The focus of this project is on transforming American undergraduate computer science education to prepare students to work and to lead in a global community of computing professionals. This project establishes a Pacific Rim Community of computer science departments, high tech industry and international programs to explore a new model of computer science education that focuses on the knowledge, skills and competencies necessary for professional success and leadership in a flat world. This project, involving collaboration between the University of Oregon and Portland State University, will help to revitalize computer science education by infusing it with international perspectives and provide a model for growing similar communities nationwide. The Pacific Rim was chosen because of the growing importance of this region in the high technology industry and because the PIs are situated in universities with exceptionally strong Pacific Rim ties and expertise.
The core of this project is a series of community building workshops involving a diverse group of academic and industrial partners across the Pacific Rim. The workshops will address four key topics: assessing the needs, benefits and barriers to internationalization; cultural impacts on computer science courses and pedagogy; cultural awareness through international experiences; and community sustainability. In addition to the workshops, the project team will develop a globally available on-line resource repository for internationalization of computer science education. This repository will collect the results from the workshop series: seed ideas and recommendations for programmatic change, proposals for curricular innovation, new technologies for international pedagogy and collaboration, a database of international programs, key contacts, and bibliographic references. The repository will also include a video archive of the workshops.
The primary intellectual merit of this project is the enrichment and refinement of the concept of internationalization for computer science education using the Pacific Rim as a model community. The project activities will contribute to better understanding of the nature, challenges, and successful approaches for this transformation to be truly international in scope. The broader impacts of this Pacific Rim community-building project will give students at the participating institutions a competitive advantage in a global world, whether in research or industry. Internationalization of computer science education will attract the best and brightest students and broaden the appeal of computer science to a much more diverse population.
