Tentative Author List:
- Sherif G. Aly, The American University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt
- Karima Echihabi, Mohamed VI Polytechnic University, Morocco
- Seif Eldawlatly, The American University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt
- Khaled Shuaib, United Arab Emirates University, UAE
- Joe Tekli, The Lebanese American University, Lebanon
Scope:
Computer Science has been aggressively evolving at unprecedented rates over the past decade. Not only have breadth and depth been the key players in the dynamics of the domain, but interdisciplinarity has also been playing a major role in this evolution. The credibility of undergraduate Computer Science education has been challenged with zero sum game dynamics, an increasing sentiment amongst employers that undergraduate education had not been duly preparing graduates for the workforce, resistance to professional licensure in most areas of the world, and prominent alternative channels of learning, many of which lack formalism and credibility. As curricular guidelines are being developed for the next decade by the CS2023 ACM/IEEE/AAAI taskforce, this paper attempts to emphasize how Computer Science education is happening in a specific yet diverse area of the world, namely the Arab World. While it is not possible to document all the details, representative regions of the Arab World are used to make the case. Innovative practices to neutralize some of the aforementioned challenges are also detailed, as well as how they compare with other state of the art practices in various regions of the world. The intent of the paper is to expose to the broader audience of Computer Science education how such practices exist in various regions of the world, and open up opportunities for the broader community to share thoughts on how to make Computer Science education more adaptive to a highly aggressive ecosystem of computing.
Contact: Sherif G. Aly, The American University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt