Fundamental Computer Science Research Articles

A fundamental computer science course that unifies theory and practice

If computer programming is to become an "engineering discipline," computer science students must acquire the tools for rigorous analysis and evaluation of programs. An early course in the undergraduate curriculum must introduce the fundamental principles of the discipline, just as freshman calculus teaches the basic analysis skills for most engineering disciplines. The course described in this paper teaches mathematical principles and practical programming applications in a unified form. It has been successfully taught to sophomores for four years.

The Software Engineering Subject Area

Besides being a generalist skilled in interpersonal communication, problem-solving, computer science fundamentals, and management and economic techniques, a computer professional also needs basic training in digital logic, organization, architecture, operating systems, data structures, file and data base systems, programming languages and translator writing systems, programming systems and methodologies, and applications and theoretical considerations. This is a large order indeed, but it is the sort of graduate that our universities must turn out if they are to meet the needs of business and industry.

Computer science by TV

Our use of television to teach the first computer science course for computer science majors is an attempt to make sure that the students get the right education. In our case it is not an attempt to enable one instructor to handle a large number of students but rather to handle small groups of students spread throughout the state. As a result of some shortage of computer science faculty, teaching beginners is often considered of lesser importance than other duties. For example, at one college in our state, an instructor with a little programming experience was hired to teach the beginners in computer science. This instructor felt he was well-enough equipped to handle the course. He covered the entire text and taught two languages, Fortran and PL/I. Our experience shows we can't cover two-thirds of that text, and then only in one language. Ours is the first computer science course which our majors take. It presumes no programming experience. It has two goals, to introduce the student to the fundamentals of computer science through a study of algorithms and programming, and to start the student well into PL/I. The course is taught as a one-semester four-credit course which meets five times per week. We made half-hour video tapes under excellent production conditions to cover the material of the course.

New directions in teaching the fundamentals of computer science — discrete structures and computational analysis

Since the publication of the Curriculum 68 report of the ACM Committee [CUR 68], undergraduate computer science programs have undergone substantial changes. Notably, many courses previously taught at the graduate level have shifted down to the undergraduate level; new areas have developed and consolidated but were not covered by the ACM report. These facts make it necessary to revise and update the Curriculum 68 report. An important factor which could help the revision is the actual experience gained through the development of many new undergraduate computer science programs since the publication of Curriculum 68 report five years ago. More specifically, most recommendations of the ACM report contain just the subject areas to be taught. The actual teaching experiences of these courses have formulated certain basic philosophies and formats of presentation. It is helpful, in our opinion, to compare the merits of these philosophies and formats of presentation. In this paper, we shall discuss the basic philosophies and formats of presentation of two undergraduate computer science courses—Introduction to Discrete Structures, and Computational Analysis. The former coincides with the B3 course of the Curriculum 68 report; the latter is a new course not covered by the ACM report.