Abstract This editorial commemorates Prof. Sir Charles Antony Richard Hoare FRS FREng (1934–2026), one of the defining figures of modern computer science. It reflects on his enduring contributions to algorithms, programming languages, formal reasoning, and concurrency, with particular attention to his 1962 paper on quicksort in The Computer Journal. It also notes the journal’s intention to mark his legacy further through a dedicated collection.

Across various countries and jurisdictions, we have seen reports of a “graduate skills gap”, with higher-than-desired graduate unemployment and underemployment, as well as reports from employers that there is a mismatch between the competencies desired by employers and those evidenced by graduates. Graduate employment prospects are related to many complex intersecting factors, including human capital, individual attributes, individual career-building behaviours, labour market factors, and social capital. Alongside the graduate skills gap, there are also reports internationally of a “digital skills gap”, with increasing demand for digital skills and a proclaimed shortage of diverse digital skills evidenced by the workforce. These circumstances appear to promote positive employment outcomes for computing graduates. However, there are reports in many jurisdictions, including the UK, of skills-gap-related issues for computing graduates. In response to these concerns, curricula guidance in the computing and engineering disciplines are increasingly promoting competency-based education (CBE) to develop graduates' work readiness better and, hence, reduce the skills gap. Authentic Assessment, i.e. Assessment that addresses important problems or questions that require students to effectively and creatively apply their knowledge and disciplinary and personal skills, mirroring the challenges faced by adults or professionals in the real-world context, has also been advocated to reduce skills gaps between education and professional life. However, the link between CBE and Authentic Assessment in the computing discipline could benefit from further exploration. This paper explores the relationship between CBE and authentic assessment. Based on the guiding research question: “How can authentic assessment be employed to promote competency in computing degree programmes?”, the paper begins by providing theoretical underpinnings in the form of working definitions for competency and authentic assessment and the link between the two. This paper follows a proof-of-concept research approach conducted by evolutionary prototyping to develop a framework for exploring the relationship between authentic assessment and competency. The paper documents the validation of the framework by applying it to examples of practices from UK universities involved in the study. These illustrative examples show the framework in action. The paper concludes with a discussion of how the framework promotes learner competency development by authentic assessment. This approach has implications for enhancing how computing graduates address digital skills gaps and has the potential to be customised and adopted more broadly across STEM disciplines.

The emergence of AI agents and agentic systems represents a significant milestone in artificial intelligence, enabling autonomous systems to operate, learn, and collaborate in complex environments with minimal human intervention. This paper, drawing on multi-expert perspectives, examines the potential of AI agents and agentic systems to reshape industries by decentralizing decision-making, redefining organizational structures, and enhancing cross-functional collaboration. Specific applications include healthcare systems capable of creating adaptive treatment plans, supply chain agents that predict and address disruptions in real-time, and business process automation that reallocates tasks from humans to AI, improving efficiency and innovation. However, the integration of these systems raises critical challenges, including issues of attribution and shared accountability in decision-making, compatibility with legacy systems, and addressing biases in AI-driven processes. The paper concludes that while agentic systems hold immense promise, robust governance frameworks, cross-industry collaboration, and interdisciplinary research into ethical design are essential. Future research should explore adaptive workforce reskilling strategies, transparent accountability mechanisms, and energy-efficient deployment models to ensure ethical and scalable implementation.

Many factors influence computing graduate employment prospects, including human capital, social capital, individual attributes, individual career-building behaviours, perceived employability, and labour market factors. Whilst most computing graduates go on to be beneficially employed, a small minority remain under-employed or unemployed. Computing curricular recommendations increasingly advocate a competency-based approach to bolster graduates' perceived employability. Hence, the discipline is evolving to incorporate competency-based approaches. However, competency-based can mean any of three different types of competency: technical, personal and professional. Technical Competency is the ability to apply acquired content knowledge and skills to develop solutions to unseen problems. Personal Competency is the personal behaviours and interpersonal skills required for success in the modern workplace. Professional Competency is Technical and Personal combined and applied in a real-world context.

