Broadening the computer science curriculum

  • Authors:

  • James Robergé;C. R. Carlson

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, Illinois;Department of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, Illinois

  • Venue:
  • SIGCSE '97 Proceedings of the twenty-eighth SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education
  • Year:
  • 1997

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

Too often, students in undergraduate computer science programs come to equate computer science with the "nuts and bolts" of the field---programming, data structures, algorithms, operating systems, programming languages and so forth. If we are to attract students to computer science and produce graduates who will excel in the profession, we must broaden our students' perspective on our discipline. In this paper, we examine an initiative that seeks to broaden the undergraduate computer science experience by introducing three new elements into the curriculum: a first-year experience that focuses on the challenges of computer science, a fourth-year experience that focuses on the initial stages of the software design process, and a student portfolio that unifies the existing curriculum, broadens its content, and provides us with a mechanism for assessing the growth of our students' technical and non-technical skills.