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Broadening the computer science curriculum

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Published:01 March 1997Publication History
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Abstract

Too often, students in undergraduate computer science programs come to equate computer science with the "nuts and bolts" of the field---programming, data structures, algorithms, operating systems, programming languages and so forth. If we are to attract students to computer science and produce graduates who will excel in the profession, we must broaden our students' perspective on our discipline. In this paper, we examine an initiative that seeks to broaden the undergraduate computer science experience by introducing three new elements into the curriculum: a first-year experience that focuses on the challenges of computer science, a fourth-year experience that focuses on the initial stages of the software design process, and a student portfolio that unifies the existing curriculum, broadens its content, and provides us with a mechanism for assessing the growth of our students' technical and non-technical skills.

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      • Published in

        cover image ACM SIGCSE Bulletin
        ACM SIGCSE Bulletin  Volume 29, Issue 1
        March 1997
        388 pages
        ISSN:0097-8418
        DOI:10.1145/268085
        Issue’s Table of Contents
        • cover image ACM Conferences
          SIGCSE '97: Proceedings of the twenty-eighth SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education
          March 1997
          410 pages
          ISBN:0897918894
          DOI:10.1145/268084

        Copyright © 1997 ACM

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        Association for Computing Machinery

        New York, NY, United States

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        • Published: 1 March 1997

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