Posts tagged ‘curriculum’
Of MOOCs and Mousetraps: Making Curricular Decisions in Massive Courses
Karen Head is writing occasional blog posts about her efforts to teach introductory composition in a MOOC. I appreciate getting a chance to see into the design choices she needs to make to fit into the context of a massive on-line course.
From the beginning we have had logistical issues getting a large group together on a regular basis. After only three meetings, we decided to break into two main subgroups: one focusing on curricular decisions and the other on technical ones. My partner in this project, Rebecca Burnett (director of our Writing and Communication Program), and I attend all meetings to ensure that the two sides remain coordinated. Some of the key curricular decisions we needed to make immediately were the length and theme of the course, expected student commitment, types of assignments, and appropriate instructional approaches. We decided the course should last eight weeks rather than six to create a framework for students to understand the goals and approaches, and to allow time for more end-of-course reflection. We also decided to have a single “build on” main assignment; each week students will learn new skills and apply these to the continuing project. For our theme, which lends itself to our multimodal course goals, we will have students write and speak about a principle that guides their everyday lives.
via Of MOOCs and Mousetraps – Wired Campus – The Chronicle of Higher Education.
CSAB and ABET/CAC Criteria Committee Survey
At the ACM Education Council meeting this last weekend, I heard about changes in the accreditation criteria being considered for computing disciplines (e.g., Computer Science, Information Systems, Information Technology). The committee has asked for feedback on several issues that they’re considering, e.g., how much mathematics do students really need in computing?
That question, in particular, is one that I’m reading about in The Computer Boys Take Over by Nathan Ensmenger. Ensmenger tells the story of how mathematics got associated with preparation of programmers (not computer scientists). Mathematics showed up on the early aptitude tests that industry created as a way of figuring out who might be a good programmer. But Ensmenger points out that mathematic ability only correlated with performance in academic courses, and did not correlated with performance as a programmer. It’s not really clear how much math is really useful (let alone necessary) for being a programming. Mathematics got associated with programming decades ago, and it remains there today.
The Committee is inviting feedback on this and other issues that they’re considering:
This survey was developed by a joint committee from CSAB and the ABET Computing Accreditation Commission, and is designed to obtain feedback on potential changes on the ABET Computing Accreditation Criteria. We are looking for opinions about some of the existing ideas under discussion for change, as well as other input regarding opportunities to improve the existing criteria.
Respondents to the survey may be computing education stakeholders in any computing sub discipline, including computer science, information systems, information technology, and many others. Stakeholders may include professionals in the discipline, educators, and/or employers of graduates from computing degree programs.
The survey may be completed online: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/caccriteria2013.
Please send inquiries to csab@csab.org.
Thank you for your participation.
Just in time for #SIGCSE13: Ironman draft of CS2013 is out!
Posted by Mehran Sahami. There are several sessions for feedback on the draft and to provide exemplars for the curriculum section.
Dear Colleagues,
Just in time for SIGCSE, we are happy to announce the availability of the
ACM/IEEE-CS Computer Science Curricula 2013 (CS2013) – Ironman v1.0 draft.
The draft is available at the CS2013 website (http://cs2013.org) or directly
at:
http://cs2013.org/ironman-draft/cs2013-ironman-v1.0.pdf
The Ironman v1.0 draft contains a revision of the CS2013 Body of Knowledge,
based on comments from the previously released CS2013 Strawman and Ironman
v0.8 drafts. The Ironman v1.0 draft also includes additional new chapters
as well as over 50 course exemplars, showing how the CS2013 Body of
Knowledge may be covered in a variety of actual fielded courses.
** SIGCSE-13 SPECIAL SESSION: CS2013: Reviewing the Ironman Report **
A special session, entitled “ACM/IEEE-CS Computer Science Curriculum 2013:
Reviewing the Ironman Report,” will be held at SIGCSE-13. This session will
give you an overview of the current state of the CS2013 curricular
guidelines and provide opportunities for discussion and feedback from the
community. The special session will be held on Thursday, March 7, 2013 from
10:45am to 12:00pm in Ballroom E.
