This project proposes to form a Networked Improvement Community (NIC) to design, deploy and evaluate a computing curriculum designed for non-computer science majors across a diverse range of academic partnership institutions. It is organized as a partnership of four institutions: California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly); University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB); University of Colorado at Colorado Springs (UCCS); and College of Charleston. The project is structured around two goals: (a) increasing exposure to computing and computational thinking among all students, and better preparing these students for professional careers in fields requiring a certain level of computing, and (b) diversifying the population of students enrolled in computer science courses. The project reframes computer science around human-centric learning goals in fifteen modules that will be implemented across the collaborating institutions. The project is grounded in the complementary and unique academic histories of the partnering organizations. The project addresses the need to develop a strong, diverse, national computing-literate workforce.
The NIC's objective is to build a series of modules, each targeting a specific aspect or a group of related aspects of computational thinking, tightly coupled with multiple domain examples. Each module will include an ethics perspective on the material. Project activities include emphasize flexibility to adapt to the context of participating organizations and to reach a variety of major disciplines through domain-specific examples and assignments, as well as broadening participation and ethical concerns. Partner institutions will organize these modules into coursework that best matches individual institution?s context, and take into consideration variations such as term length, local strengths and campus synergies, and typical number of contact hours in a course. The organizations will work jointly on offering, testing, and evaluating the sequence of computational thinking modules. In addition to a commitment to work together digitally, the NIC includes two in-person workshops for intensive shared time, testing, and evaluation. The project will evaluate the curriculum both locally and globally for factors that impact underrepresented students and overall program efficacy compared to a control group. This project has the potential to serve as a model of a networked improvement community in the area of CS education for non-CS majors. It focuses on the need to develop a large, diverse workforce able to address computing problems across a wide range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary problem domains. This IUSE: CUE project is co-funded by EHR/DUE and CISE Directorates CNS, CCF, IIS, and OAC, reflecting the project's alignment with the broader goals of the IUSE: EHR program in DUE and complementary programs in CISE.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
