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U N I V E R S I T Y O F P I T T S B U R G H |
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A newsletter devoted to the support of teaching and learning at the University of Pittsburgh |
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U N I V E R S I T Y O F P I T T S B U R G H |
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A newsletter devoted to the support of teaching and learning at the University of Pittsburgh |
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A Radically New Presentation of Old Course Materials
In an effort to increase the overall number and diversity of the students in the Computer Science Department (i.e., recruit more women and minorities), Daniel Mossé and his colleagues have developed a new approach to teaching the first computer science courses students take as majors and non-majors. As he points out, “The overall goal of our project, Can A Radically New Presentation of Old Coure Materials Make a Difference? , is to increase the number of majors by downplaying the geek factor.” However, Mossé is not planning to change the curriculum; he simply wants to make it more attractive to students who don’t realize they’re actually interested in computer science. In recent years, a number of factors have contributed to the decrease in computer science majors, including the bursting of the “bubble” that occurred around 2000 when many of the successful dot-com businesses that cropped up in the mid-1990s failed. There was a mass exodus from computer science departments as the high-paying jobs students were expecting upon graduation virtually disappeared overnight. With this change in the market, there also came a need for different job skills: students graduating with computer science degrees were less likely to get high-paying jobs with “lower-level languages” and were expected to have more knowledge of data visualization tools. Aside from the basic economic problems affecting student enrollment, another problem is a lack of underrepresented groups such as Hispanics, African Americans, and women. Traditionally, the curriculum had been focused on highly specialized or pragmatic aspects that attracted and retained technically oriented students (mostly male) and discouraged students with a more holistic, visionary outlook (mostly female). This new approach addresses the question of whether courses that are more inclusive would increase the diversity of the student population. Mossé and his colleagues plan to start a new student learning community in computer science in fall 2007 that will include an updated version of Introduction to Computer Programming , a course for non-majors with, what he calls, “cool projects.” This introductory course will give freshmen a look at some of the different aspects of computer science and will, it is hoped, entice a wider variety of students. By using a software program called Alice , which started as a virtual reality tool and was adapted for teaching programming in an intuitive manner, students will be asked to create an animated environment and characters that perform tasks, but without the heavy programming syntax that typically scares students away from computer science courses. The second phase of the project will address the needs of first-year computer science majors by replacing the traditional Java format in Intermediate Programming Using Java . Instead, Microsoft Robot Studio will be used. This software will allow students to manipulate robots without worrying about the low-level controllers that make the robots actually move. This aspect of the curriculum sometimes frustrates first-year computer science students to the point of changing majors. This course could be taught in spring 2008 as a follow-up to the revised Introduction to Computer Programming . Assessment of the impact of these revamped courses includes comparing the number of majors in subsequent years and evaluating the knowledge gain of two cohorts: students who attended these courses and students who did not. The latter will be done by comparing their quiz and exam grades throughout the term. It is hoped that this new approach to teaching computer science courses will have a positive impact on the recruitment and retention of students.
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A newsletter devoted to the support of teaching and learning at the University of Pittsburgh |
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for Instructional Development & Distance Education |
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![Photo: Daniel Mossé [center] and students](images/mosse.jpg)