National survey of Japanese universities on computing education: Analysis of non-IT departments and courses

Abstract

We conducted the first national survey of computing education at Japanese universities in 2016. In this paper, we report the survey result of the computing education at non-IT departments and faculties whose major subject is not computing. The survey covers various aspects of computing education including program organization, quality and quantity of educational achievement, students, teaching staff and computing environment. We collected 998 answers through the survey. At least 87,000 non-ICT students are taking computing education in Japan. Although computing education is carried out at every major academic discipline, teaching effort greatly differs depending on the academic discipline. We also find shortage of teaching staff for computing education. The analysis result will be an essential input to develop reasonable curriculum guidelines and accreditation criteria to improve computing education at non-IT departments.