An official website of the United States government
“CS for All” has set computing on an unusual journey. Those words ask CS to change: to grow from a compelling discipline and useful mindset into a full-fledged human literacy. Just as cogent writing, critical reading, and compelling speaking are today’s hallmarks of literacy, so too will leveraging computing for insight become part of the goals and expectations we all share. This paper considers how Computer Science, both as a discipline and as an academic department, can support this journey. To map the landscape, we first survey the extent of computing’s current curricular reach – beyond CS departments – at a sample of fifty U.S. institutions. We then present findings from three experiments, local to our institutions, which explored interdisciplinary course structures. Both the local and the global overviews suggest that CS departments have, now, a unique opportunity to help smooth computing’s transformation into a modern literacy. It’s in the best interests of all disciplines, together, to bring computing, its resources, and its roles into their distinctive identities.
more »
« less
Computing-as-literacy: cross-disciplinary computing for all
As a means of inquiry and expression, computing has become a literacy across many professional paths. This paper casts a vision for how a small, STEM-focused school supports this role of computing-as-literacy. We share several examples, both future visions and past experiences. We hope to prompt and join discussions that further the reach, use, and enjoyment of computing.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 1707538
- PAR ID:
- 10385404
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of computing sciences in colleges
- Volume:
- 37
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 1937-4771
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 101-108
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Lai, A; Cooper, Y (Ed.)This chapter features intersections of art, literacy, and creative computing. As a component of STEAM, creative computing augments story creation, or storymaking (Buganza et al., 2023; Compton & Thompson, 2018), prompting learners to explore expressive meaning making as collective interactions with texts. To signify a way of teaching that supports such learning activities, we propose expressive STEM as a design principle, illustrated here with examples from an elementary school and a preservice art education program in Texas, USA. Principles of expressive STEM storymaking drawn from these examples and from our teaching and research are offered in the chapter’s conclusion.more » « less
-
This paper describes the beginning of a design-based research project for integrating computing activities in preservice teacher programs throughout a middle and secondary education department. Computing integration activities use computing tools, like programming, to support learning in non-computing disciplines. The paper begins with the motivation for integrating computing that encouraged widespread buy-in, design goals, and design parameters. The primary motivating factor for this work was preparing teachers to use technology to support learning in their classrooms. Involving computing education faculty in the preparation enabled the activities to include computer science and spread computational literacy. The paper also describes the process and year-long timeline for designing and implementing the integrations, followed by the details of the computing integrated activities. Last, the paper describes preservice teachers’ reactions to computing integration, focusing on before-and-after perceptions and knowledge of computing. Preservice teachers perceptions and knowledge of computing evolved similarly to teachers who engage in different approaches to learning about integrated computing, such as in elective or educational technology courses, suggesting that this approach is effective for engaging all teachers in integrating computing. In particular, the common feature that ignited teachers’ excitement about integrating computing was offering new opportunities to improve student learning and providing engaging activities within their non-computing discipline.more » « less
-
Integrated computing curricula combine learning objectives in computing with those in another discipline, like literacy, math, or science, to give all students experience with computing, typically before they must decide whether to take standalone CS courses. One goal of integrated computing curricula is to provide an accessible path to an introductory computing course by introducing computing concepts and practices in required courses. This paper analyzed integrated computing curricula to determine which CS practices and concepts they teach and how extensively and, thus, how they prepare students for later computing courses. The authors conducted a content analysis to examine primary and lower secondary (i.e., K-8) curricula that are taught in non-CS classrooms, have explicit CS learning objectives (i.e., CS+X), and that took >5 hours to complete. Lesson plans, descriptions, and resources were scored based on frameworks developed from the K-12 CS Framework, including programming concepts, non-programming CS concepts, and CS practices. The results found that curricula most extensively taught introductory concepts and practices, such as sequences, and rarely taught more advanced content, such as conditionals. Students who engage with most of these curricula would have no experience working with fundamental concepts, like variables, operators, data collection or storage, or abstraction in the context of a program. While this focus might be appropriate for integrated curricula, it has implications for the prior knowledge that students should be expected to have when starting standalone computing courses.more » « less
-
Integrated computing curricula combine learning objectives in computing with those in another discipline, like literacy, math, or science, to give all students experience with computing, typically before they must decide whether to take standalone CS courses. One goal of integrated computing curricula is to provide an accessible path to an introductory computing course by introducing computing concepts and practices in required courses. This study analyzed integrated computing curricula to determine which CS practices and concepts are taught, how extensively the curricula are taught, and, by extension, how they might prepare students for later computing courses. The authors conducted a content analysis to examine primary and lower secondary (i.e., K-8) curricula that are taught in non-CS classrooms, have explicit CS learning objectives (i.e., CS+X), and that took 5+ hours to complete. Lesson plans, descriptions, and resources were scored based on frameworks developed from the K-12 CS Framework, including programming concepts, non-programming CS concepts, and CS practices. The results found that curricula most extensively taught introductory concepts and practices, such as sequences, and rarely taught more advanced content, such as conditionals. Students who engage with most of these curricula would have no experience working with fundamental concepts, like variables, operators, data collection or storage, or abstraction in the context of a program. While this focus might be appropriate for integrated curricula, it has implications for the prior knowledge that students should be expected to have when starting standalone computing courses.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- The DOI is not currently available.
