Abstract
This paper explores the proposition that teaching programming for application development differs from established methods in computer science, engineering, and MIS, and requires a re-framing of pedagogical models. In addition to programming fundamentals, algorithms, and data structures, application development also requires understanding the foundations of human-computer interaction and the nature and economics of information in different application domains. Tradeoffs to make this possible within a four-year undergraduate degree are explored using a revised version of Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives to compare learning objectives for an applications developer curriculum with those for a traditional computer science curriculum. The paper also reports our experiences over the last five years with a new application design and development curriculum in the College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) at Penn State University. Faculty and student backgrounds and interests range from business to social sciences to humanities to engineering and computer science. Students entering the major have diverse educational backgrounds different from students typically entering physical science, engineering, or computer science programs. We elaborate on these differences and discuss this new curriculum developed to focus more directly on the requirements of application development where they differ from those in numerical or systems-oriented programming.
Published Version
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