Providing intellectual focus to CS1/CS2

Abstract

First-year computer science students need to see clearly that computer science as a discipline has an important intellectual role to play and that it offers deep philosophical questions, much like the other hard sciences and mathematics; that CS is not "just programming"., An appropriate intellectual focus for CSlKS2 can be built on the foundations of systems thinking and mathematical modelingi'as these principles are manifested in a component-based software paradigm. We outline some of the main technical features of this approach to CSlKS2 and report preliminary observations from our experience with it.

A study of the impact of student background and preparedness on outcomes in CS I

“…It should be noted that a number of schools have recently explored an alternate breadth-first approach for CS I, and many papers have been presented at past SIGCSE conferences exploring the breadth-first paradigm (e.g., [2,3,5,8]). …”

Binary software components in the undergraduate computer science curriculum

“…improved design guidelines for what constitutes a good component that is both efficient and independently verifiable. In recent years, some of these results have been integrated into the undergraduate computer science curriculum [3,4].…”

Client view first

“…By systems thinking, we mean viewing or understanding things as units that can be viewed from the outside -the client view -as indivisible, or from the inside -the implementer view -as compositions of other systems, a.k.a. subsystems [2]. A client is one who uses a system purely via an understanding of a "cover story" that purports to explain what the system acts like without mvealing precisely how it achieves that behavior.…”