We present results of an in-depth survey of nearly 100 introductory programming (CS1) instructors in 18 countries spanning six continents. Although CS1 is well studied, relatively few broadly-scoped studies have been conducted, and none prior have exceeded regional scale. In addition, CS1 is a notoriously fickle and often changing course, and many might find it beneficial to know what other instructors are doing across the globe; perhaps more so as we continue to understand the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on computing education and as the effects of Generative AI take hold. Expanding upon several surveys conducted in Australasia, the UK, and Ireland, this survey facilitates a direct comparison of global trends in CS1. The survey goes beyond environmental factors such as languages used, and examines why CS1 instructors teach what they do, in the ways they do. In total the survey spans 84 institutions and 91 courses in which a total of over 40,000 students are enrolled.

Computer science (CS) curriculum reform across the UK has been subject to substantial scrutiny, as it has in many other countries around the world. However, in Wales -- one of the four nations in the UK -- various political, geographical and socio-cultural issues have historically hindered major educational policy interventions or reforms for CS. In this poster, we highlight the activities and impact of Technocamps, a pan-Wales university-based schools outreach programme founded in 2003. We showcase its wider impact on CS education, practitioners, schools, and learners in Wales over the past 20 years; especially with the start of the new bilingual Curriculum for Wales (Cwricwlwm i Gymru) from September 2022, which includes major reform of CS alongside digital competence as a statutory cross-curricular skill for all learners aged 3-16.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused both significant disruption and catalysed extensive experimentation in how education has been and may be delivered worldwide. The discipline of computing has been part of this experimentation, and significant innovations have been implemented and disseminated. Furthermore, educational provision and learner expectations may have evolved in response to the experiences during the pandemic; whilst still subject to disruption, higher education in many jurisdictions is still returning to a new (ab)normal. In the UK, whilst there has been a return to traditional face-to-face delivery, one estimate suggests that nearly a third of courses continue to involve some hybrid learning as opposed to about 5% before the pandemic. Learners' preferences for delivery approach remains critical and has been explored in previous work predominately by survey-based approach. This single UK institutional case study explores learner preferences by using workshops (N=45 students across ten workshops) which aspires to co-create an understanding of issues and benefits of the learning, teaching and assessment approaches adopted in the pandemic and identify preferences for future directions. The workshops employed the sailboat retrospective template; they suggest that the preferences are varied but commonly include some face-to-face study and that digital exclusion, social engagement, and motivation/distraction are vital factors to be addressed for further adoption of hybrid or online learning.

This working group concerns the adoption of computing education (CE) in undergraduate computer science (CS) programmes. Such adoption requires both arguments sufficient to persuade our departmental colleagues and our education committees, and also curricular outlines to assist our colleagues in delivery. The goal of the group is to develop examples of both arguments and curricular outlines, drawing on any prior experience available.

Educators have long researched student attention and how this influences learning, teaching and assessment. Focusing on how this specifically impacts upon CS education, we present early work that constructs a deeper understanding of CS student attention during learning and teaching activities, alongside co-designing a set of recommendations. We conducted an in-depth analysis of student perspectives and experiences related to their attention in CS courses through diaries and focus groups, working with students as partners on recommendations for increasing student attention and engagement. The outcomes of this preliminary work provides the foundation for developing future engagement activities and targeted interventions for undergraduate CS students.

We introduce the major changes to computer science (CS) education in Wales, UK, as part of wider school-level (K-12) curriculum, qualifications and system-level reforms. The new Curriculum for Wales (Cwricwlwm i Gymru), starting from September 2022, reinforces the societal importance of digital competence as a statutory cross-curricular skill alongside literacy and numeracy, for all learners aged 3-16. It also offers significant changes to the discipline of CS, as part of a new interdisciplinary Science & Technology "area of learning and experience". We introduce the high-level rationale and characteristics of this new bilingual national curriculum. Finally, we consider what this means for school-level digital competence and CS education, and especially how it can influence digital pedagogy and practice in Wales as the new curriculum is implemented.

