Mid Sweden University

Computer science is a higher education domain that still show a significant male dominance. Many research studies have highlighted the importance of diversity and gender balance in computer science related areas such as software engineering and system development. However, there is still a well-identified problem that university programmes and courses on computer science fail to attract the female audience. The objective of this study is to investigate the concept of gender-inclusive computer science (CS) education with the aim of broadening participation in CS courses and programs. This is conducted through a literature study, initially focusing on keywords and research areas, and subsequently searching into existing research. The research question that guided the study was: "What concepts can be found in literature to make computer science education more gender-inclusive?". Data were analysed thematically in a two-step analysis process inspired by the grounded theory methods of Open coding and Axial coding. Findings suggest that there is significant room for learning in this field, particularly from Critical CS education studies. The Open coding analysis showed that the findings can be categorised into eight main themes. In the Axial coding the themes were merged, refined, renamed, and centred around the main axial theme of 'Epistemological pluralism'. Other essential themes that all are related to the axial main theme were: 'Design and creativity', 'Bias awareness and ethics', 'Collaboration and communication', 'Self-regulated learning', 'Real-world applications', and 'Role models and mentorship'. The result of this study is presented through a visual model that illustrates essential aspects of inclusive computer science education. The paper also proposes various directions for future research.

The rapid growth of software industry highlights the importance of the education system in producing competent professionals to meet industry demands. Previous research has identified a gap between industry needs and the content of educational programs. This study presents Vocational Education and Labour Market Analyser (VELMA), a tool designed to extract information from job ads and educational curricula (both from Sweden), utilising topic modelling to identify the diverse technologies and skills in demand within the industry and those covered by professional education. Particularly, we use Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) to categorise keywords into cohesive themes for document frequency analysis. Our findings highlight industry demand for skills in cloud and embedded technologies, security engineering, and software architecture. In contrast, the Higher Vocational Education (HVE) curricula emphasise the education of web developers and general object-oriented programming languages. 

In this concluding chapter, we point to themes that emerge from the chapters in this book on sustainable networked learning. The themes cut across different sections of the book, indicating their broader significance. These themes are the lasting effects of lockdown online teaching; Digital sustainability for the future; Future roles of networked learning in society; Balancing utopia and dystopia in visions of AI and open data; Speculative methods in research, education and design; and Balancing qualitative and quantitative data in the research of networked educational settings: Studies at the community and project levels.

The present book has emerged from the 13th International Conference on Networked Learning (NLC, 2022), held 16–18 May 2022 at Mid-Sweden University, Sundsvall, Sweden. The conference had a high number of interesting, high-quality research papers, which made it a difficult task to select papers to be further developed into chapters for this book. To aid our editorial decisions, in the final plenary session of the conference, we encouraged the delegates to discuss what themes and ideas they had found most interesting and/or thought-provoking during the many presentations. Comments were collated on an online board (a padlet), creating a rich plethora of potential focal points for this volume. With this as the outset, we found a set of overarching themes that each encompassed a sufficient number of papers corresponding to delegates’ articulated interests. From there, the process leading to the present collection included several rounds of reviews and revisions through which authors of the chosen papers further developed their contributions.

In software engineering research, academia-industry collaboration is predominantly understood as partnerships between academic institutions and large companies. Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) are vital contributors to the industry, and they are numerous. Their unique preconditions and challenges differentiate their collaboration dynamics from larger corporations. We seek to identify guiding principles and practices for initiating collaborations between researchers and SMEs. Through a meta-synthesis approach drawn from two systematic literature reviews, we introduce a collaborative model canvas. This emphasizes the importance of SMEs’ business contexts and the relationships between researchers and SMEs. Our research offers insights for those looking to collaborate with SMEs, considering potential challenges and limitations.

The present book has emerged from the 13th International Conference on Networked Learning (NLC, 2022), held 16–18 May, 2022 at Mid-Sweden University, Sundsvall, Sweden. The conference had a high number of interesting, high-quality research papers, which made it a difficult task to select papers to be further developed into chapters for this book. To aid our editorial decisions, in the final plenary session of the conference, we encouraged the delegates to discuss what themes and ideas they had found most interesting and/or thought-provoking during the many presentations. Comments were collated on an online board (a padlet), creating a rich plethora of potential focal points for this volume. With this as the outset, we found a set of overarching themes that each encompassed a sufficient number of papers corresponding to delegates’ articulated interests. From there, the process leading to the present collection included several rounds of reviews and revisions through which authors of the chosen papers further developed their contributions.

