creators_name: Stein, Lynn Andrea
type: journalp
datestamp: 1999-06-25
lastmod: 2011-03-11 08:54:02
metadata_visibility: show
title: What We've Swept Under the Rug: Radically Rethinking CS1
ispublished: pub
subjects: comp-sci-art-intel
full_text_status: public
abstract: Introductory computer science education is entrenched in an outdated computational model. Although it corresponds neither to our computing environments nor our work, we teach our students a single-thread-of-control static problem-solving view of the role of the computer program: computation as calculation. In this model, the job of a computer program is to start with a problem, calculate its answer, return that answer, and stop. This program-as-an-island bears little resemblance to most of today's software. We can dramatically improve this situation--and, as a corollary, all of undergraduate computer science--by teaching our students from the very beginning to conceptualize computation with a model of computer programs as simultaneous ongoing entities embedded in and interacting with a dynamic environment: computation as interaction; computation as it occurs in spreadsheets and video games, web applications and robots.
date: 1998
date_type: published
publication: Computer Science Education
volume: 8
number: 2
pagerange: 118-129
refereed: TRUE
citation:   Stein, Lynn Andrea  (1998) What We've Swept Under the Rug: Radically Rethinking CS1.  [Journal (Paginated)]     
document_url: http://cogprints.org/543/1/rug.html