CS101, Part 1: How and Why Intro Computer Science Courses Fail
I’m part of a group at UB that’s working to revamp our own introductory computer science course sequence. I’m also teaching a new first course on the Internet next year which will be offered to both majors and non-majors as a first-year "seminar" 1. So I’ve been thinking a lot about introductory courses recently, and I’m planning on organizing my thoughts about them into multiple posts. Future planned additions to this series will explore aspects of introductory courses such as content, audience, language choice (why it doesn’t matter that much), instructor charisma (why it does), and evaluation metrics. But let me start by arguing that these courses are incredibly important before explaining how and why they so often fail to live up to their potential.
The Potential of (Intro) CS
Today, CS has by far the most incredible, accessible, and powerful tools for anyone who wants to change the world, solve a problem, build something new or find something out.The potential of introductory CS courses should reflect the power and excitement of our field. Today, CS has by far the most incredible, accessible, and powerful tools for anyone who wants to change the world, solve a problem, build something new or find something out. Computation is cheaper now then when I started this post, we’re collecting and publishing exabytes of new data about every aspect of life on earth, small powerful computers are deployed into every corner of the world and can communicate with every other corner, and we’ve built amazing software and new languages to help us control and direct these incredible resources. Never has it been more apparent how all of this is changing our world. Never has so much computation and data been made available to so many people. Also: ROBOTS ARE DRIVING CARS.
We know this. And intro CS is how we share that knowledge with others. When we get it right, students end up as excited about computer science as we are.
Getting it right also has other positive effects. When we get intro CS right, women and men end up as excited about computer science as we are, as shown by the University of Washington, Harvard, Harvey Mudd, and I suspect others. When you look at successful efforts to improve on our woeful gender and other forms of diversity within CS, exciting (and frequently redesigned) introductory courses always seem to play a role.
When we get intro CS right, it also goes a long way to reversing negative stereotypes about CS students may bring with them to college. I’m very supportive of efforts to teach CS in high school and work on stereotypes and misconceptions before students arrive at university. But I’m a college educator, and I don’t think that college is too late. Plus, there are a lot of fields that students arrive at college not knowing much about, and the solution isn’t to teach everything at the high school level. (Although, again, CS in high school is a great idea.)
We have a chance to introduce students to the most exciting field out there. In baseball terms 2, this is a big fat pitch sitting right out over the plate, just waiting for us to give it a ride.