** SIGCSE-13 SPECIAL SESSION: CS2013 EXEMPLAR-FEST **
Another SIGCSE-13 special session is the “CS 2013: Exemplar-Fest”. This
session will showcase submitted samples of CS2013 course/curriculum
exemplars and provide the opportunity to engage the community in the
development of additional course/curricular exemplars for CS2013. The
special session will be held on Friday, March 8, 2013 from 10:45am to
12:00pm in Ballroom F.
COMMENTING ON CS2013 IRONMAN v1.0 DRAFT
The Ironman v1.0 draft is the penultimate draft of the CS2013 curricular
guidelines. The final version of the CS2013 guidelines will be published in
Fall 2013. We welcome additional comments on the CS2013 Ironman draft from
the computing community. Information on how to comment on the draft is
available at the CS2013 website. Comments on the Ironman draft will be
addressed in the final released version of CS2013.
CALL FOR EXEMPLARS
The CS2013 Curriculum Steering Committee is continuing to seek exemplars of
courses and curricula from the broader community. This open process will
better connect the CS2013 Body of Knowledge to real, existing approaches
representing diverse and innovative ways to teach computer science. In
Computer Science terms, the topics and learning outcomes in the Body of
Knowledge represent a “specification”, whereas a curriculum is an
“implementation” and a course is part of a curriculum. Information on how
to contribute course/curriculum exemplars is available at the CS2013 website
(http://cs2013.org) or directly at:
http://cs2013.org/exemplars.html
Warm regards,
Mehran Sahami and Steve Roach
Co-Chairs, CS2013 Steering Committee
CS2013 Steering Committee
ACM Delegation
Mehran Sahami, Chair (Stanford University)
Andrea Danyluk (Williams College)
Sally Fincher (University of Kent)
Kathleen Fisher (Tufts University)
Dan Grossman (University of Washington)
Beth Hawthorne (Union County College)
Randy Katz (UC Berkeley)
Rich LeBlanc (Seattle University)
Dave Reed (Creighton University)
IEEE-CS Delegation
Steve Roach, Chair (Univ. of Texas, El Paso)
Ernesto Cuadros-Vargas (Univ. Catolica San Pablo, Peru)
Ronald Dodge (US Military Academy)
Robert France (Colorado State University)
Amruth Kumar (Ramapo Coll. of New Jersey)
Brian Robinson (ABB Corporation)
Remzi Seker (Embry-Riddle Aeronautical Univ.)
Alfred Thompson (Microsoft)
############################
Defining the role for computer science in a national curriculum
The UK has achieved something that the US has not yet accomplished (but is trying through the Computing in the Core effort). Computer science is now included as part of a national UK curriculum. Computer science is not yet part of most US state curricula. Neil Brown does a great job (in the blog post linked below) considering the strengths and weaknesses of the new curriculum. In particular, he considers seriously what every student needs to have — certainly some CS (like in the CS:Principles effort), and trying out programming, but with ICT and digital literacy as probably the most critical for everyone.
At the core of computing is the science and engineering discipline of computer science, in which pupils are taught how digital systems work, how they are designed and programmed, and the fundamental principles of information and computation. Building on this core, computing equips pupils to apply information technology to create products and solutions. A computing education also ensures that pupils become digitally literate – able to use, and express themselves through, information and communication technology – at a level suitable for the future workplace and as active participants in a digital world.
via Computing in the National Curriculum | Academic Computing.
Vint Cerf urges computer science to be included in EBacc
Interesting that the ACM is taking an active role in this education public policy issue. I’ve seen them do this in the US before, but not in the UK. It’s great to see!
Vint Cerf – the founding father of the internet – is backing the BCS’s call for computer science to be included in the English Baccalaureate (EBacc).
In 2015, the EBacc is set to replace the current GCSE examination system in five core subjects: English, maths, a science, a foreign language and one or other from history or geography. Students wishing to take subjects outside of the EBacc will continue to take GCSEs until new syllabuses for other subjects are constructed.
Cerf, the vice-president and chief internet evangelist for Google and a distinguished fellow of the BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, decided to air his views following the publication of The case for computer science as an option in the English Baccalaureate report from the BCS.
via Vint Cerf urges computer science to be included in EBacc.
Draft ICT Programme of Study now available for comment
The process that started with the Royal Society’s report on the state of computer science education in UK schools has now resulted in a new draft program of study, available for comment. It’s interesting to contrast with CS:Principles and Exploring Computer Science as two US curricula aiming to, similarly, give students the computing knowledge and skills that they need for modern society.
