Computer Science Dying in the US?

Being a former professor of Computer Science, I read a couple of recent articles in the Guardian with great interest:

The (Possible) Death of a Computer-Science Department

Seattle Pacific University founded its computer-science department almost three decades ago, when the discipline was still going through growing pains. But this year might be the department's last. In its heyday during the 90s, the university -- a private Christian institution -- often had more than 125 computer-science majors. Now there are only 24, and none of this year's incoming freshmen indicated any interested in majoring in the field.

Computer Science Olympiad

Last year's contest took place in Shanghai, and the local favorites from Shanghai Jiaotong University parlayed their home-field advantage into a narrow victory. The highest-ranking American squad finished a distant 17th, a disappointing showing that prompted experts to wonder if American programming was in serious decline.

When I was speaking at an event recently, I commented on these trends. Someone asked a really interesting question...

Would I recommend to my own children to go into Computer Science when they
go to college in a few years?

I have real mixed emotions on this. My company depends on having good talent emerging from Computer Science programs. The CTO group that I'm part of has real trouble finding good talent, so I believe that even with substantial offshore development there is still need in the U.S. And, I believe that learning Computer Science is a good springboard to many different kinds of jobs.

But, the honest answer, is "No, I'm not suggesting to my children to pursue Computer Science." I think that the hard core technical skills that you learn in Computer Science put you in direct competition with off-shore talent that will suppress your opportunities and salary. Instead, you really should look for a hybrid kind of degree, possibly an combination Business/IT + Computer Science that aims you at more of an analyst. You can probably do this with a Computer Science degree and an MBA as well.

I'm really not happy that this is my opinion, but, I would suspect that Computer Science programs are going to face this head-on as student populations closely follow the industry. When I went undergrad, things were booming because of defense and the PC (mid-80s). It again boomed in the late 90-s with the Internet. In between there were lulls. But, right now we are having another explosion of interest because of (roughly) Web 2.0, yet we don't see the corresponding pick-up in enrollments. I think that tells us something.

eLearning Technology: Personal Learning for Learning Professionals - Using Web 2.0 Tools to Make Reading & Research More Effective

A recent article by Jon Udell:

Reinventing the intranet
Modern social software could be the key to building effective enterprise
knowledge systems

discusses the big need for better search solutions in the enterprise. Certainly, once you've started using desktop search tools such as Google Desktop, X1, Microsoft's Desktop search or others will make you realize the need for this. Why can I search my desktop and the web, but I can't search my network drives?

Interestingly, Jon also points to the need for the tools I discuss for personal learning...

eLearning Technology: Personal Learning for Learning Professionals - Using Web 2.0 Tools to Make Reading & Research More Effective

Article: Wikis, Blogs and Other Points of Failure - Is it Misinformation as Well?

I came across this recent column while catching up on my reading on my recent plane trip: Wikis, Blogs and Other Points of Failure. It points out some common concerns around the use of Wikis and Blogs inside corporations, but I feel like there's been too much discussion of this issue to the point where there is almost a negative stigma with these technologies.

In fairness to the article, he points out that these are tools much like email and the spreadsheet. The beauty of these tools is how simple they've made it to create content. And, just like email and spreadsheets, and even paper and pencil, you can create good or bad content. Let's not blame the tools. Let's not focus so much attention on these issues that we lose sight of the opportunity that we need to be evaluating. It's too easy to read this kind of article and think ... "oh, we shouldn't use those tools here in our corporation." And, that's my main issue with the article.

On a related note, I would be very curious how many of the problems that people talk about (such as leaking information) were done on blogs or wikis that were completely unsanctioned by the corporation. In other words, aren't a lot of these cases happening when an individual signs up with Blogger (or similar software) and begins publishing what they are doing to the world? Does that mean there is something bad about blog software in the enterprise?

Keywords: eLearning Trends

Business Process Management instead of Learning

As a follow-up to my recent post about the convergence of several interesting trends ... eLearning Technology: Blurry Vision of Future of Work (Workflow, eLearning 2.0, Web 2.0, Decision Systems)

I just saw a post from Jay Cross - Informal? Workflow? that talks about a couple of these trends and also points to Business Process Management solutions as a key.

Out of the workflow conference last week, one of the points that really got me to think was that as you begin to create your process flows, you start to find:

* Many process steps that are currently done by people turn can often be automated, e.g., who should get this information, document, etc. next.

* Much of what we train inside coporations are how to perform process steps that only need training because we haven't done a good job from a process standpoint (right information available, clear next steps). Once you do this, much of the training becomes trivial.

Lots of interesting stuff going on here.

Blurry Vision of Future of Work (Workflow, eLearning 2.0, Web 2.0, Decision Systems)

I've not been posting recently because I've been attending the HandySoft Bizflow user's conference. This is a workflow tool that allows you to easily specify workflows involving people and systems and provides a reasonably good capability for quickly creating human interfaces. We've done quite a bit of work on top of this application related to performance, scalability, reliability and new user interfaces.

What was interesting was hearing a keynote speech that could have been lifted right out of a presentation at a Training conference. The main theme was:

We need agility and execution to be able to respond to the ever increasing pace of change

What is interesting about this is that there is a natural intersection going on in corporate IT solutions where there is a natural synergy between:

• Workflow, business rules modeling and execution - to be able to rapidly specify how work is done
• Human workflow interfaces - to be able to present work to people in order for them to perform
• Web 2.0, Lightweight components, Composition - easier composition to form applications
• Decision systems - helping people to have the information available and put them in the context of the decision that they need to make

But because of this agile kind of environment where we will be able to more rapidly change processes, rules, applications, interfaces, decision support, the key barrier will remain our ability to support the understanding of the newly formed processes, what is needed, what will happen next, etc. That's right, the key lynchpin for all of this is:

Embedded Learning

This is already being done in these systems in some forms, but will rapidly grow so that the learning follows the process descriptions. This is what I believe Jay Cross and Tony O'Driscoll talk about with workflow learning, but a particular application of it.

It will be interesting to see how this moves forward.

I would very much invite your comments or pointers to related information.