This conceptual development and planning project by the New York City College of Technology is creating a model of viable general education curriculum revision based on the tenets of Computational Thinking (CT), and defining changes in the College?s organizational and technological infrastructure needed to support such fundamental institutional transformation. This model is needed to be viable under current conditions of rapid and continuous changes in computer and information technologies and is applicable across different disciplines.
INTELLECTUAL MERIT. Computational thinking has become the essential competency for the workforce of the future. Today, the world of information technology is changing so fast that any isolated effort of computational curriculum update is likely to become obsolete almost as soon as it is completed. The intellectual merit of this Conceptual Development and Planning project in the redesign of City Tech?s curriculum and in the transformation of its organizational and technological infrastructure as: ? continuous instead of episodic and short-lived; ? systemic instead of local and isolated; and ? based on tenets of computational thinking.
To achieve this, the project team is taking a multi-level approach to ensure that no level of organizational infrastructure has been missed and that all of the participants (administration, faculty, staff, students, and wider community) are engaged and that all the elements of the system are mutually reinforcing. An important part of this process is be development of Key Indicators of computational thinking?the metrics that can be used to assess the progress of transformational effort, and course and program outcomes. These is also being used to serve as the basis for developing Computational Thinking Literacy in the college core. A set of the exemplary interdisciplinary case studies, instructional prototypes and curriculum units are being developed by the department groups and disseminated to the college and wider community.
BROADER IMPACTS: Because City Tech is a Hispanic Serving Institution and one of the most diverse institutions of higher education in the country, this program will have impact on an important urban community that is underrepresented in STEM. Due to advances of computer and information technology, for the first time in human history, any person, with or without scientific credentials, with or without special means, may have access to ongoing research activities. Discovering new ways of teaching and learning through interdisciplinary computational curricula and providing organizational and technological infrastructure for these activities will give the students and the broader community the ability to take advantage of these unique and endless possibilities, and will thereby fulfill the educational imperative of the college?s mission. The web of interrelationships among departments and schools within this college that this project is creating will have far-reaching and long-lasting effect. Dissemination activities through the web will be continuous and systemic, reaching outward through internal and external advisory boards and the online community.