In his speech to BETT on 11 January, the Secretary of State for Education Michael Gove responded to the call from industry by starting a consultation on withdrawing the existing National Curriculum Programme of Study for Information and Communication Technology (ICT) from September this year. The intention was to allow the development of innovative, exciting and rigorous new ICT courses in advance of the launch of the new National Curriculum in 2014. Following consultation, the government confirmed on 11 June that it was their intention to proceed and that ICT would be a compulsory subject up to Key Stage 4 with its own Programme of Study.
In late August 2012 the DfE invited BCS and the Royal Academy of Engineering to coordinate the drafting of a new Programme of Study for ICT. In discussion with DfE, BCS and the Royal Academy of Engineering decided to follow the following process
- Form a small working party to write a first draft.
- Publish this first draft in late October, and seek broad comment and feedback.
- Revise the draft during November and December in the light of that feedback.
- The DfE will publish the revised draft, along with the Programmes of Study for other subjects, for full public consultation in the Spring of 2013.
The working party included several school teachers, together with representation from Naace, CAS, ITTE, Vital, and NextGen Skills. The group’s membership appears below. It met for the first time on 19 September, and completed the draft by 22 October as required by DfE.
We are now at Step 2 of this process. The current draft should be regarded as a first step, not as a finished product. It has not received widespread scrutiny, and it is not endorsed by DfE. It is simply a concrete starting point for wider public debate.
via Draft ICT Programme of Study | BCS Academy of Computing.
CS2013 Ironman Draft Available
We are happy to announce the availability of the ACM/IEEE-CS Computer Science Curricula 2013 – Ironman v0.8 draft. The draft is available at the CS2013 website (http://cs2013.org) or directly at:
http://cs2013.org/ironman-draft/cs2013-ironman-v0.8.pdf
The Ironman v0.8 draft contains the complete CS2013 Body of Knowledge, fully revised based on comments from the previously released CS2013 Strawman draft. We are now calling on the computing community to submit exemplars of courses and curricula to better connect the CS2013 Body of Knowledge to real, existing approaches representing diverse and innovative ways to teach computer science.
CALL FOR EXEMPLARS
The CS2013 Curriculum Steering Committee is seeking exemplars of courses and curricula from the broader community. This open process will better connect the CS2013 Body of Knowledge to real, existing approaches representing diverse and innovative ways to teach computer science. In computer-science terms, the topics and learning outcomes in the Body of Knowledge represent a “specification”, whereas a curriculum is an “implementation” and a course is part of a curriculum. The CS2013 Ironman v1.0 draft (the penultimate CS2013 draft) will be released in early 2013, containing an initial set of such course/curriculum exemplars.
Including exemplars as part of the CS2013 effort is a new idea not present in previous versions of the ACM/IEEE-CS Computer Science Curriculum guidelines. The steering committee believes they will provide greater value than stylized model courses that do not directly describe actual experience. Submitting an exemplar is your opportunity to present a successful approach to teaching computer science in a way that will prove useful to educators working to adopt the CS2013 guidelines.
Information on how to contribute course/curriculum exemplars is available at the CS2013 website (http://cs2013.org) or directly at:
http://cs2013.org/exemplars.html
SIGCSE-13 SPECIAL SESSION: CS2013 EXEMPLAR-FEST
A special session, entitled “CS 2013: Exemplar-Fest,” will be held at SIGCSE-13. This session will showcase submitted samples of CS2013 course/curriculum exemplars and provide the opportunity to engage the community in the development of additional course/curricular exemplars for CS2013. Exemplars submitted prior to December 5th can be considered for potential inclusion in this special session. The special session will be held on Friday, March 8, 2013 from 10:45am to 12:00pm.
COMMENTING ON CS2013 IRONMAN v0.8 DRAFT
We welcome additional comments on the CS2013 Ironman draft from the computing community. Information on how to comment on the draft is available at the CS2013 website. Comments on the Ironman draft will be addressed in the final released version of CS2013.