In the UK, a thriving computer science education community of practice is emerging, supported by national and international professional body/learned society specialist interest groups, and being developed through relevant research and practice conferences. A key group within this emerging community of practice are early career academics who are required to overcome significant obstacles in the early stages of their academic career, from developing an independent research career, delivering high quality learning and teaching, continuing their own professional development, alongside wider academic service commitments. Institutional-level, but generally subject-agnostic, support for early career colleagues in the UK is supplemented by nationwide developmental sessions and initiatives such as journal clubs. This poster reports on a developing pilot scheme to support early career CS academics through cross-institutional mentoring from experienced academics, as well as buddying groups of similar career stage colleagues.

This paper presents the findings from a research project exploring the impact of learner resilience as part of the shift to online delivery of learning, teaching and assessment amidst national "lockdown" measures as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. This exploration of resilience was undertaken as part of the delivery of a first-year undergraduate computer science degree programme in a UK higher education institution over two academic years. Resilience was measured by the Nicholson McBride Resilience Questionnaire (NMRQ). The responses from the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 student cohorts (N=214) illustrate that overall learner resilience as measured by NMRQ does not appear to have had a significant impact upon learner success as measured by the mean overall first-year performance. This is an outcome that differs from previous work and may be a consequence of the disruptive (and ongoing) circumstances arising from the pandemic. However, this work identifies that the factor "I try to control events rather than being a victim of my circumstances" appears to promote success and the factor "I trust my intuition" may have been slightly detrimental to overall success. As we start to consider the post-pandemic new (ab)normal, learners will continue to face significant personal challenges that will impact upon their engagement with their studies and their performance and progression; thus the insights offered from this UK university study can help to inform emerging academic and pastoral practice for undergraduate computer science education.

We present the major changes to computer science education in Wales, UK, as part of wider school (K-12) curriculum, qualifications and system-level reforms. The new Curriculum for Wales, published in January 2020 to phase in from September 2022 for all learners aged 3-16, offers significant changes to the discipline of computer science as part of a new interdisciplinary Science & Technology "area of learning and experience", alongside the repositioning of digital competence as a statutory cross-curricular skill. We introduce the key features of this new bilingual national curriculum, its underlying rationale and wider Welsh education policy context, as well as what this means for school level computer science education, pedagogy and practice in Wales as the curriculum is implemented.

From March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic imposed "emergency remote teaching" across education globally, leading to the closure of institutions across all settings. The resulting shift to online learning, teaching and assessment (LT&A) has placed significant challenges on practitioners, especially their mental health and wellbeing. Building on previous work, this poster presents preliminary results drawn from international computer science practitioners (n=779), extracted from a wider sample of university academics (N=2,628). We highlight widespread disciplinary concerns relating to transitioning to remote online working; deprioritisation of research; and wider impact on marginalised communities within computer science. These results offer valuable insight into the emerging impact of COVID-19 on computer science practitioners, especially as we start to move towards a new post-COVID (ab)normal.

Team-based software development projects where teams of learners design and develop software artefacts are common in computing-related degree programmes in the UK and other jurisdictions. Peer assessment is a commonly used approach to ensure learners are fairly recognised and rewarded for their contributions to such projects. This poster presents a preliminary study analysing the relationship between peer marking using the Team-Q rubric and peer feedback from one cohort using open coding and sentiment analysis. The preliminary results from a UK institutional study (N=124) illustrate how learner behaviours within teams appear to impact upon peer scores and the sentiment and intensity of emotion expressed in peer feedback. Additionally, the results provide valuable insights into common behaviours within teams. Given the prominence of team projects in computing curricula, the insights offered from this UK institutional study can shape and inform future learning, teaching and assessment practice.

