Toward Competency-Based Professional Accreditation in Computing

Raj, Rajendra, Impagliazzo, John, Aly, Sherif, Bowers, David, Connamacher, Harold, Kurkovsky, Stan, MacKellar, Bonnie, Prickett, Tom and Samary, Maira (2022) Toward Competency-Based Professional Accreditation in Computing. In: ITiCSE-WGR '22: Proceedings of the 2022 Working Group Reports on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education. ACM, New York, pp. 1-35. ISBN 9798400700101

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Abstract

Program accreditation in medical or religious professions has existedsince the 1800s while accreditation of business and engineeringprograms started in the early twentieth century. With this long history,these disciplines have focused on ensuring the competence oftheir graduates, as modern society demands appropriate expertisefrom doctors and engineers before letting them practice their profession.In computing, however, professional accreditation startedin the last decades of the twentieth century only after computerscience, informatics, and information systems programs becamewidespread. At the same time, although competency-based learninghas existed for centuries, its growth in computing is relativelynew, resulting from recent curricular reports such as ComputingCurricula 2020, which have defined competency comprising knowledge,skills, and dispositions. In addition, demands are being placedon university programs to ensure their graduates are ready forentering and sustaining employment in the computing profession.This work explores the role of accreditation in the formationand development of professional competency in non-computingdisciplines worldwide, building on this understanding to see howcomputing accreditation bodies could play a similar role in computing.This work explores the role of accreditation in the formationand development of professional competency in non-computingdisciplines worldwide, building on this understanding to see howcomputing accreditation bodies could play a similar role in computing.Its recommendations are to incorporate competencies inall computing programs and future curricular guidelines; create competency-based models for computing programs; involve industryin identifying workplace competencies, and ensure accreditationbodies include competencies and their assessment in their standards.

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