Assessment Details
Academic Year: 2020-2021 Level: Undergraduate
Campus Department: Morrissey College of Arts & Sciences [UG and Grad]
Program Type: Core [UG]
Program Name: Computer Science Core (Link)
Description of Data Collection:
As CS1 is the gateway course for the computer science major, there is regular feedback from instructors of later courses in our program as to how well prepared the CS1 students are for advanced work—that is, how well they have acquired the concepts and mastered the skills laid out in the documents referred to above.
For the Enduring Questions course, as this is a new course, there is as yet no process in place. The instructor for the course studied the quality of the student work (more project than exam-based) and the feedback from the student evaluations. This was discussed with the instructor of the partner course in the School of Law, with an eye to an eventual repeat.
Review Process:
Every few years, the department undertakes a top-to-bottom review of our program, and how we do CS1 has always been an important part of this review. In the past, when the department was considerably smaller, this has been conducted by meetings of the faculty in the department as a whole. As we have grown, it has become less convenient to do things in such a large group, and we will designate different groups within the department (e.g., the group of instructors principally responsible for doing CS1) to study different aspects of the program and formulate recommendations. We intended to conduct such a review this Spring, but the changed teaching circumstances pushed us into emergency mode, and derailed a number of ongoing curricular projects. We will take up this review again in the AY2020-21.
Resulting Program Changes:
We are planning a significant overhaul of the introductory course, and this will have an impact on our Core offerings. We have seen a rapid increase in two distinct populations of students. One consists of our majors: taken together, Computer Science has been the fastest-growing major in the college for the past several years. The other is the growing group of non-majors who want to acquire computing and coding skills as an adjunct to their work in their principal fields of interest. These two groups of students have very different needs. Up until now, we have lumped the two together in our introductory course CSCI1101, but it has become increasingly obvious that this is not an ideal arrangement for either group: Too many CS majors were emerging from CSCI1101 deficient in some of the core skills that are critical for continued study in the subject; but many of these same skills are not particularly relevant or useful — and often too challenging — for the other group. Accordingly, we intend to split the introductory course into two different courses, one aimed primarily at majors who will pursue further study in Computer Science, and the other a new course aimed at non-majors. We currently have a subcommittee within the department aimed at developing the new course, which we expect to introduce in Spring, 2022. At the same time, we are implementing some changes in CSCI1101, to ensure that new majors have the appropriate knowledge and skills for further study in the subject. The non-major course may take the form of an updated version of CSCI1074-The Digital World, which, when it was taught, could be used to satisfy the Mathematics Core requirement.
Date of Most Recent Program Review:
We are planning a significant overhaul of the introductory course, and this will have an impact on our Core offerings. We have seen a rapid increase in two distinct populations of students. One consists of our majors: taken together, Computer Science has been the fastest-growing major in the college for the past several years. The other is the growing group of non-majors who want to acquire computing and coding skills as an adjunct to their work in their principal fields of interest. These two groups of students have very different needs. Up until now, we have lumped the two together in our introductory course CSCI1101, but it has become increasingly obvious that this is not an ideal arrangement for either group: Too many CS majors were emerging from CSCI1101 deficient in some of the core skills that are critical for continued study in the subject; but many of these same skills are not particularly relevant or useful — and often too challenging — for the other group. Accordingly, we intend to split the introductory course into two different courses, one aimed primarily at majors who will pursue further study in Computer Science, and the other a new course aimed at non-majors. We currently have a subcommittee within the department aimed at developing the new course, which we expect to introduce in Spring, 2022. At the same time, we are implementing some changes in CSCI1101, to ensure that new majors have the appropriate knowledge and skills for further study in the subject. The non-major course may take the form of an updated version of CSCI1074-The Digital World, which, when it was taught, could be used to satisfy the Mathematics Core requirement.
Attachments (if available)