In March 2020, the COVID-19 global pandemic imposed “emergency remote teaching” across education globally, leading to a rapid shift to online learning, teaching and assessment (LT&A) across all settings, from schools through to universities. This paper looks specifically at the impact of these disruptive - and ongoing - changes to those teaching the discipline of computer science (CS) across the world. Drawing on the quantitative and qualitative findings from a large-scale international survey (N=2,483) conducted in the immediate aftermath of the shift online between March-April 2020, we report how those teaching CS across all educational settings and contexts (n=327) show significantly more positive attitudes towards the move to online LT&A than those working in other disciplines. When comparing educational setting, CS practitioners in schools felt more prepared and confident than those in higher education; however, they expressed greater concern around equity and whether students would be able to access and meaningfully engage with online LT&A. Furthermore, while CS practitioners across all sectors consistently noted the potential opportunities of these changes, they also raised a number of wider concerns on the impact of this shift to online, especially on workload and job precarity. Concerns were also raised by international CS practitioners regarding the ability to effectively deliver technical topics online, as well as the impact on formal examinations and assessment. This rapid response snapshot of the early impact of COVID-19 on CS education internationally provides insight into emerging LT&A strategies that will likely continue to be constrained by coronavirus into 2021 and beyond.

There exists a significant gap between the requirements specified within higher education qualifications and the requirements sought by employers. The former, commonly expressed in terms of learning outcomes, provide a measure of capability, of what skills have been learnt (an input measure); the latter, commonly expressed in terms of role descriptions, provide a measure of competency, of what a learner has become skilful in (an output measure). Accreditation traditionally provides a way of translating and embedding industry-relevant content into education programmes but current approaches make fully addressing this requirements gap, referred to here as the Capability-Competency Chasm, very difficult. This paper explores current efforts to address this global challenge, primarily through STEM examples that apply within the United Kingdom and European Union, before proposing a way of bridging this chasm through the use of a 21stCentury (C21) skills taxonomy. The concept of C21 Skills Hours as a new input measurement for learning within qualifications is introduced, and an illustrative example is presented to show the C21 skills taxonomy in action. The paper concludes with a discussion of how such a taxonomy can also be used to support a microcredentialing framework that aligns to existing competency frameworks, enabling formal, non-formal and informal learning to all be recognized. A C21 Skills taxonomy can therefore be used to bridge the gap between capability (input) and competency (output), providing a common language both for learning and demonstrating a skill. This approach has profound implications for addressing current and future skills gaps as well as for supporting a transition to more personalised learning within schools, colleges and universities and more lifelong learning both during and outside of employment.

We introduce the emerging changes to science and technology education in Wales, as part of major school (K-12) curriculum and qualifications reform. The new bilingual Curriculum for Wales, published in January 2020 and set to phase in from September 2022, features significant changes to the discipline of computer science as part of a new science & technology "area of learning and experience", alongside the repositioning of digital competence as a statutory cross-curricular skill for all learners aged 3-16. This poster introduces some of the key features of the new Curriculum for Wales, its underlying rationale and wider policy context, as well as what this means for K-12 computer science education, pedagogy and practice in Wales over the coming years.

The early career of a computer science (CS) academic in the UK is increasingly challenging in terms of balancing research aspirations, learning and teaching responsibilities, wider academic service commitments, alongside their own professional development. The development of an early-career CS academic is mediated in part by the strength of the community of practice with which they are able to access and engage. And not just ones that operate within their department or institution; but also communities of practice that exist at a national and international level, often through professional bodies, learned societies and research networks. This poster presents the emerging work-in-progress to address some of these social, cultural and structural challenges in developing a CS education community of practice in the UK. Building on recent work, we identify a number of specific actions and recommendations to supplement the current formal institutional requirements with enhanced national-level academic practice support and professional development, alongside local and regional professional mentoring.

This poster presents the preliminary findings from a research project exploring the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on learner resilience from the shift to online delivery of learning and teaching amidst national social "lockdown" measures. This exploration of resilience was undertaken as part of the delivery of the first-year undergraduate computer science degree programme in a UK university. Resilience was measured by the Nicholson McBride Resilience Questionnaire (NMRQ) and three open-ended questions exploring what has supported their study most during the COVID-19 pandemic, what had been the greatest challenge, and how that challenge was resolved. The preliminary results of this survey (N=103) illustrate how learner responses differed to the delivery depending upon their measured resilience level. Additionally, the results provide valuable insight into learners' perceptions of the challenges of online learning, teaching and assessment. Given the continued impact on educational settings from COVID-19, online/blended learning is likely to remain a significant feature of future delivery; hence the insights offered from this UK institutional study can inform future sector practice.

