A systematic approach to teaching abstraction and mathematical modeling

Authors:
Charles T. Cook;Svetlana Drachova;Jason O. Hallstrom;Joseph E. Hollingsworth;David P. Jacobs;Joan Krone;Murali Sitaraman
Affiliations:
Clemson University, Clemson, SC, USA;Clemson University, Clemson, SC, USA;Clemson University, Clemson, SC, USA;Indiana University Southeast, New Albany, IN, USA;Clemson University, Clemson, SC, USA;Denison University, Granville, OH, USA;Clemson University, Clemson, SC, USA
Venue:
Proceedings of the 17th ACM annual conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education
Year:
2012

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Abstract

The need for undergraduate CS students to create and understand mathematical abstractions is clear, yet these skills are rarely taught in a systematic manner, if they are taught at all. This paper presents a systematic approach to teaching abstraction using rigorous mathematical models and a web-based reasoning environment. It contains a series of representative examples with varying levels of sophistication to make it possible to teach the ideas in a variety of courses, such as introductory programming, data structures, and software engineering. We also present results from our experimentation with these ideas over a 3-year period at our institution in a required course that introduces object-based software development, following CS2.