Curriculum Design for 'Explorations in Computing' (a New General Education Course at USC) (Abstract Only)

Abstract

Starting Fall 2016, the CS department at USC has begun offering CS100: Explorations in Computing, a brand new General Education (GE) course. The course is only open to non-CS majors (since our CS students go through a CS-specific introductory track that encompasses the CS100 material). The class has 24 students, from a variety of disciplines such as Communications, Business Administration and Theatrical Arts. The course presents a broad overview of computational/algorithmic problem-solving techniques that form the basis of today's digital society. It provides students, a strong foundation for understanding how everyday activities such as web searching, communicating via social media, playing games, booking a ride, etc., work "behind the scenes". The course's intent is to promote computational thinking, as put forth by Jeannette Wing and others. In designing the course, the following aspects were kept in mind: the course is formulated as a GE, for a non-CS audience - so it cannot be heavy on coding; the topics need to involve some form of computational/algorithmic approach; the topics need to have a connection with things that students do with their digital devices (eg. play games, send instant messages, order things..); the topics have to grab the students' attention (keeping in mind that they grew up with tablets, the Web, animated movies and videogames). To that end, the topics are grouped under the following headings: Media Computing, Recreational Math, Algorithmic Art, Social Media and Data.