Warm regards,
Mehran Sahami and Steve Roach
Co-Chairs, CS2013 Steering Committee
CS2013 Steering Committee
ACM Delegation
Mehran Sahami, Chair (Stanford University)
Andrea Danyluk (Williams College)
Sally Fincher (University of Kent)
Kathleen Fisher (Tufts University)
Dan Grossman (University of Washington)
Beth Hawthorne (Union County College)
Randy Katz (UC Berkeley)
Rich LeBlanc (Seattle University)
Dave Reed (Creighton University)
IEEE-CS Delegation
Steve Roach, Chair (Univ. of Texas, El Paso)
Ernesto Cuadros-Vargas (Univ. Catolica San Pablo, Peru)
Ronald Dodge (US Military Academy)
Robert France (Colorado State University)
Amruth Kumar (Ramapo Coll. of New Jersey)
Brian Robinson (ABB Corporation)
Remzi Seker (Univ. of Arkansas, Little Rock)
Alfred Thompson (Microsoft)
£3m investment in Computer Science and Digital Literacy in Wales
New Zealand, Denmark, Israel, Computing at Schools England, and CS10K here in the US — there is a growing movement to improve computing education at the national level. Wales just announced a large investment to improve computing education there, too.
Computer science touches upon all three of my education priorities: literacy, numeracy and bridging the gap. It equips learners with the problem-solving skills so important in life and work.
The value of computational thinking, problem-solving skills and information literacy is huge, across all subjects in the curriculum. I therefore believe that every child should have the opportunity to learn concepts and principles from computer science.
Indeed, computing is a high priority area for growth in Wales. The future supply and demand for science, technology and mathematics graduates is essential if Wales is to compete in the global economy.
It is therefore vitally important that every child in Wales has the opportunity to study computer science between the ages of 11-16.
A Question that Everyone should Ask their CS Professors: Why do we have to learn this?
There’s a meme going around my College these days, about the 10 questions you should never ask your professor (linked below). Most of them are spot-on (e.g., “Did we do anything important while I was out?”). I disagreed with the one I quote below.
One of our problems in computer science is that we teach things for reasons that even we don’t know. Why do we teach how hash tables are constructed? Does everybody need to know that? I actually like the idea of teaching everybody about hash functions, but it’s a valid question, and one that we rarely answer to ourselves and definitely need to answer to our students.
Why we’re teaching what we’re teaching is a critical question to answer for broadening participation, because we have to explain to under-represented minorities why it’s worth sticking with CS. Even more important for me is explaining this to non-majors, and in turn, to our colleagues in other departments. Computing is a fundamental 21st Century literacy, and we have to explain why it’s important for everyone to learn. ”Stuck in the Shallow End” suggests that making ubiquitously available can help to broaden participation, but we can only get it ubiquitously available by showing that it’s worth it.
I’m back from New Zealand and ICER: today, yesterday, tomorrow — days get confused crossing a dateline. (We landed in both Sydney and Los Angeles at 10:30 am on 13 September.) I spent several hours of the trip reading Mike Hewner’s complete dissertation draft. Mike has been asking the question, “How do CS majors define the field of computer science, and how do their misconceptions lead to unproductive educational decisions?” He did a Grounded Theory analysis with 37 interviews (and when I tell this to people who have done Grounded Theory, their jaws drop — 37 interviews is a gargantuan number of interviews for Grounded Theory) at three different institutions. One of his findings is that even CS majors really have no idea what’s going on in a class before they get there. The students’ ability to predict the content of future courses, even courses that they’d have to take, was appallingly bad. Even our own majors don’t know why they’re taking what they’re taking, or what will be in the class when they go to take it.
We will have to tell them.
“Why do we have to learn this?” In some instances, this is a valid question. If you are studying medical assisting, asking why you have to learn a procedure can be a gateway to a better question about when such a procedure would be necessary. But it should be asked that way–as a specific question, not a general one. In other situations, like my history classes, the answer is more complicated and has to do with the composition of a basic liberal arts body of knowledge. But sometimes, a student asks this because they do not think they should have to take a class and want a specific rationale. In that case, I respond, “Please consult your course catalog and program description. If you don’t already know the answer to that question, you should talk to your advisor about whether or not this is the major for you.”
via 10 Questions You Should Never Ask Your Professor! – Online Colleges.
