CRA P2P Survey (Practitioner-to-Professor)

Endorsed by:

What is this project about?

The goal of this project is to initiate a long-term partnership between the computing/software industry and academia with the purpose of keeping computing curricula up to date and globally competitive. We envision a periodic survey administered nationwide by which computing professionals can provide actionable feedback to universities such as: which competencies are most important, which course experiences are most valuable, which are less needed, and what does industry most value in graduates over the long term. We are a team of computer science professors across multiple universities who, with input from international computing associations, would like to develop a robust and periodic feedback loop from computing professionals nationwide to all of computing academia.

Why do this?

Developing such an industry-to-academia feedback loop helps everyone: universities keep their curricula current and relevant, which in turn leads to better prepared prospective employees for companies.
A regular, respected survey with wide participation and acceptance can bring together the data needed to effect meaningful adjustments to curricula, and to spur high-impact educational research that explores gaps between curricular aims and actual results.
Credible industry feedback, especially across a broad spectrum of industry, helps persuade university administrators to invest new resources in addressing challenges.

How can I contribute?

(Least effort – no meetings) Join our group of industry practitioners willing to distribute the survey link by email to your colleagues at work, and nudging them to fill it out. (Yes, nobody likes surveys, which is why it’s important work.)
(Medium effort – no meetings, little email) In addition to the above, join our project’s steering committee to review survey questions and results and offer suggestions.
(More effort – one meeting/year, some email) In addition to the above, meet with us to brainstorm ways of getting the word out, recruit steering committee members.

Community Impact

Survey results from a prior pilot survey are described in a Communications of the ACM article, one of the most widely distributed publications in computing academia. These results have already informed the design of the ACM’s new 2023 curricular guidelines. Thus, by building a culture around feedback from industry to academia, future such survey analyses will shape computing curricula.
Think of distributing the survey as your good deed for the day. It’s only through actual data about the impact of education that education can adapt.
We will distribute a summary of the survey’s results to you, along with a status report of the project. The survey results (what the community thinks is important) should be of interest to everyone.

This project is being partially supported by the Division of Undergraduate Education at the National Science Foundation under Award #2110815 under a larger umbrella project called DEAP.