Understanding the Cost of Change: Measuring Sustainability of Computing Education

This study examines the cost of change in maintaining the quality of effective university courses. The primary contribution is the development and deployment of an instrument developed for assessing the number of courses changed annually, the severity of those changes, as well as compounding factors related to the length of time as an instructor. The study involves survey comparisons of computing and non-computing faculty in teaching institutions, and among computing education faculty. The preliminary results suggest strongly that when it comes to the cost of maintaining courses, computing differs from engineering, and differs significantly from other higher education both in the frequency and the severity of changes sustained by teaching faculty. This study presents data suggesting that maintaining computing courses is similar to that in humanities, and more dynamic than other disciplines.