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has forced an unprecedented global shift within higher education in the ways that we communicate with and educate students. This necessary paradigm shift has compelled educators to take a critical look at their teaching styles and use of technology. Computing education traditionally focuses on experiential, in-person activities. The pandemic has mandated that educators reconsider their use of student time and has catalysed overnight innovations in the educational setting. Even in the unlikely event that we return entirely to pre-COVID-19 norms, many new practices have emerged that offer valuable lessons to be carried forward into our post-COVID-19 teaching. This working group will explore what the post-COVID-19 academic landscape might look like, and how we can use lessons learned during this educational shift to improve our subsequent practice. The exploration will strive to identify practices within computing that appear to have been improved through exposure to online tools and technologies, and that should therefore continue to be used in the online space. In the broadest sense, our motivation is to explore what the post-COVID-19 educational landscape will look like for computing education.

The COVID-19 pandemic has imposed "emergency remote teaching" across education globally, leading to the closure of institutions across all settings, from schools through to universities. We draw on the quantitative and qualitative findings from a large-scale international survey (N=2,483) conducted in the immediate aftermath of closures, implementation of lockdown measures, and the shift to online delivery in March 2020. We report how those teaching the discipline of computer science (CS) across all educational levels (n=327) show significantly more positive attitudes towards the move to online learning, teaching and assessment (LT&A) than those working in other disciplines. However, while CS practitioners across all sectors/settings consistently noted the potential opportunities of these changes, they also raised a number of wider concerns on the impact of this shift to online, especially on workload and job precarity. More specifically for the discipline of CS, there were concerns raised regarding the ability to effectively deliver technical topics online, as well as the impact on various types of formal examinations and assessment.

This poster shares the progress related to an evaluation of computer science degree professional body accreditation, framed through an ongoing national review in the United Kingdom (UK). While this review substantially focuses on the UK, other countries, including South Africa and Ireland, have adopted a similar accreditation regime; furthermore, this work is evaluated in the context of the Washington Accord review, taking into account the memorandum's impetus for increased consistency in the UK. In parallel with this international review, the UK's Engineering Council is seeking to enhance and modernise the processes and procedures for degree accreditation (which includes the award of the protected professional title "Chartered Engineer") and the introduction of the new set of accreditation expectations on approved institutions. The review includes consideration of the value of accreditation to universities, students and employers. It was initiated in 2016 following two major national reviews looking at computer science and wider STEM degree accreditation. The intent is to better understand the value of professional body accreditation in computer science, as well as how to co-create improved outcomes for all accreditation stakeholders.

The Institute of Coding (IoC) is a new £40m+ initiative by the UK Government to “transform the digital skills profile of the country”. In the context of widespread national and international educational and economic policy interventions, it responds to the apparently contradictory data that the United Kingdom (UK) has a digital skills shortage across a variety of sectors, yet its higher education system produces computing graduates every year who end up unemployed, or underemployed. The Institute is a large-scale national intervention to address some of the perceived issues with formal educational routes versus industry-focused skills and training, for example: technical skills versus “soft” or “work-ready” skills; industry-readiness versus “deep education”; inclusion and diversity of the current and future technical workforce; and managing expectations for the broad digital, data and computational skills demands of employers across a wide range of economic sectors. Alongside these activities at the higher education-industry interface, we have also seen substantial computer science curriculum reform across the four nations of the UK. In this paper, we outline the background, evidence base and rationale for the IoC (especially within the complex UK policy context); its key themes, current activities and outputs; as well as anticipate its likely impact over the coming years. Furthermore, we reflect on the potential replicability of aspects of the Institute (and related initiatives in the UK) to other nations or regions with similar ambitions to address the “digital skills crisis”.

