A Siena computer science professor has received a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop and deliver a series of workshops on undergraduate computer science curriculum design.
Jim Teresco, Ph.D. and his colleagues from around the country on the SIGCSE Committee on Computing Education in Liberal Arts Colleges have been awarded $49,843 for the workshops, organized around their new curriculum design workbook to support innovation in computer science programs.
“Our group argues that there is no ‘one size fits all’ computer science curriculum. The workbook provides a process faculty can follow to align their curriculum with their unique institutional and departmental mission and context, informed by international curricular standards,” said Teresco. “This will broadly impact the students who complete these courses of study, and will, in turn, have impact at a national level, helping to fill the nation’s needs for a workforce trained in technical skills grounded in a strong liberal arts foundation.”
He explained that the workbook is informed by current literature on curriculum design and the committee’s analysis of trends in liberal arts curriculum innovation. A college’s computer science program can leverage curricular standards, such as CS2023, the new ACM/IEEE-CS/AAAI Computer Science Curricula, yet be designed to reflect its unique mission and goals.
The workbook guides the programs through a six-step process:
• Articulate identity at the institutional and departmental level.
• State identity-driven curriculum principles.
• Articulate learning outcomes.
• Shape the curriculum within the context of the CS2023 curricular guidelines.
• Evaluate current status based on an institutional and department assessment.
• Implement change and plan for ongoing assessment.
The committee will conduct the first of its workshops supported by this grant at the Association of Computer Machinery’s SIGCSE 2024 Technical Symposium in Portland, Oregon in March, and host workshop sessions at as many regional Consortium of Computing Sciences in Colleges conferences as possible.
“The program will fill an important gap within the liberal arts computer science education community,” said Teresco. “It proposes a novel top-down process for working within educational guidelines, grounded in up-to-date curricular design literature and our group’s research on innovative computer science curricula at liberal arts institutions.”
He noted that while the process outlined in the workbook is tailored for the undergraduate level at liberal ats colleges, it also can be adapted for programs at other schools, thereby broadening its impact.