Formal education systems “Still today you can't go to college and expect to graduate with a degree in front-end engineering.” — Front-end Handbook 21
22. Formal education systems But it might not be for everybody: 4 Learn about stuff you do not want to know 4 You already know all that stuff (or you at least think so) 22
23. Informal education systems 4 Rails Girls & Rails Girls Summer of Code8 4 Nodeschool 4 Open Tech School 4 Mentorship Programs 4 … 8 Anika Lindtner – „Getting more Women in Open Source“ 23
24. Informal education systems But this might not be enough for some students: 4 Limited time (1 day to 1 month) 4 Limited to certain technology 24
25. You do not need to choose between one or the other! 25
26. Teaching Computer Science 26
27. In an applied way! 27
28. First time using a scripting language const Singleton = (function () { let instance function createInstance() { const object = new Object(„I am the instance“) return object } return { getInstance() { if (!instance) { instance = createInstance() } return instance } } })() 28
29. IShouldReallyGetOverJava 29
30. After using it for some time export default Object.freeze({ method() {…} }) AWWWWESOME! cause modules are singeltons. 5 5 http://www.2ality.com/2014/09/es6-modules-final.html 30
31. The Stack 31
33. The Stack 4 Human Computer Interaction (HCI) 4 Front-end 4 Back-end 4 Operations 33
34. The Stack How we teach it: 4 Focus on applied development (projects) 4 Try to pick the best parts from Computer Science 4 Make progressive technology choices 34
35. The Stack First things first 4 Introduction to (Web-)Programing 4 Introduction to Databases 4 Introduction to Computer Networks 4 Algorithms & Data Structures 4 Applied Mathematics 35
36. The Stack Additional courses 4 A statically typed language (C#) 4 Multimedia systems 4 Computer Graphics 36
37. The Stack Second year 4 Front-end Development (ECMAScript2015, CSS) 4 Back-end Development (Ruby on Rails, Node.js) 4 Content Management Systems 4 Interaction Design 4 Workflows & Operations (DevOps) 4 Software Project Management 37
38. The Stack Interactive Prototyping & Physical Computing 38
39. The Stack Computer Science 4 Design Patterns 4 Cryptography 4 Concurrent & Distributed Systems 4 Writing a Scientific Paper 39
40. The Stack Final year 4 Internship (3-5 months) 4 Final (interdisciplinary) project 4 Bachelor thesis 40
41. The Stack What can you do with this knowledge? 4 Concept Development 4 First Project 41
42. The Stack – Results vidatio 4 Open Government Data 4 Semi-automatic visualization 4 Autocorrection for input data 4 In cooperation with the city of Salzburg https://vidatio.mediacube.at/ 42
43. Portfolio 43
44. The Stack – Tuition ~360€ / semester7 7 Approx. 245 GBP 44
45. The Community 45
46. The Community 4 Salzburg Webdev Meetup 4 Visiting local companies 4 2-3 Talks 4 Barcamp "the next web" 4 Web development conference 4 Field trips 46
47. Barcamp “the next web” 4 Classic barcamp format 4 Twice a year 4 120 developers 4 … https://barcamp-sbg.at 47
49. Web development conference 4 One day, two tracks 4 March 2015 https://conc.at 49
51. Field trips 4 Mozilla Festival London 4 EuRuKo 4 JSUnconf 4 Trivago Hackathon 4 … Invite Us! Contact Contact Hannes Moser 51
53. Time for Action 53
54. Do you work at a university? 54
55. HTW$Berlin FH$Salzburg 55
56. Let's collaborate! 56
57. Do you study Computer Science? 57
58. Erasmus Student exchange program 58
59. Want to study web- development? 59
61. Do you run a web company? 61
62. Internships 62
63. Have you ever thought about teaching? 63
64. You should teach what you are really into 4 Frontend: ECMAScript 2015, CSS Modules, React 4 Backend: Ruby on Rails, Node.js 4 Tooling: GitHub, Browserify, Webpack, CI/CD 4 TDD, BDD 4 Operations → *NIX, Docker, Databases, Scalable Architectures 64
65. You DO NOT need a Ph.D to teach! 65
66. You do not need to be an academic at all! 66
67. Do you have something interesting to talk about? 67
68. If you don't care about my university in particular, you can still… 4 be a mentor to others 4 offer paid internships 4 and share your knowledge 68
69. Vision 69
70. You should be able to study Web Development at a university near you 4 If you are a student. Demand it! 4 If you are a developer. Offer it! 4 If you are in academia. Get over Java! 70
71. Embrace the Web! 71
72. Thank You ! Hannes Moser – @eliias " 72
73. Links 4 Hannes Moser 4 GitHub 4 Twitter 4 MultiMediaTechnology 4 University of Applied Sciences Salzburg 73