This Carroll College CPATH Planning Grant is focused on increasing the number of students developing Computational Thinking (CT) competencies by infusing CT experiences into the undergraduate general education curriculum. The project team is: 1) reviewing and revising the BS degree requirements, and replacing the current math and computer science requirements with two new CT courses, 2) developing an interdisciplinary undergraduate minor in computational science, 3) developing an interdisciplinary undergraduate major in computational science, and finally 4) training faculty to teach new BS courses and help them integrate CT throughout individual curricula.
Intellectual Merit: These educators believe, based on the computing education literature that they have reviewed, that it is essential to begin building CT skills early in the undergraduate education for all students. Reaching students early in their undergraduate career ensures that students are prepared with the CT skills that they need to pursue graduate studies and that are highly desirable for future employment. Because CT skills will be so integral to the 21st century workplace, this project begins by developing two lower-level CT courses to be integrated into the general education curriculum for all BS degree students ? approximately 80% of the Carroll College student body. To round out the college?s computational offerings, they are developing undergraduate minor and major programs in computational science. The computational courses developed through the proposed minor program will serve as a common area for collaboration among faculty from different fields. The major and minor programs will also allow students who have an interest in computational science to explore a variety of applications while learning the theory behind the techniques. Finally, the project team is integrating computational techniques into the student learning experience as a whole. They are working with faculty to keep the introductory-level courses relevant to current research and thus are ensuring that the knowledge that students gain early in their time at Carroll will be used throughout their undergraduate education.
Broader Impact This NSF CISE CPATH planning grant is enabling Carroll College, a predominately undergraduate institution, to make a first critical step towards invigorating and strengthening offerings in the computational sciences. With this project, Carroll College will be able to significantly improve the computational thinking skills of their undergraduate student population. Additionally, this NSF CISE CPATH grant is enabling the College to develop faculty expertise in computational science program development that will result in opportunities for students to acquire computational thinking competency within multidisciplinary majors. It is expected that this curricular program will serve as a national model and will demonstrate how to develop computational thinking competency within a general education curriculum. It is expected that this program will work to attract more women and underrepresented minority students into the computational science field while providing the enhanced curriculum needed to ensure that students succeed in completing major and minor programs in computational science.
, has successfully completed its three goals. These goals were 1) overhauling undergraduate Bachelor of Science degree requirements to more adequately meet the needs of 21st Century job seekers, 2) creating a minor and major curriculum in Computational Science, and 3) setting up mechanisms both to train staff to teach the B.S. courses and to create a feedback loop between the B.S. courses and upper-level courses in individual majors. Until now, the Bachelor of Science requirements at Carroll University included a minimum of a standard, four credit, Introductory Statistics course and a two credit course in using Microsoft Excel. Under the CPATH grant, a two-course sequence in Computational Thinking (CT) was created to take its place. The first course in the sequence is common to all B.S. majors and teaches students data analysis techniques and the computer skills necessary to implement them. In particular, this course uses spreadsheets (Microsoft Excel) and basic computer programming (Python) to explore linear and non-linear functional modeling, using simulations to approximate probability, and basic descriptive and inferential statistics. The second course in the CT sequence is more tailored to fit individual majors. At the present time, there are two versions of course two. One uses the skills obtained in course one to study intermediate inferential statistics such as multivariate regression, multi-factor ANOVA, and non-parametric statistics. The other version of course two is more computer science oriented and expands on the basic programming skills learned in course one, particularly focussing on web-related technologies. Two years of pilot sections were run during the CPATH project. Following approval of the changes by the faculty in the Fall of 2012, the University is in a transition year leading to full implementation of the new B.S. degree requirements in the Fall of 2013. The minor and major in Computational Science are designed to complement degrees in other fields. The minor requires a major in an applied field, the CT sequence, Calculus, Programming in Java, and one upper-level Computational Science course. The upper-level Computational Science course focusses on either the Life and Behavioral Sciences (for students majoring in Biology, Psychology, Business, etc.) or the Physical Sciences (for students in Chemistry or Physics). The major requires a minor (or major) in an applied field, the CT sequence, the equivalent of one and a half years of both a mathematics major and a computer science major, and both of the upper-level Computational Science courses. The minor and major programs were approved by the Carroll University faculty in the Spring of 2012 and they appear in the catalog starting this year. Instructor training for the CT sequence began during the summer prior to this, the transition, year. This has taken the form of weekly meetings with the instructors and the course coordinator. The instructors for the courses are from a pool of adjuncts and faculty who have previously taught either statistics or computer science at Carroll. Since the CT courses span both of these topics, some of the training time includes teaching instructors familiar with one area the content found in the other. The weekly meetings also allow sharing of instruction techniques and act as brainstorming sessions. As more adjuncts and faculty will be required to teach all of the sections, it is expected that these training sessions will continue for at least the first few years of full implementation. Due to faculty availability, the feedback loop between the B.S. courses and upper-level major courses has taken place mainly as an informal conversation. Since Carroll is a relatively small institution, this has proved adequate. At a larger institution, a more formal process would most likely be necessary. Dissemination of these efforts has been through presentations at the Mathematics Joint Meetings and the Midwest Instruction and Computing Symposium as well as through two Computational Thinking Workshops hosted by Carroll University. Workshops were held each in both 2011 and 2012 and faculty from institutions of similar size to Carroll were invited. These workshops were useful both for dissemination and in gathering new ideas for the CT sequence. More detailed information will be made available by request to colleagues who are interested in implementing similar programs at their institution.
