abstract

'Early X or Late X' Questions for Discussing Curricular Practices in CS1 and CS2

Author:

Martin HenzAuthors Info & Claims

SIGCSE 2023: Proceedings of the 54th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 2

Page 1269

https://doi.org/10.1145/3545947.3573240

Published: 06 March 2023 Publication History

Abstract

In teaching university entry-level calculus, it proved useful to distinguish early from late transcendentals depending on the time at which transcendentals such as the exponential and logarithmic functions are introduced. I suggest we pose analogous "early X or late X" questions for first-year computer science courses. I propose a tentative list of concepts for which the "early or late" question might be worthy a discussion and argue that the approach allows us to pay attention to pedagogical choices rather than the choice of the programming language for CS1 and CS2.

The first calculus textbook by late Torontonian and mathematics educator James Drewry Stewart follows the traditional approach of late transcendentals where the transcendental logarithm function is introduced as an integral of ƒ (χ) = 1/χ and the transcendental exponential function as its inverse. Stewart and others realized that this approach deprives the concepts preceding integrals of these two transcendentals as interesting example functions. Stewart's early-transcendentals alternative introduces them-along with transcendental trigonometric functions-informally in the first chapter and uses these transcendentals throughout the book.

Do we have analogous pedagogic choices in CS1 and CS2? An exhaustive approach would list all essential concepts in the first year in CS and analyse their prerequisite dependencies. To initiate a more focused discussion, I propose instead to limit the discourse to a handful of concepts, and explore their "early or late" question.

Cited By

View all

Vahid FStephenson BStone JBattestilli LRebelsky SShoop L(2024)CS1 Instructors: Flexibility in Content Approaches is Justified, and Can Enable More Cross-University CooperationProceedings of the 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3626252.3630816(1368-1373)Online publication date: 7-Mar-2024
https://doi.org/10.1145/3626252.3630816

Index Terms

'Early X or Late X' Questions for Discussing Curricular Practices in CS1 and CS2
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computing education programs
        Computer science education
        CS1
      2. Model curricula

Recommendations

Using Foundational CS1 Curricula for Middle School & Early High School Computer Programming Education
SIGCSE 2023: Proceedings of the 54th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 1

Teaching computer programming to K-12 learners is widely recognized as important for invoking interest in computing in college and beyond. Specifically, with respect to middle school students, several computing education efforts do an excellent job of ...
What do "CS1" and "CS2" mean?: investigating differences in the early courses
SIGCSE '10: Proceedings of the 41st ACM technical symposium on Computer science education

Thirty-one years ago, the ACM Computing Curricula used the terms "CS1" and "CS2" to designate the first two two courses in the introductory sequence of a computer science major. While computer science education has greatly changed since that time, we ...
CS1 and CS2 (panel session): foundations of computer science and discrete mathematics
SIGCSE '00: Proceedings of the thirty-first SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education

Over a period of thirty years there have been many curriculum reforms in the Undergraduate Computer Science curriculum. The ACM/IEEE-CS task force is currently working on the Curriculum 2001. In this struggle to define and develop this dynamic field of ...

Comments

Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

SIGCSE 2023: Proceedings of the 54th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 2

March 2023

1481 pages

ISBN:9781450394338

DOI:10.1145/3545947

General Chairs:
Maureen Doyle
Northern Kentucky University, USA
,
Ben Stephenson
University of Calgary, Canada
,
Program Chairs:
Brian Dorn
University of Nebraska at Omaha, USA
,
Leen-Kiat Soh
University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA
,
Lina Battestilli
North Carolina State University, USA

Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all 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 third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 06 March 2023

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Abstract

Conference

SIGCSE 2023

Sponsor:

SIGCSE

SIGCSE 2023: The 54th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

March 15 - 18, 2023

Toronto ON, Canada

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 1,595 of 4,542 submissions, 35%

Upcoming Conference

SIGCSE TS 2025

Sponsor:
sigcse

The 56th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

February 26 - March 1, 2025

Pittsburgh , PA , USA

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

1
Total Citations
View Citations
0
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)0
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0

Reflects downloads up to 04 Feb 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all

Vahid FStephenson BStone JBattestilli LRebelsky SShoop L(2024)CS1 Instructors: Flexibility in Content Approaches is Justified, and Can Enable More Cross-University CooperationProceedings of the 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3626252.3630816(1368-1373)Online publication date: 7-Mar-2024
https://doi.org/10.1145/3626252.3630816

Abstract

Cited By

Index Terms

Recommendations

Using Foundational CS1 Curricula for Middle School & Early High School Computer Programming Education

What do "CS1" and "CS2" mean?: investigating differences in the early courses

CS1 and CS2 (panel session): foundations of computer science and discrete mathematics

Comments

Information

Published In

Sponsors

Publisher

Publication History

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Conference

Acceptance Rates

Upcoming Conference

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

Other Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View options

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media

Affiliations