National Academies Report Defines ’21st-Century Skills’
I looked up this report, expecting to see something about computation as a ’21st-century skill.’ The report is not what I expected, and probably more valuable than what I was looking for. Rather than focus on which content is most valuable (which leads us to issues like the current debate of whether we ought to teach algebra anymore), the panel emphasized “nonacademic skills,” e.g., the ability to manage your time so that you can graduate and intra-personal skills. I also appreciated how careful the panel was about transfer, mentioning that we do know how to teach for transfer within a domain, but not between domains.
Stanford University education professor Linda Darling-Hammond, who was not part of the report committee, said developing common definitions of 21st-century skills is critical to current education policy discussions, such as those going on around the Common Core State Standards. She was pleased with the report’s recommendation to focus more research and resources on nonacademic skills. “Those are the things that determine whether you make it through college, as much as your GPA or your skill level when you start college,” she said. “We have tended to de-emphasize those skills in an era in which we are focusing almost exclusively on testing, and a narrow area of testing.”
The skill that may be the trickiest to teach and test may be the one that underlies and connects skills in all three areas: a student’s ability to transfer and apply existing knowledge to a problem in a new context. “Transfer is the sort of Holy Grail in this whole thing,” Mr. Pellegrino said. “We’d like to believe we can create Renaissance men who are experts in a wide array of disciplines and can blithely transfer skills from one to the other, but it just doesn’t happen that way.”
via Education Week: Panel of Scholars Define ’21st-Century Skills’.
Period of transition: Stanford computer science rethinks core curriculum
I heard from Mehran Sahami, Eric Roberts, and Steve Cooper at the ACM Education Council meeting that CS is now the largest undergraduate major at Stanford. That’s pretty exciting, but not really too surprising. The Silicon Vally entrepreneurial atmosphere is palatable, even with my short visit there in March.
This is an interesting piece on the revision that Stanford is making to its undergraduate CS curriculum.
Though computer science enrollments are up in general nationwide, owing much to the success of social and mobile applications like Facebook and Instagram, Stanford is outpacing the broader trend. The program has seen an 83 percent increase in enrollment in its first two years, and computer science has become the largest major on campus.
In the 2011-12 academic year, the department broke the all-time record for students declaring computer science as their major: More than 220 students in that one class alone chose to major in computer science, a 25 percent leap from the previous record in 2000-01.
“We were surprised at the level of interest and the speed at which the community responded,” said Sahami. “Today, more than 90 percent of all Stanford undergrads take at least one computer science course. It’s pretty astounding.”
Disappointing Support for new NRC Framework for Science Standards from P21
I received the below statement via email, and I found it somewhat disappointing. Wholehearted support for the NRC Science Standards even though they ignore computing? From companies like Intel and Cisco? I had not heard of P21 previously, and wonder what if there’s any connection between this group and Computing in the Core. My guess is that there isn’t, but there probably should be.
BBC News – Google funds computer teachers and Raspberry Pis in England
Sally Fincher came to the CS10K Professional Development workshop last week, and I asked her why she thought Google was doing this. She suggested that it’s probably because the UK doesn’t gave an effort like NSF’s CS10K, so Google is trying to play that role. (Maybe the UK should try to clone Jan Cuny – if anyone can build up a nation of high school CS teachers, she can!)
He announced that Google would provide the funds to support Teach First – a charity which puts “exceptional” graduates on a six-week training programme before deploying them to schools where they teach classes over a two-year period.
Many stay on beyond that term while others pursue places at leading businesses associated with the programme.
At present the scheme is limited to seven regions of England: East Midlands; Kent and Medway; London; North East; North West; West Midlands; and Yorkshire and Humber.
“Scrapping the existing curriculum was a good first step – the equivalent of pulling the plug out of the wall” said Eric Schmidt, Chairman, Google
Mr Schmidt said the donation would be used to train “more than 100 first rate science teachers over the next three years, with the majority focused on computer science”.
via BBC News – Google funds computer teachers and Raspberry Pis in England.
Let’s call It “Computer Science” AND “Programming”: The fat line where most people will be
Who knows why meme’s start, but one of the big ones in the Computing Education blogosphere today is “Let’s not call it ‘Computer Science’ if we really mean ‘Computer Programming.’” Based on Neil Brown’s excellent response, I suspect that it’s the UK “Computing at Schools” effort that is leading to this question. If you’re going to define a computer science curriculum, you’re going to have to define “computer science.” Both Neil and Alfred Thompson do a great job of helping us define kinds of computing and understand the goals of the different kinds of curricula.
