The project ``Texnh: A New Approach to the B.A. Degree in Computer Science,'' was funded by the NSF (CISE/EIA) in 2003. Texnh is the Greek word for art. It is also the root of the Greek and English words for technology. The objective of the Texnh project is to establish a strong connection between arts and sciences in teaching computing. Based upon this work, the School of Computing at Clemson University has structured the first two years of its undergraduate curricula according to the Texnh approach, whose focus is problem-based instruction in the domain of computer-generated visual media.
The objective of this project is to build upon the Texnh foundation in a manner consistent with the objectives of the EAE program. Partners at Western Carolina University and UNC Wilmington will employ the Texnh approach in selected courses for at least two years. The Texnh approach will be extended to senior division courses at Clemson University. A rigorous assessment mechanism incorporating environmental assessment, dynamic assessment, and other mechanisms identified by the project's external evaluator working with the CPATH evaluators will be used by all partners.
Texnh is the Greek word for art. It is also the root of the Greek and English words for technology. Texnh is also the name given to a multi-year endeavor in the realm of Computer Science education conducted by faculty at Clemson University, the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, and Western Carolina University. A goal of the Texnh project is to re-establish the connection between art and technology and in so doing to improve learning in undergraduate computing curricula. The Texnh approach is based upon the use of problem based learning with semester-long problems taken from the visual domain. In the CS-1 course students develop an application that can perform some of the image transformations found in open source systems such as the GIMP and in commercial systems for image processing. In the CS-2 course they learn to produce their own images of virtual worlds using a process known as ray tracing. In the CS-3 (data structures) course, they learn that the naive algorithms used in the simple virtual worlds of CS-2 are not fast enough for more complex virtual worlds. New data structures and algorithms that are suitable are introduced and incorporated into the system. A new database course in which students construct a multimedia database and Web based front end modeled after the popular You Tube web site was jointly developed by faculty members at Clemson and Western Carolina. Assessment studies we conducted comparing student performance in courses using the Texnh approach with control courses using traditional approach. Analysis showed that in some cases the Texnh students performed better than those in the control course in a statistically significant way. In other cases no statistically significant differences were noted.
