research-article

Course development through student-faculty collaboration: a case study

Authors:

Henry M. Walker,

David CowdenAuthors Info & Claims

ITiCSE '14: Proceedings of the 2014 conference on Innovation & technology in computer science education

Pages 189 - 194

https://doi.org/10.1145/2591708.2591723

Published: 21 June 2014 Publication History

Abstract

Traditionally, faculty plan and implement courses with students as the target audience, based upon educational goals and objectives. With today's interest in active learning, faculty try to anticipate activities that will resonate with students. This paper presents a different model that utilizes faculty-student collaboration for course development -- in this case, creating an introductory C-based course on imperative problem solving with robots as an application theme. Basing development on course goals and objectives, a faculty member works with a development team of undergraduate students to structure course content, prepare materials (e.g., readings, laboratory exercises, projects), and test each element of the course. In subsequent semesters, students taking the course provide feedback on all materials, the development team updates materials, and the refinement process iterates. The resulting course meets goals and objectives, provides wonderful motivation, and highlights creativity and intellectual challenge within computer science as well as syntax, semantics, and core technical skills.

This paper builds upon a previous report (SIGCSE 2013 Proceedings, pp. 27-32), by highlighting the course development process and providing data that assess course effectiveness. The resulting course has been identified as an "exemplar" by CS Curricula 2013 (pp. 454-455, 458-459), providing a strong second course in a three-course, multi-paradigm introductory sequence that emphasizes a lab-based approach with collaborative learning. Course materials at co-author Walker's home page.

References

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Digital Library

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Cowden, D., O'Neill, A., Opavsky, E., Ustek, D., and Walker, H. M., "A C-based introductory course using robots", Proceedings of the 43rd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE 2012), March 2012, p. 27--32.

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Walker, H. M., "A lab-based approach for introductory computing that emphasizes collaboration", Proceedings of the Computer Science Education Research Conference (CSERC '11), Heerlen, the Netherlands, pp. 21--31.

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Cited By

Morrison BQuinn BBradley SBuffardi KHarrington BHu HKallia MMcNeill FOla OParker MRosato JWaite JKrogstie BQuille KSchulte CBecker B(2021)Evidence for Teaching Practices that Broaden Participation for Women in ComputingProceedings of the 2021 Working Group Reports on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education10.1145/3502870.3506568(57-131)Online publication date: 28-Dec-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3502870.3506568
Ivica MMarku SNguyen TWu RWalker H(2016)Student-faculty collaboration in developing and testing infrastructure for a C-based course using robotsJournal of Computing Sciences in Colleges10.5555/3007225.300723932:1(57-64)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3007225.3007239
Bashlovkina VDeWitt ALiu AKnoebber NWalker H(2015)A refined C-based infrastructure and curriculum to support robots in introductory CSJournal of Computing Sciences in Colleges10.5555/2752981.275301330:5(136-143)Online publication date: 1-May-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/2752981.2753013

Index Terms

Course development through student-faculty collaboration: a case study
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computing education programs
        Computer science education
      2. Model curricula

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

ITiCSE '14: Proceedings of the 2014 conference on Innovation & technology in computer science education

June 2014

378 pages

ISBN:9781450328333

DOI:10.1145/2591708

Conference Chairs:
Åsa Cajander
Uppsala University, Sweden
,
Mats Daniels
Uppsala University, Sweden
,
Program Chairs:
Tony Clear
Auckland University of Technology, NZ
,
Arnold Pears
Uppsala University, Sweden

Copyright © 2014 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Bilkent University: Bilkent University
SIGCSE: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

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Published: 21 June 2014

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Bilkent University
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ITICSE '14: Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education Conference 2014

June 21 - 25, 2014

Uppsala, Sweden

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ITiCSE '14 Paper Acceptance Rate 36 of 164 submissions, 22%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 552 of 1,613 submissions, 34%

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Cited By

Morrison BQuinn BBradley SBuffardi KHarrington BHu HKallia MMcNeill FOla OParker MRosato JWaite JKrogstie BQuille KSchulte CBecker B(2021)Evidence for Teaching Practices that Broaden Participation for Women in ComputingProceedings of the 2021 Working Group Reports on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education10.1145/3502870.3506568(57-131)Online publication date: 28-Dec-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3502870.3506568
Ivica MMarku SNguyen TWu RWalker H(2016)Student-faculty collaboration in developing and testing infrastructure for a C-based course using robotsJournal of Computing Sciences in Colleges10.5555/3007225.300723932:1(57-64)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3007225.3007239
Bashlovkina VDeWitt ALiu AKnoebber NWalker H(2015)A refined C-based infrastructure and curriculum to support robots in introductory CSJournal of Computing Sciences in Colleges10.5555/2752981.275301330:5(136-143)Online publication date: 1-May-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/2752981.2753013

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