TY - GEN
T1 - Contextualized approaches to introductory computer science
T2 - 42nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, SIGCSE 2011
AU - Kay, Jennifer
PY - 2011/4/19
Y1 - 2011/4/19
N2 - America's youth perceive Computer Science to be difficult, tedious, boring, irrelevant and asocial. Unfortunately, many traditional introductory Computer Science classes and textbooks do little to improve that image. In contrast, contextualized approaches to teaching introductory Computer Science are very attractive. Instead of writing a leap year program, students can learn about conditional statements by programming a robot to follow a light, or by creating an animation to tell a story, or even by modifying a picture of the college president so that she is wearing a neon orange jacket instead of a navy blue one. The arguments in favor of contextualized approaches to attract non-Computer-Science-majors to our classes are very persuasive. But what about students who then choose to major or minor in Computer Science? Of course we want to offer them interesting and engaging first courses in Computer Science, and indeed this may help with our efforts to attract more students to our programs. But what happens in subsequent semesters? The purpose of this paper is to initiate a general discussion on the use of any sort of "cool" new approach into both undergraduate and K-12 Computer Science education. These approaches successfully attract students to study subjects that we ourselves are deeply engaged in. But we need to discuss as a community what happens to students who do choose to major or minor in Computer Science when our individual classes conclude and the rest of their studies commence.
AB - America's youth perceive Computer Science to be difficult, tedious, boring, irrelevant and asocial. Unfortunately, many traditional introductory Computer Science classes and textbooks do little to improve that image. In contrast, contextualized approaches to teaching introductory Computer Science are very attractive. Instead of writing a leap year program, students can learn about conditional statements by programming a robot to follow a light, or by creating an animation to tell a story, or even by modifying a picture of the college president so that she is wearing a neon orange jacket instead of a navy blue one. The arguments in favor of contextualized approaches to attract non-Computer-Science-majors to our classes are very persuasive. But what about students who then choose to major or minor in Computer Science? Of course we want to offer them interesting and engaging first courses in Computer Science, and indeed this may help with our efforts to attract more students to our programs. But what happens in subsequent semesters? The purpose of this paper is to initiate a general discussion on the use of any sort of "cool" new approach into both undergraduate and K-12 Computer Science education. These approaches successfully attract students to study subjects that we ourselves are deeply engaged in. But we need to discuss as a community what happens to students who do choose to major or minor in Computer Science when our individual classes conclude and the rest of their studies commence.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=79954441989&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=79954441989&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/1953163.1953219
DO - 10.1145/1953163.1953219
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:79954441989
SN - 9781450305006
T3 - SIGCSE'11 - Proceedings of the 42nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education
SP - 177
EP - 182
BT - SIGCSE'11 - Proceedings of the 42nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education
Y2 - 9 March 2011 through 12 March 2011
ER -