A Process for Updating Computer Science Curriculum for Non-Majors

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1 A Process for Updating Computer Science Curriculum for Non-Majors Melis Öner, David Kaczynski, and Roger Lee Central Michigan University Department of Computer Science Mount Pleasant, MI 48859, USA (oner1m, kaczy1da, Abstract Computers permeate society deeper and more thoroughly as computer science and adjacent fields progress. Students who graduate from institutions of higher education are expected to adapt to and utilize computer technologies, regardless of major. Many universities already offer computer science courses for non-majors, but little research exists on methods to continuously update existing curriculum. We propose a method for updating computer science curriculum for non-majors by identifying course objectives that are directly tied to those recommended by the ACM and IEEE Joint Task Force for Computing Curricula. This process addresses how to identify and bridge the gaps between existing and new course objectives and how we measure the impact of the course using computer attitude surveys. Our research finds that universities may be able to utilize the methods outlined in this paper to update their computer science curriculum for non-majors with confidence. Index Terms computer science education, nonmajors, IT key qualifications, curriculum, computers and society I. INTRODUCTION Information and software technologies are growing everyday. Today, not only computer engineers and computer scientists use software. From photographers to physicians, every profession utilizes from various numbers of softwares and information technology tools. This fact enhances the importance of being computer literate. Computer literacy is defined in [Gupta] [?] as individual ability to employ a computer system, have a basic understanding of the operating system, manage file and disk operations, use computer applications for individual or job-related tasks, and use the Internet for communication, information acquisition, or commerce purposes. Being computer literate is not only knowing how to use the tools; computer literate adults must be able to deploy these activities for academic work and jobrelated tasks. Computer literacy is more than surfing on the Internet or playing computer games. A computer literate person uses his or her computer to work more efficiently. We cannot limit the benefits of computer literacy to job- or academic-related tasks, either. Computer literate people can use computers for various casual tasks, such as querying weather or traffic conditions, shopping, or communicating with friends and family. There are all examples of daily computer uses in social and vocational life. Central Michigan University offers a computer science course for non-majors: CPS 100, or Computers and Society. The course has an enrollment of several hundred students each year, largely due to being a compulsory course in a variety of degree programs. The course covers a wide range of topics, including: history of computer hardware and software, societal impacts of computer technology, applications of computer technology,

2 proficiency in navigating the Internet, computer security and risks, and proficiency in Microsoft Office and Microsoft Windows software. CPS 100 is taught with equal parts of lecture and lab periods. In the case of the lab, the exercises have not been updated for several years. This has lead to many lab exercises being inoperable due to outdated instructions for user interfaces for software products, such as Google and Windows. Computer technology is developing faster everyday, and computer science education must be updated depending on the new developments. ACM and IEEE Computer Science joint Task Force publishes Computer Science Curricula at regular intervals. This generally-accepted guide encouraged us to ask this question: Do our current lab exercises supply the outcomes defined in Computer Science Curricula 2013? We decided to use our outdated lab exercises as an opportunity to overhaul our curriculum with modern computer science learning objectives. In order to effectively update the curriculum for CPS 100, we have three research objectives: 1) Identify guidelines for modern computer science curriculum 2) Define a process for bridging the gaps between current course content and the new curriculum 3) Measure and analyze the progress of students For the purposes of this research, we define the methods used to meet our objectives and leave the results of implementation to future research. II. BACKGROUND A. ACM and IEEE Computer Science Curricula Guidelines ACM and IEEE revise recommended computer science curricula every 10 years [?]. The curricula guidelines are volunteered by institutions of information technology in both industry and academia from all around the world. The Joint Task Force define a set of underlying principles to guide the construction of the curricula. Several of these principles specifically influenced us to adopt their recommendations for our non-majors course: Computer Science curricula should be designed to provide students with the flexibility to work across many disciplines... CS 2013 must provide realistic, adoptable recommendations that provide guidance and flexibility, allowing curricular designs that are innovative and track recent developments in the field... [and] The CS2013 guidelines must be relevant to a variety of institutions. B. Designing a Computer Science Course for Non-Majors Guzdial and Forte [?] define a process for designing a computing course for non-majors: set objectives, choose a context, set-up feedback process, define infrastructure, and finally, define the course content. The authors go one to describe how each of these steps apply to the create of a Media Computation course. We may implement similar techniques as we take steps to revise and update our course material. However, the context for our course is already decided via the lecture materials. Also, we will be implementing additional methods for mapping our current class activities to the pending course curriculum guidelines in order to reduce unnecessary efforts in redesigning the course. C. Incorporating ACM/IEEE Curricula Guidelines into Undergraduate Curriculum Tewari and Friedman documented and published their results for updating the computer science curriculum at Temple University in the early 1990s [?], when software engineering was still young. They identify the flaws in their existing curriculum and the new objectives that they wish to incorporate. For software engineering, this included such topics as requirements development, incremental development, software architecture patterns, and more. These topics were elicited from 1991 version of ACM/IEEE-CS Computing Curricula. Tewari

