SICSA Conference 2020

We are delighted to announce that the SICSA Conference 2020 will take place, on-line on 1 October 2020 and will be under the theme SICSA and the Sustainable Society. The conference this year will be co-located with ScotSoft, which is Scotland’s leading tech conference allowing our delegates to access elements of the event throughout the day. … Read more

Now Recruiting for SICSA Research Theme Co-Leader in Human-Computer Interaction

Applications are invited for any suitable member of academic staff within a SICSA Institution to co-lead the SICSA Human-Computer Interaction Research Theme. Role Purpose SICSA is the Scottish Funding Council Research Pool in Informatics and Computer Science.  The goal of SICSA is to cohere the Scottish Informatics and Computer Science research communities to help increase … Read more

Cybersecurity SICSA Grant

By Zeeshan Siddiqui, University of West of Scotland 10 July 2020 Finally, some good news in a tense pandemic year. Cybersecurity SICSA grant title, “Analysis and impact of Cybersecurity Vulnerabilities on Excessive and Un-administered use of Smart Devices by Children of All Ages”, was completed and conducted by Dr. Zeeshan Siddiqui in the University of … Read more

SICSA Programming Challenges

by Dr Hans-Wolfgang Loidl, Heriot-Watt University 29 June 2020 Different communities deal quite differently with the current Covid-19 situation and with lock-down. Some get stressed over a flurry of online meetings, juggling several different technologies. For your average hacker, who is quite used to spending hours, days and, well, weeks in front of the screen, … Read more

SICSA Pre-CHI day 2020

by Mohamed Khamis, University of Glasgow 26 June 2020 The SICSA PreCHI day is an annual event where researchers from SICSA institutions present their latest contributions to the premiere conference on Human-Computer Interaction: the International ACM Conference on Human-Computer Interaction – or simply CHI (pronounced ‘kai’). The PreCHI day serves two purposes: It is a … Read more

Addressing Gender Imbalance in Computing Science Education

By Dr Matthew Barr, Centre for Computing Science Education, University of Glasgow 11 June 2020 On 14 May, the University of Glasgow, with support from the Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance (SICSA), hosted an online workshop that looked at how the gender imbalance in Computing Science education might be addressed. Bringing together representatives from … Read more

Students as the focus at Edinburgh Napier’s Centre for Computing Education Research

Transitions Edinburgh Napier recruits a high proportion of students from partner colleges as direct entrants and the work of the Associate Student Project supports this often-difficult transition.  Debbie Meharg, supported by Khristin Fabian, Ella Taylor-Smith and Alison Varey has developed a model of interventions to aid preparation and support direct entrants both pre and post-transition … Read more

Ground-breaking work within the field of computing education research

Within SICSA institutions we are doing excellent, ground-breaking work within the field of computing education research. We have asked the newly formed Education Champions to write short blogs about the research within their particular institution. At the University of Glasgow, the Centre for Computing Science Education supports several education research projects. Spatial skills Jack Parkinson … Read more