TITLE: Making Things Worse in the Introductory Course
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: January 30, 2006  5:51 PM
DESC: 
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BODY:
Reading
<A HREF="http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2006/01/physics_face_1.php">
   Physics Face</A>
over at Uncertain Principles reminded me of a
<A HREF="http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2005-08.html#e2005-08-10T15_17_59.htm">
   short essay</A>
I wrote a few months ago.  Computer scientists get
"the face", but for different reasons.  Fewer people
take computer science courses, in high school or
college, so we don't usually get the face because of
bad experiences in one of our courses.  We get the
face because people have had bad experiences using
technology.

(On the flip side, at least physicists don't have to
listen to complaints like "Gravity didn't work for
me yesterday, but it seems to be working okay right
now.  Why can't you guys make things work all the
time?" or "Why are there so many different ways I
can exert force  on an object?  That's so confusing!")

But the main thrust of Chad's article struck a chord
with me.  A physics education group at the University
of College Park found that introductory physics
courses cause student expectations about physics --
about the nature of physics as an intellectual activity
-- to <EM>deteriorate</EM> rather than improve!  In
every group, students left their intro physics thinking
less like a physicist, not more.

I know of no such study of introductory CS courses (if
you do, please
<A HREF="mailto:wallingf@cs.uni.edu">
   let me know</A>),
but I suspect that many of our courses do the same thing.
For students who leave CS 1 or CS 2 unhappy or with an
inaccurate view of the discipline, their primary image
of computing is an overemphasis on programming drudgery.
I've written several times here in the last year or so
about how we might make our intro courses more engaging
-- make them about <EM>something</EM>, more than "just
programming" -- via the use of engaging problems from the
"real world", maybe even with a domain-specific set of
applications.  I notice that Owen Astrachan and his
colleagues at Duke are presenting a paper at
<A HREF="http://www.cs.rit.edu/~sigcse06/">
   SIGCSE</A>
in early March on using the science of networks as a
motivating centerpiece for CS 1.  Whatever the focus,
we need to helps students see that computing is about
concepts bigger than a <TT>for</TT>-loop.  In the 1980s,
we saw a "breadth-first" curriculum movement that aimed
to give students a more accurate view of the discipline
in their first year or two, but it mostly died out from
lack of interest -- and the logistical problem that
students <EM>do</EM> to master programming before they
can go very far in most CS programs.

I don't have any new answers, but seeing that physics
has documented this problem with their introductory
courses makes me wonder even more about the state of
science education at the university.
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