I’m more interested in the assumptions in the original blog about what the “regular people” are going to do. Jason Gorman claims that 99% of people involved in computing are just “users.” ”I believe that what’s needed is a much more rounded computing education for the 99%, with IT blending seemlessly and ubiquitously into everyday lessons as well as home life.” They need computational thinking, but not programming, argues Jason. Jason sees that only 1% of students should get programming. “For the remaining 1%, of whom some might become software developers, we need programming in schools (and out of school). Lots of it. “
That sharp distinction is not how people work today. Chris Scaffidi, Mary Shaw, and Brad Myers explained this in 2007. For every software developer in the world, there are four more professionals who program, but aren’t software developers, and there are another nine other people who are programming, but don’t recognize that.
- A lot of Jason’s 99% are going to write SQL queries. That’s where much of the world’s data lives today, and lots of people need to get to that data. SQL queries require variables, conditionals constraints, an understanding of data abstraction, and oftentimes, a model of iteration. Looks like programming to me.
- A lot of Jason’s 99% are going to create spreadsheets: Same variables, conditionals, models of iteration. Oh, and testing. One of the common themes in all the end-user programming literature is that new programmers don’t realize how many things can go wrong in writing programs, and how much time they’ll waste in debugging if they don’t develop good testing practices. There is a real economic cost to all those end-user programmers losing productive time to bugs. Is testing in the “Computer Science” side or the “Computer Programming” side?
- All scientists and engineers will program: Maybe just in Excel, many in MATLAB or R, and a surprisingly many in both. Greg Wilson just sent me a great paper yesterday about all the ways that scientists and engineers code. They’re not professional software developers. They use programming to achieve their goals.
Jason’s worldview has this giant country of “Computer Users,” and this tiny Lichtenstein of a country called “Computer Programmers” next to it. The problem isn’t that the border between them is thin, porous, and maybe more gray than well-defined. It’s a really fat line, and that’s where most professionals will live. It’s really another whole country, lying in the border, and it swamps the other two.
What people do with computing is changing, and growing. Programming is a medium, a literacy, a form of communication and expression. More and more people will use it. Jason also raises the issue that self-taught programming is just fine. Someone yelled at Alfred in his blog for not recognizing the greater value of self-taught programming. Neil Brown called it right: Emphasizing self-taught programming is another way of shutting women out of computing. I look at the issue from a literacy perspective. Some people can teach themselves to write on their own, but you can’t count on that to achieve literacy in your society. If a literacy is worth knowing, teach it. Computer programming is a literacy, and everyone should be taught it — and computer science, too.
Think of computing as a pyramid. At the base, we have computer users, who will probably make up about 99% of the pyramid. The next level up is people who write software (let’s ignore people who make computers – that’s electronic engineering, which a CS education won’t help you with), and they might account for the next 0.9% of the pyramid. Finally, at the top, are computer scientists – people who advance the concepts, design the programming languages and “push the envelope” for the 0.9% of us who write software day-to-day.
Next Generation Science Standards available for comment now through 1 June
Check out “Gas station without pumps” for more on the Next Generation Science Standards, available now for comment (but only through this week). There is a bit of computational thinking and computing education in there, but buried (as the blog post points out). I know that there is a developing effort to get more computation in there.
The first public draft of the Next Generation Science Standards is available from May 11 to June 1. We welcome and appreciate your feedback. [The Next Generation Science Standards]
Note that there are only 3 weeks given for the public review of this draft of the science standards, and that time is almost up. I’ve not had time to read the standards yet, and I doubt that many others have either. We have to hope that someone we respect has enough time on their hands to have done the commenting for us (but the people I respect are all busy—particularly the teachers who are going to have to implement the standards—so who is going to do the commenting?).
I’m also having some difficulty finding a document containing the standards themselves. There are clear links to front matter, how to interpret the standards, a survey for collecting feedback, a search interface, and various documents about the standards, but I had a hard time finding a simple link to a single document containing all the standards. It was hidden on their search page, rather than being an obvious link on the main page.
via Next Generation Science Standards « Gas station without pumps.
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