Computing Education is essential not only for Computer Science and its many sibling disciplines(Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, Information Systems, etc.) but for practically all other academic disciplines. Computers are pervasive today and many professionals develop basic programming skills as a way to express ideas, problems and solutions in computational terms within their own disciplines. It is common to find curricula in the arts (music, graphical design), business (accounting, economics), sciences (biology, chemistry, physics), and social sciences with computational courses in their curriculum. In a way, computing is becoming a requirement of most professional degrees. This project addresses both the separation between computing specialists and to widespread integration of computing concepts, not just the technology but computational thinking, in other disciplines. The project will use technologies now commonly available to permit faculty to collaborate in offering courses that extend the potential reach of experts to a broader audience, as well as a collection of recorded expert lectures. In addition, it will develop a visual, interactive interface to a common framework around which to explore similarities and differences across domains and to enable decisions about educational plan development. The teams will also host workshops to identify innovative approaches to teaching, as well as support initiation of new collaborative course experience and reflect of the utility of the courses. The opportunity computing education is to learn how motivated hands-on learning can engage students and provide opportunities to introduce computing concepts. In addition to aiming for diversity in the groups of participating faculty, the project will extend the reach of computing to disciplines not normally associated with that content and will also represent the scope of their discipline to computing students, providing a broader view of the impact of the discipline as it is applied in creative fields. This project addresses the growing conviction that inter-disciplinary approaches are crucial to revitalizing computing education and offers a solution to the need for broader reach of individual areas of expertise. If successful, this project could spread to national implementations with very great effect.
