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Computer science by TV

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Published:01 July 1976Publication History
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Abstract

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.

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      • Published in

        cover image ACM SIGCSE Bulletin
        ACM SIGCSE Bulletin  Volume 8, Issue 3
        Proceedings of the 6th SIGCSE symposium on Computer science education
        July 1976
        146 pages
        ISSN:0097-8418
        DOI:10.1145/952991
        Issue’s Table of Contents
        • cover image ACM Conferences
          SIGCSE '76: Proceedings of the sixth SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education
          September 1976
          154 pages
          ISBN:9781450374453
          DOI:10.1145/800144

        Copyright © 1976 ACM

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        Association for Computing Machinery

        New York, NY, United States

        Publication History

        • Published: 1 July 1976

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