This Innovative Practice Full Paper explores the diversity of challenges relating to the teaching of cybersecurity in UK higher education degree programmes, through the lens of national policy, to the impact on pedagogy and practice. There is a serious demand for cybersecurity specialists, both in the UK and globally; there is thus significant and growing higher education provision related to specialist undergraduate and postgraduate courses focusing on varying aspects of cybersecurity. To make our digital systems and products more secure, all in IT need to know some cybersecurity - thus, there is a case for depth as well as breadth; this is not a new concern, but it is a growing one. Delivering cybersecurity effectively across general computer science programmes presents a number of challenges related to pedagogy, resources, faculty and infrastructure, as well as responding to industry requirements. Computer science and cognate engineering disciplines are evolving to meet these demands - both at school-level, as well as at university - however, doing so is not without challenges. This paper explores the progress made to date in the UK, building on previous work in cybersecurity education and accreditation by highlighting key challenges and opportunities, as well as identifying a number of enhancement activities for use by the international cybersecurity education community. It frames these challenges through concerns with the quality and availability of underpinning educational resources, the competencies and skills of faculty (especially focusing on pedagogy, progression and assessment), and articulating the necessary technical resources and infrastructure related to delivering rigorous cybersecurity content in general computer science and cognate degrees. Though this critical evaluation of an emerging national case study of cybersecurity education in the UK, we also present a number of recommendations across policy and practice - from pedagogic principles and developing effective cybersecurity teaching practice, challenges in the recruitment, retention and professional development of faculty, to supporting diverse routes into post-compulsory cybersecurity education (and thus, diverse careers) - to provide the foundation for potential replicability and portability to other jurisdictions contemplating related education and skills reform initiatives and interventions.

This poster presents a model for the value provided by professional body accreditation of computer science degree programmes in the United Kingdom (UK). We introduce how one large UK professional computing body -- BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT (BCS)-- addresses degree accreditation, as well as recent changes to content and process. Whilst comparable accreditation regimes exist in a number of other jurisdictions, we provide the opportunity for exploring future extensions to, and the portability of, the UK model.

Many factors have been shown to be important for supporting effective learning and teaching -- and thus progression and success -- in higher education. While factors such as key introductory-level (CS1) knowledge and skills, as well as pre-university learning and qualifications, have been extensively explored, the impact of measures of positive psychology are less well understood for the discipline of computer science. University study can be a period of significant transition for many students; therefore an individual's positive psychology may have considerable impact upon their response to these challenges. This work investigates the relationships between effective learning and success (first-year performance and attendance) and two measures of positive psychology: Grit and the Nicolson McBride Resilience Quotient (NMRQ). Data was captured by integrating Grit (N=58) and Resilience (N=50) questionnaires and related coaching into the first-year of the undergraduate computer science programme at a single UK university. Analyses demonstrate that NMRQ is significantly linked to attendance and performance for individual subjects and year average marks; however, this was not the case for Grit. This suggests that development of targeted interventions to support students in further developing their resilience could support their learning, as well as progression and retention. Resilience could be used, in concert with other factors such as learning analytics, to augment a range of existing models to predict future student success, allowing targeted academic and pastoral support.

This Innovative Practice Full Paper presents a national case study-based analysis of the numerous dimensions to cybersecurity education and how they are prioritised, implemented and accredited; from understanding the interaction of hardware and software, moving from theory to practice (and vice versa), to human factors, policy and politics (as well as various other important facets). A multitude of model curricula and recommendations have been presented and discussed in international fora in recent years, with varying levels of impact on education, policy and practice. This paper address three key questions: i) what is taught and what should be taught for cybersecurity to general computer science students; ii) should cybersecurity be taught stand-alone or in an integrated manner to general computer science students; and iii) can accreditation by national professional, statutory and regulatory bodies enhance the provision of cybersecurity within a body's jurisdiction? Evaluating how cybersecurity is taught in all aspects of computer science is clearly a task of considerable size, one that is beyond the scope of this paper. Instead a case study-based research approach - primarily focusing on the UK - has been adopted to evaluate the evidence of the teaching of cybersecurity within general computer science to university-level students. Thus, in the context of widespread international computer science/engineering curriculum reform, what does this need to embed cybersecurity knowledge and skills mean more generally for institutions and educators, and how can we teach this subject more effectively? Through this UK case study, and by contrasting with related initiatives in the US, we demonstrate the positive effect that national accreditation requirements can have, and offer some recommendations both for future research and curriculum developments.

