This issue covers three very important topics:

  • in curriculum development and accreditation, what topics should be covered and included,
  • in cybersecurity where we are at present, and
  • in conversations with important people about considerations of CS1 and online learning experiences.

Raymond Greenlaw and Rajendra Raj have presented a history of the accreditation of cybersecurity programs by ABET. Cybersecurity is not only an area of increasing importance, but also one that has recently been considered as part of accreditation processes. They chronicle the outcomes of early providers of accredited programs and describe and analyse the various criteria for accreditation. And they also provide a discussion of future trends and directions in cybersecurity

Amruth Kumar and Rajendra Raj, the co-chairs of the Task Force for the Computer Science Curricula 2023 (CS2023), give their perspectives of how the guidelines for developing these curricula are evolving. Their article presents a preview of this effort including its vision, structure, and status, and invites readers to contribute to and improve CS2023 before it is finalized. This Task Force represents a coming together of IEEE and ACM and promises to deliver something important for all of us involved in computing education generally and computer science in particular. One of our Associate Editors, Chris Stephenson, introduced us to Amruth Kumar who will be working on this over the new year. Thank you, Chris! She also invited us to the Google Conference where we heard some interesting discussions around diversity and equity and would like to encourage you to write about this in a future issue.

David Bunde, Zack Butler, Christopher Hovey, and Cynthia Taylor have brought out some interesting insights into one of our computing education's more famous and outgoing members, Beth Simon. We learn about some of her transformative teaching experiences, including peer instruction to improve the student learning experience and to introduce more social factors and tailored instruction for K12 classes.

Tony Clear reflects on his experiences and that of his colleagues in over 25 years of teaching first-year programming. There are often various stakeholders here whose interests may conflict over issues such as pass rates, languages used, specific learning outcomes and academic career prospects. It seems one of the most dangerous things we can do is teach first-year programming!

Tim Bell and Tracey Henderson explain all about how CS Unplugged activities work and propose a model for distance operation. It's interesting to read which activities work well over longer distances with minimal equipment and especially with limited bandwidth. This ties in well with what the data about our COVID experience really tells us. Stuart Zweben and Cindy Tucker unravel the data collected before and during COVID to explain some of the COVID experience. Though none of us knows what the data after COVID will deliver, it may be interesting to speculate.

Scott Weiss's puzzle provides a timely reminder to 'Watch Your Language,' especially over Christmas and the New Year period. And reminds us to take this opportunity to wish you all a very enjoyable and happy family time over this festive occasion.

And finally, if any of you have some interesting lessons learned during COVID, we would ask you to take some time to jot them down and share with us over 2023. On another note, if any of you would like to volunteer to become a Reviewer, we would greatly appreciate your support. We thank our existing Reviewers and Associate Editors for their hard work over the past year. We also thank our columnists and article writers for their valued contributions. We hope to be bringing you more information about the new curriculum as the discussions continue during 2023, as well as some interesting manuscripts on diversity and equity, and new conversations with prominent propagators along with all our other regular columns and features.

Margaret Hamilton and James Harland
Editors-in-Chief

Copyright held by authors.

The Digital Library is published by the Association for Computing Machinery. Copyright © 2022 ACM, Inc.

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