Literacy is evolving to accommodate digital media. Means students are more in need of computational skills. – expands more on literacy, what it is and what makes it up – arguments from Kay et al that computers are a meta-media – arguments that everyone should program
But CS is in a bad way
- low retention rates, in the 25 to 50% [8][11] They believe this is symptomatic of a failure to communicate the value of computer science to students. If it isn't perceived as interesting or useful, students fail or drop out.
- declining percentage of women and minorities. 60% of US bachelors go to females only 30% CS
Studies point to
- over emphasis on abstraction over application
- technical details instead of usability
- stereotypical view of programmers as loners lacking creativity
Introduce a new course – Introduction to Media Computation – using media creation and manipulation as the context. Students implement photoshop style filters and digital video special effects, splice sounds and search web pages.
Open only to non-majors. Supported through a web-based collaboration environment where students share and discuss their creations.
Results – 120 students, 2/3 female – only 3 students withdrew all male. Failure rate of 11.5% versus 42.9% in traditional computer science intro course.
Results show that the course motivates and engages students poorly served by traditional computer science courses
The constructionist approach to learning asserts that people learn particularly well when they are engaged in constructing a public artifact that is personally meaningful [4].
It seems that traditional introductions to computer science are more likely to frustrate students than attract them to the field. This trend has troublesome implications for other fields, too.
ACM suggests
- imperative first
- objects first
- functional first
- breadth-first
- algorithms-first
- hardware-first
[15] 1st year CS course that uses 3d graphics to teaching OO They describe their approach as "data-first"
[16] talked about the use of domain specific contexts to motivate 1st year students
[18] longitudinal study (1995-1999)- into CS female students' motivations – reasons for women's disinterest in computing
- emphasis on technical detail rather than application
- computing is uncreative/anti-social
Course description
- starts with discussion about media representation – what is CD quality audio, resolutions
- students start writing programs to manipulate images
- revisited in the context of sound and text – searching text, generating HTML, manipulating directories and networks and finally animation
- finally move onto broader CS concepts
- 6 homework assignments which involve programming and entail the creation of their own original media
- 3 in-class exams assess students' comprehension of conceptual material and ability to read and write code
- 2 take-home exams assess programming proficiency
abstraction, hierarchical decomposition, representation and encoding of data, and iteration are introduced more than once in the class.
we know that learning occurs concrete-to-abstract [20, 21]
But does familiarity with media computation actually affect students’ abilities to communicate through various media? Does computational know-how transfer to other contexts?
Does media computation have any affect on students’ long-term decisions regarding computer science learning? In particular, are female students who take media computation as an introduction to computer science more likely to pursue advanced learning than those who take a traditional CS course?
Finally, if the course succeeds at Georgia Tech with the current instructor, can it succeed at Georgia Tech with other instructors and at other institutions? Two other institutions have already implemented these types of courses
[15] W. Dann, T. Dragon, S. Cooper, K. Dietzler, K. Ryan and R. Pausch, "Objects: visualization of behavior and state," ITiCSE 2003: Proceedings of the 8th Annual Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education, pp. 84-88, 2003.
[16] N. Kock, R. Aiken and C. Sandas, "Using complex it in specific domains: developing and assessing a course for nonmajors," IEEE Transactions on Education, vol. 45, no. 1, 2002, pp. 50-56.
[18] J. Margolis and A. Fisher, Unlocking the Clubhouse: women in computing, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002.
[20] S. Turkle and S. Papert, "Epistomological pluralism and the revaluation of the concrete," in Constructionism Harel, I. and Papert, S. Eds. Ablex Publishing Corp., 1992, pp. 161-191.
[21] Committee on Learning Research and Educational Practice, How People Learn: bridging research and practice, no. 09/04/2002, Donovan, S. et al. Eds. Washington DC: National Academy Press, 1999, pp. 9-22.