3 and Friedman go on to specify the changes to the course work and laboratories, instructional methods, and the early experiences of adopting the new curricula. For our current research, we are discovering a method with which we will be updating our course s curriculum. The curriculum will not actually be updated until a future semester. We extract updated course objectives from the 2013 version of ACM/IEEE-CS Computing Curricula. At the time of this writing, the Irondraft v. 1.0 is the latest version of ACM/IEEE-CS Computing Curricula, and we hope that we may use the official release soon for our update process. D. Applying Key Qualifications to IT Curriculum In 2008, Dörge and Schulte published a paper [?] on applying the ten most common key qualifications to IT curriculum, producing a set of learning objectives that were independent of current technologies. These objectives can be summarized as self-reliance, self-training, using computers independently of operating systems, keeping up with the latest technological developments, adapting computer technology to fit one s own needs, recognizing dangers and risks for computer systems, using new trends and developments, and the ability to assess societal impacts of information technology (potentials and threats). We find that several of our existing course objectives for our Computers and Society course highly resemble the aforementioned concepts derived by Dörge and Schulte, such as ability to communicate, flexibility, and capacity to solve problems. However, how key qualifications are extrapolated to specific assignments will differ from course to course. For example, we would like to extend operating system independence to office productivity software independence as well. III. GOALS OF UPDATED CURRICULUM We hope to see several benefits by updating our computer science curriculum in this manner. Because we are using international standards that represent the evolving interests of both industry and academia, we intend to create a foundation of course objectives that are supported by an international community of experts. Since the ACM/IEEE-CS Computing Curricula is constantly under review and being updated, we hope that we can revisit this relationship for future updates in course content as well. Lab exercises with updated instructions and content may be target towards functioning productively in a computer-oriented work environment. With the updated curriculum and course content, we hope to alleviate social anxiety that students may have towards computer technology when beginning the class. We plan to establish a framework of surveying students at the beginning and end of each semester and measuring the students attitudes towards the course and computer technology in general. By explicitely defining our process for updating our curriculum and documenting our progress, future educators may avoid stagnant course content in CPS 100 by applying the same or a similar process. For example, future administrators may be able to consult the current version of ACM/IEEE-CS Computing Curricula for guidance in selecting course objectives, and our reseaerch may be consulted for the process of updating the current curriculum and content. IV. METHOD Here, we elaborate on the research objectives introduced in Section 1 and define our methods for meeting our objectives. A. Identify Curriculum Guidelines First, we must identify a set of topics to be addressed in the updated course curriculum. For this, we utilize technology-specific objectives as described by the 2013 ACM and IEEE Joint Task Force on Computing Curricula [?]. In the ACM/IEEE-CS Computing Curricula, The Social and Professional Practice subject is divided into sub-topics, and each sub-topic

4 Fig. 1. An example of a coverage matrix that helps identify gaps in existing curriculum versus the ACM/IEEE-CS Computing Curricula 2013 [?] is associated with a list of learning objectives. Elective and non-elective, all sub-topics can be seen in Figure 1. Each sub-topic has three parts: explanation of the sub-topic, topics to be covered, and learning outcomes. Each learning objective is labeled appropriately in Bloom s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. We choose different outcomes to update our lab exercises depending on the Bloom s Taxonomy label and feasibility. CPS 100 is a non-major course, so we do not intend to apply all the learning outcomes in this course. B. Bridge Gaps in Curriculum Since there are existing course materials that may already satisfy the new curriculum guidelines that we are adopting, we have created a coverage matrix for identifying the gaps between current materials and the updated curricula recommendations. We define a coverage matrix as a twodimensional grid, as seen in Figure 1. On the x-axis, we list the subject areas that have been identified as defined in the previous step (Identify Curriculum Guidelines). The y-axis is a list of the current activities in the class, such as in-lab exercises, homework assignments, or other projects. For each activity, we indicate which areas (if any) of the new course objectives are satisfied. Note that if an activity is deemed inoperable due to outdated software interfaces or other technical issue, that activity is not considered to be covering any topic. Once all of the course activities have been added to the axis, we populate the matrix with Boolean check marks; either the activity covers the the topic, or it does not. After the matrix is appropriately populated, it may be determined which activities do not contribute to the course objectives and which course objectives still need to be satisfied by observing which rows or columns are respectively missing check marks. Once the gaps in curriculum have been identified, we go on to bridge the gaps by following the relevant processes in course design defined by Guzdial and Forte [?], such as defining the infrastructure and building the activities. C. Measure and Analyze Progress of Students To measure the progress of the students, we measure the attitudes of students towards computers via surveys. We currently survey students at the beginning of each semester for their attitudes towards computers. As it can be seen in Figure 2, Computer Attitudes Survey is on Blackboard, which is the main platform of CPS 100 course. This survey includes sixteen different statements about how students feel about working with computers and/or how they feel in the computer environment. Students are asked to answer questions on a five-level Likert scale. Students may choose one of the following levels: Strongly agree Somewhat agree Neither agree or disagree Somewhat disagree Strongly disagree The following are questions from our student attitude survey: 1) I feel anxious whenever I am using computers.

