Socrates, Spielberg or Intel?

CS Dept. Head Candidate

Dr. Fillia Makedon
Computer Science Department
Dartmouth College

Tuesday, April 29, 2003
9 a.m. - 10 a.m.
Higgins Labs 218

Computer science (CS) is a relatively new field where teachers and students still explore the best way to teach and demonstrate its concepts. While CS basic theories and principles have matured and validated the importance of the field in practically every other field through numerous applications, computer science is challenged by a constant: the constant change of "information technology", a mixed bag of evolving tools, services and communication systems, that bring special challenges to educators.

What is the best approach to follow? Should CS education be based on basic principles or be specific to a language or platform? Should we prepare students to handle any problem-solving situation with abstractions or should we have them practice on all the latest programming languages? As CS proliferates in other disciplines (such as bioinformatics) it often causes it to become a subspecialty of another discipline. This fact brings new pressures to educators to actually prepare students for specific application areas in order to make their students more competitive to market forces.

This talk considers alternative approaches to teaching computer science, all having a common feature: the need to prepare students as "problem solving professionals". This implies that educators need to motivate and engage students in active and independent learning through whatever means are appropriate for any one class.

Host

Computer Science Dept Head Search Committee

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Last modified: Sep 27, 2006, 16:05 EDT