Dr Daryl D'Souza

Daryl has been an academic member of the School of Computer Science & IT since 1983 and has contributed substantially to all facets of university life, including teaching, research, leadership and community engagement. An overview is presented below

His teaching experience is extensive at both undergraduate and postgraduate coursework levels and is presently largely involved in first year teaching of programming. This latter activity is an important part of his reflective teaching practice and scholarly activity in the area of computing education research and is a founding member of the School’s Computer Science Education Research Group (CSERG). He secured a Global Learning by Design grant in 2014 to transition his first year programming course towards the flipped classroom delivery model, a work in progress. In 2006 and 2007 he secured two consecutive internal L&T grants and led a team to develop a sustainable peer mentoring service for first year students, a service that continues to be offered to this day.

He has published in computing education research since 2011, has chaired national computing education conferences and has been an investigator in several internal and external grants, including a significant OLT—Office of Learning and Teaching (formerly ALTC—Australian Learning and Teaching Council) grant to investigate curriculum and pedagogy issues around novice programming during 2011—2013. A continuing project funded by the Australian Council of Deans ICT, 2013—2014 supported a programming examination classification system. Other ongoing research interests include text classification in social media learning contexts as well as an emerging interest in eHealth.

He contributed extensively in leadership roles at school level, including the school executive, program leadership and IT management. Key contributions include leadership in forming a merged school and its programs during the merger between RMIT and PIT (Phillip Institute of Technology) in 1993, the restructure of school IT support team, the broadening of the Graduate Diploma programs, which significantly increased enrolments, and many procedural reforms including an examination process still largely used today. At university level he was a member of the IT committee (ITAC), University Council, University Academic Board and the College Ethics Committee.

For several years from around the late nineties and until 2013, Daryl played a significant role in the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), at School, Branch, Division (State) and National levels. As a local branch office bearer (he served as Vice President Academic for one term) he was part of the bargaining team for the NTEU during enterprise bargaining with the university. He assisted many members during his tenure with the NTEU.

Current responsibilities/activities include:

• Teaching Programming 1 in both semesters;
• Teaching-related course coordination of all Programming 1 offerings (currently OUA and Vietnam);
• Supervision of undergraduate capstone projects;
• Supervision of research students including one PhD and one (completed) minor thesis;
• Elected, serving member of University Academic Board;
• Member of the College Human Ethics Advisory Network (College of Science, Engineering and Health)

Current responsibilities/activities include:

• Teaching Programming 1 in both semesters;
• Teaching-related course coordination of all Programming 1 offerings (currently OUA and Vietnam);
• Supervision of undergraduate capstone projects;
• Supervision of research students including one PhD and one (completed) minor thesis;
• Elected, serving member of University Academic Board;
• Member of the College Human Ethics Advisory Network (College of Science, Engineering and Health)

• Bachelor of Computer Science, Imperial College, London, 1977
• Masters (by research), Computer Science, Monash University, Melbourne, 1982
• PhD (by research), Computer Science, RMIT University, 2005

• Professional memberships: Association of Computing Machinery (ACM)
• Vice-President Special Interest Group Computer Science Education (SIGCSE), Australian Chapter