Parallel surveys of introductory programming courses were conducted in Australasia and the UK, with a view to examining the programming languages being used, the preferred integrated development environments (if any), and the reasons for these choices, alongside a number of other key aspects of these courses. This paper summarises some of the similarities and differences between the findings of the two surveys. In the UK, Java is clearly the dominant programming language in introductory programming courses, with Eclipse as the dominant environment. Java was also the dominant language in Australasia six years ago, but now shares the lead with Python; we speculate on the reasons for this. Other differences between the two surveys are equally interesting. Overall, however, there appears to be a reasonable similarity in the way these undergraduate courses are conducted in the UK and in Australasia. While the degree structures differ markedly between and within these regions -- a possible explanation for some of the differences -- some of the similarities are noteworthy and have the potential to provide insight into approaches in other regions and countries.

Advances in display technologies are transforming the capabilities—and potential applications—of system interfaces. Previously, the overwhelming majority of systems have utilised rectangular displays; this may soon change with digital devices increasingly designed to be ubiquitous and pervasive, to facilitate frictionless human interaction. At present, software is invariably designed assuming it will be used with a display of a specific shape; however, there is an emerging demand for systems built around interacting with tabletop interfaces to be capable of handling a wide range of potential display shapes. In this paper, the design of software for use on a range of differently shaped tabletop displays is considered, proposing a novel but extensible technique that can be used to minimise the influence of the issues of using different display shapes. Furthermore, we present a study that applies the technique to adapt several software applications to several different display shapes.

This paper describes the output of a study to tackle the problem of gang-related crime in the UK; we present the intelligence and routinely gathered data available to a UK regional police force, and describe an initial social network analysis of gangs in the Greater Manchester area of the UK between 2000-2006. By applying social network analysis techniques, we attempt to detect the birth of two new gangs based on local features (modularity, cliques) and global features (clustering coefficient). Thus for the future, identifying the changes in these can help us identify the possible birth of new gangs (sub-networks) in the social system. Furthermore, we study the dynamics of these networks globally and locally, and have identified the global characteristics that tell us that they are not random graphs - they are small world graphs - implying that the formation of gangs is not a random event. However, we are not yet able to conclude anything significant about scale-free characteristics due to insufficient sample size.

This paper describes our experiences with three different crime networks in the UK: burglary, `gun' gangs and retail theft. We present an introduction into each of these problems, and highlight some of the issues related to over-simplification of the network analysis. We also review the term `third-generation' analysis, and provide some insights into achieving this, but also conclude that it can be an extremely computationally expensive undertaking.

Computer science in UK schools is undergoing a remarkable transformation. While the changes are not consistent across each of the four devolved nations of the UK (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland), there are developments in each that are moving the subject to become mandatory for all pupils from age 5 onwards. In this article, we detail how computer science declined in the UK, and the developments that led to its revitalisation: a mixture of industry and interest group lobbying, with a particular focus on the value of the subject to all school pupils, not just those who would study it at degree level. This rapid growth in the subject is not without issues, however: there remain significant forthcoming challenges with its delivery, especially surrounding the issue of training sufficient numbers of teachers. We describe a national network of teaching excellence which is being set up to combat this problem, and look at the other challenges that lie ahead.

Computer science in UK schools is a subject in decline: the ratio of Computing to Maths A-Level students (i.e. ages 16--18) has fallen from 1:2 in 2003 to 1:20 in 2011 and in 2012. In 2011 and again in 2012, the ratio for female students was 1:100, with less than 300 female students taking Computing A-Level in the whole of the UK each year. Similar problems have been observed in the USA and other countries, despite the increased need for computer science skills caused by IT growth in industry and society. In the UK, the Computing At School (CAS) group was formed to try to improve the state of computer science in schools. Using a combination of grassroots teacher activities and policy lobbying at a national level, CAS has been able to rapidly gain traction in the fight for computer science in schools. We examine the reasons for this success, the challenges and dangers that lie ahead, and suggest how the experience of CAS in the UK can benefit other similar organisations, such as the CSTA in the USA.