When CS 1 is biology 1: crossdisciplinary collaboration as CS context

  • Authors:

  • Zachary Dodds;Ran Libeskind-Hadas;Eliot Bush

  • Affiliations:

  • Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA, USA;Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA, USA;Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA, USA

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the fifteenth annual conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education
  • Year:
  • 2010

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Abstract

We present the curriculum, deployment, and initial evaluation of a course, BioCS1, designed to serve as CS1 and Biology1 for majors of either (or both) disciplines. Cotaught by professors in both fields, BioCS1 interweaves fundamental biology and computational topics in a manner similar to contextual approaches to CS1. In contrast to other contextual approaches, however, BioCS1 emphasizes both CS and its context equally. The results suggest that cross-disciplinary collaborations can succeed at the introductory level, as they have at later stages of the curriculum.