Where does computer science as an intellectual discipline fit in human discourse? Over a dozen contributors have looked at this question of identity from as many viewpoints. In this closing statement, we emphasize six themes running through these 16 commentaries and draw some conclusions that seem to be supported by the symposium.

Is the MOOC honeymoon winding down? With many university faculty opposing the MOOC movement, the author argues taking the best of massive online courses access to high-quality materials and rapid feedback to students to implement SPOCs (small private online courses) will provide a more effective leverage of instructors' time and resources.

Whether MOOCs can provide a good education and broaden educational opportunities at lower cost is an ongoing discussion. In this article Stanford professor, John C. Mitchell, reflects on Stanford University's pioneering role in the MOOC movement, explains how to harness the power of digital technology, and offers predictions for the academic landscape.

As a discipline, we have been discussing parallel programming for years. After all these years, do we know the right language abstractions for parallel programming? Would we recognize the right abstractions if we were to see them? In this article, Todd Mytkowicz and Wolfram Schulte, both from Microsoft Research, ask: Have we been simply biding our time, waiting for our Godot?

In this interview conducted by Ubiquity editor Walter Tichy, Prof. Thomas Fahringer of the Institute of Computer Science, University of Innsbruck (Austria) discusses the difficulty in predicting the performance of parallel programs, and the subsequent popularity of auto-tuning to automate program optimization.