5 Fig. 2. This survey is the Preview Survey of CPS 100 in Central Michigan University. All students have to take this survey as a part of Lab Exercise number one, first week. This survey has 16 questions and targets to measure attitudes of students towards computers. 2) I wish that I could be as calm as others appear to be when they are using computers. 3) I am confident in my ability to use computers. 4) I feel tense whenever I am working on a 5) I worry about making mistakes on the 6) I try to avoid using computers whenever possible. 7) I experience anxiety whenever I sit in front of a computer terminal. 8) I enjoy working computers. 9) I would like to continue working with computers in the future. 10) I feel relaxed when I am working on a 11) I wish that computers were not as important as they are. 12) I am frightened by computers. 13) I feel content when I am working on a 14) I feel overwhelmed whenever I am working on a 15) I feel comfortable with computers. 16) I feel at ease with computers. We plan to continue surveying students in this manner once the new curriculum has been updated and the changed implemented. Since this survey is on the Blackboard system, it can be applied at the end of the semester, too. By this way, we will compare the progress of students prior to the course changes with the progress of students after the course has been changed to identify areas where students attitudes lack improvement. V. CONCLUSION Information and software technologies are growing everyday. Today s technology developments require people from different professions to be computer literate. Central Michigan University offers a computer science course for non-majors and nonminors: CPS 100, or Computers and Society. The course covers a wide range of topics, including: history of computer hardware and software, societal impacts of

6 computer technology, applications of computer technology, proficiency in navigating the Internet, computer security and risks, and proficiency in Microsoft Office and Microsoft Windows software. For the purposes of this research, we define the methods we will use to update our course activities and leave the results of implementation to future research. We define our methods for meeting our objectives. We identify a set of objectives to be addressed in the updated course curriculum based on ACM/IEEE-CS Computing Curricula. In these guidelines, there is set of objectives for Social Issues and Professional Practices for computer science education. There are ten different sub-topics under this content. Each sub-topic has various learning outcomes, and they are labeled with Bloom s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. Obtaining all of the learning outcomes of the Social Issues and Professional Practice would not be reasonable because a lot of sub-topics of this part are offered as electives, and they are considered as separate classes. Thus, we decided to choose the most applicable learning outcomes of our CPS 100 classes depending on their Bloom s Taxonomy labels and feasibility of a course for non-majors. After defining our course objectives, we need to identify the gaps between our current curricula and the new course objectives. By this way we are going to see which course activities need to be changed and which course objectives still need to be addressed. A two dimensional coverage matrix is used for defining the gaps. of course content that promotes computer literacy and aims to aleviate social anxiety towards computers. VI. FUTURE RESEARCH For future research, we would like to document the processes defined in this paper as applied to the curriculum of CPS 100 at Central Michigan University as of the Spring 2013 semester. This includes: citing the official 2013 IEEE and ACM Guide to Computing Curricula as a source for our course curriculum, identifying specifically the current gaps in course curriculum, documenting how the gaps were covered by updating the curriculum, and comparing the reactions of students prior to the updated curriculum to the reactions of students after the curriculum is updated. REFERENCES [1] G. K. Gupta, Computer literacy: essential in todays computer-centric world, SIGCSE Bull., vol. 38, no. 2, 2006, pp [2] ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Task Force for Computer Curricula. ACM/IEEE Computing Curricula 2013: Ironman Draft (Version 1.0). [3] M. Guzdial and A. Forte. Design Process for a Nonmajors Computing Course, in Proceedings of the 36th SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, St. Louis, MO, USA. Feb 2327, 2005, pp [4] R. Tewari and F. Friedman. A Framework for Incorporating Object-Oriented Software Engineering in the Undergraduate Curriculum, in Computer Science Education, vol. 4, no. 2, 1993, pp [5] C. Dörge and C. Schulte. What are information technologys key qualifications?, in Proceedings of the Conference on Integrating Technology into Computer Science Education, Madrid, Spain, Jun 30-Jul 2, 2008, pp We plan to measure these changes effect on the students by replicating the Computer Attitudes Survey on Blackboard at the end of the semester. Comparing students feelings about working with computers and/or being in a computer environment at the beginning and at the end of the semester will give us an idea about the effectiveness of our implementation