Learning Analytics (LA) is an established field of research and prac-tice. Yet, there is still scarce evidence of LA on improved learning and teaching. In this regard, researchers highlight a need to involve not only students but also teachers in the development of LA systems to ensure that LA is implemented effectively. Earlier research has pointed out several ethical issues that are im-portant to consider when designing and using LA services. Ethics are interrelated with stakeholders’ values since the values represent things that are seen as im-portant to individuals. These values are rarely considered when designing LA systems; it is problematic since it may influence the design and the implementa-tion of effective LA solutions in a negative way. The aim of this study is therefore to explore which values teachers consider important in relation to LA systems to be used in higher education. The selected and adapted set of envisioning cards was used during an online workshop with 11 teachers. The results indicate that there are several critical values that are important for teachers in relation to LA systems, including variation, personalization, flexibility, insight, transparency, efficiency, and trust. By taking these values into consideration when designing LA systems, teachers’ needs can be better met in the setting of higher education.

This study takes its point of departure in academic scholarship that points to how programming – reading and writing code – is the literacy of the future, in other words, non-specialized competence that should be acquired in education in parity with traditional reading and writing skills. The goal is to shed light on how programming can be orchestrated in education to break with the outworn dichotomy between the ‘two cultures’ that C. P. Snow formulated as a gap between, on the one hand, natural sciences, mathematics, and technology, and, on the other hand, the humanities, and social sciences. A discursive analysis of Swedish policy documents and curricula forms the empirical ground for discussing how reading and writing code are introduced, taught, and learnt within Swedish compulsory school. The results show that Swedish curricula are framing programming as specialized knowledge within technology and mathematics, rather than allowing it to be a dimension of several subjects, such as the humanities and social sciences. These findings are discussed in the light of recent studies in education that have explored interrelations between coding and reading and writing texts. The discussion leads up to suggestions for implementing reading and writing code as digital literacy in education. 

We see an explosive global labour demand in the Software Industry, and higher education institutions play a crucial role in supplying the industry with professionals with relevant education. Existing literature identifies a gap between what software engineering education teaches students and what the software industry demands. Using our open-sourced Job Market AnalyseR (JMAR) text-analysis tool, we compared keywords from higher education course syllabi and job posts to investigate the knowledge gap from a technology-focused departure point. We present a trend analysis of technology in job posts over the past six years in Sweden. We found that demand for cloud and automation technology such as Kubernetes and Docker is rising in job ads but not that much in higher education syllabi. The language used in higher education syllabi and job ads differs where the former emphasizes concepts and the latter technologies more heavily. We discuss possible remedies to bridge this mismatch to draw further conclusions in future work, including calibrating JMAR to other industry-relevant aspects, including soft skills, software concepts, or new demographics. 

Gaming is a ubiquitous activity today where many children spend considerable amounts of time playing various games. Serious games have also become a mainstream educational tool in a wide variety of school subjects. Despite this, many games still have a design that mainly appeals to boys where girls are less frequent players. The aim of this study was to gather requirements for a design of serious games where girls should not feel excluded. The research question to answer was: "Which design concepts are important if girls should be engaged in serious gaming?". Furthermore, the results from this study could be useful for future implementations of educational games. This study strives to address the research gap in the field of inclusive game design, and to gather important requirements for games where girls and boys want to play together. This study was carried out as a scoping literature review to map literature in the field of game design to identify key concepts that can attract the younger girl audience. Scoping literature reviews offer a method of mapping key concepts in a research field to identifying the main sources and types of evidence available. A central aim of a scoping literature review is to synthesise research results to a specific target group as a foundation for future research. For this study, the future research will consist of implementing the found design factors in an educational game on computer science. Findings indicate that there are specific game design concepts that girls find appealing. Important main themes to consider are Creativity and customisation, Character diversity, Collaborative interaction, and Exploration without violence. However, there seems to be several challenges related to the concept of designing specific girl games. The conclusion from this study is rather to choose a more inclusive game design where girls and boys would like to play together. A concept for game design that could be described as having a low threshold, wide walls and a high ceiling. The recommendation for a girl inclusive design is to carefully consider factors such as narration, backstory, social interaction, game graphics, sound design, and personalisation.