Facing Backwards While Stumbling Forwards: The Future of Teaching Web Development

Talk given at SIGCSE'19. Web development continues to grow as an essential skill and knowledge area for employed computer science graduates. Yet within the ACM CS2013 curriculum recommendation and within computing education research in general, web development has been shrinking or even disappearing all together. This paper uses an informal systematic literature review methodology to answer three research questions: what approaches are being advocated in existing web development education research, what are current trends in industry practice, and how should web development be taught in light of these current trends. Results showed a significant mismatch between the type of web development typically taught in higher education settings in comparison to web development in industry practice. Consequences for the pedagogy of web development courses, computer science curriculum in general, and for computing education research are also discussed.

Transcript

1. FACING BACKWARDS WHILE STUMBLING FORWARDS: THE FUTURE OF TEACHING WEB DEVELOPMENT RANDY CONNOLLY MOUNT ROYAL UNIVERSITY CALGARY, CANADA
2. WEB DEVELOPMENT CONTINUES TO GROW AS AN ESSENTIAL SKILL AND KNOWLEDGE AREA FOR EMPLOYED COMPUTER SCIENCE GRADUATES.
3. JOB POSTING RESEARCH CONTINUES TO SHOW WEB DEV SKILLS ARE BY FAR THE MOST FREQUENTLY REQUESTED TECHNOLOGY COMPENTENCY OF COMPUTING GRADUATES
4. YET WITHIN THE ACM CS2013 CURRICULUM RECOMMENDATION AND WITHIN COMPUTING EDUCATION RESEARCH IN GENERAL, … WEB DEVELOPMENT HAS BEEN SHRINKING OR EVEN DISAPPEARING ALL TOGETHER.
5. IN ACM CS2013 NONE CONTAIN ANY TOPICS FROM THE WEB PLATFORM SUBAREA OF THE 84 COURSE EXEMPLARS
6. “YOU CAN SEE WEB DEVELOPMENT EVERYWHERE EXCEPT IN THE CURRICULA OF THE VARIOUS COMPUTING PROGRAMS” ACM TRANSACTIONS ON COMPUTING EDUCATION 2015 SPECIAL ISSUE ON WEB DEV
7. I HAVE A VESTED INTEREST IN THIS TOPIC…
8. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
9. WHAT APPROACHES ARE BEING ADVOCATED WITHIN WEB DEV ED RESEARCH? RQ1
10. RQ2 WHAT ARE THE CURRENT TRENDS IN INDUSTRY PRACTICE?
11. HOW SHOULD WEB DEV BE TAUGHT IN LIGHT OF RQ2? RQ3
12. 125 PEER-REVIEWED PAPERS BETWEEN 2000 AND 2018
13. RQ1 – 80 PAPERS ONLY 18 > 2013
14. A CATEGORIZATION CONTENT ANALYSIS EXTRACTED COMMON REOCCURING THEMES
15. RESULTS
16. WHAT APPROACHES ARE BEING ADVOCATED WITHIN WEB DEV ED RESEARCH? RQ1
18. SEVERAL STUDIES ARGUED THAT WEB DEV CAN BE A CONCEPTUAL LINK …
19. … BETWEEN EARLY STAGES OF STUDENT’S COMPUTING EDUCATION AND …
20. … THEIR NORMAL DAY-TO- DAY USE OF COMPUTERS…
21. … AND THE WIDER RANGE OF CS CONCEPTS.
22. RQ2 WHAT ARE THE CURRENT TRENDS IN INDUSTRY PRACTICE?
23. IN 2008, WEB DEV REQUIRED LEARNING …
24. FRONT-END BACK-END HTML CSS JAVASCRIPT (MAYBE) PHP/ASPNET/JSP MVC (MAYBE) SQL DATABASE
25. JAVASCRIPT WAS USED SPARINGLY SMALL NUMBER OF PROTOCOLS DEVELOPMENT METHODOLOGIES RARE
26. BY 2013, WEB DEV HAD BECOME MORE COMPLICATED …
27. JAVASCRIPT WAS EVERYWHERE BACK-ENDS WERE THINNER NON-SQL DATABASES AND, MOST IMPORTANTLY, …
28. DEVOPS CLOUD COMPUTING
29. NOW, IN 2018, WEB DEV IS EVEN MORE COMPLICATED …
30. AVALANCHE OF JAVASCRIPT APIS CLOUD WORKFLOWS MICROSERVICES+SERVERLESS+EDGE FUNCTIONAL/REACTIVE PROGRAMMING
31. UPLOADING A FILE IN 2005
32. UPLOADING A FILE IN 2013
33. UPLOADING A FILE IN 2018
36. 2005 2018
37. HOW SHOULD WEB DEV BE TAUGHT IN LIGHT OF RQ2? RQ3
39. THE OBVIOUS PROBLEM IS THAT IT IS NOT AT ALL POSSIBLE TO COVER THIS CONTENT WITHIN 1-2 COURSES
40. CONCLUSIONS
41. THE WEB IS THE COMPUTER PLATFORM FOR SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT TODAY
42. WHY THEN IS THE ACM CS CURRICULUM HIDING FROM IT ?
43. IS IT BECAUSE CS ED IS ABOUT TEACHING FOUNDATIONAL COMPUTATIONAL CONCEPTS? CS = TIMELESS
44. THUS CS NOT INTERESTED IN TEACHING A PARTICULAR TECHNOLOGY SKILL STACK WEB = TODAY’S FASHION
45. THIS CAN BE A TOO- CONVENIENT EXCUSE FOR IGNORING THE NEED TO MAKE CURRICULAR CHANGES IN LIGHT OF A RAPIDLY TRANSFORMING COMPUTING WORLD I LIKE WHAT I KNOW
46. WEB DEV TODAY IS CONCEPTUALLY RICH, ALGORITHMICALLY COMPLICATED, AND INTEGRATES BROAD ASPECTS OF THE CS CURRICULUM IN A USEFUL/EMPLOYABLE WAY
47. WE SHOULD MAKE THE EFFORT TO INEGRATE MORE WEB DEV TECH INTO THE CS CURRICULUM
48. WE DON’T HAVE TO USE JAVA WE DON’T HAVE TO USE CONSOLE.OUT WE DON’T HAVE TO USE CLIENT-SERVER
49. QUESTIONS