Innovations in Introductory Courses
Introducing Students to Computer Science. Several years ago, Elise Turner and others in the Department designed a new introductory course to address some common problems in CS curricula across the country. In particular, typical introductory courses, called CS1 and CS2, focused primarily on programming and not on the deeper subject matter of the field. Consequently, students could go through their first year of college and still not have a very good grasp of what computer science as a field is. In addition, it was suspected that CS1 and CS2 were contributing to problems retaining women in the major.
COS 140. The new course, called Foundations of Computer Science (COS 140), is a rigorous, non-programming introduction to the field of computer science. Unlike traditional "breadth" courses in CS, although an overview of CS is provided, an emphasis is on really concentrating on three or four important and interesting topics in each area. By covering these topics at the junior or senior level, the students gain an insight into how computer scientists approach problems and how they think. The course became a required part of our curriculum a few years ago and, in addition to being well-received locally, has gained some national attention through papers about it presented at the major computer science education conference.