A new approach to introductory computing for non-CS students

Emphasizing communication rather than computation

Joy Weeks
College of Computing

Most Tech students will tell you that introductory computer science (CS) courses are not considered “user-friendly” — especially for non-CS and non-engineering majors. Non-CS majors in particular have voiced concerns about the relevance of introductory CS content to their diverse fields of study. In fact, CS programs nationwide have witnessed dramatically low retention rates and failure rates as high as 50 percent.

Recent studies by the American Association of University Women show that the kinds of concerns voiced by Georgia Tech students have had an especially negative impact on female participation in CS courses.

One course offered as a pilot this spring in the College of Computing (CoC), however, may forever change the landscape for non-CS majors. Titled “Introduction to Media Computation,” the pilot offering of the course included 120 students, two-thirds of whom were women. The course uses “computation for communication” as a guiding principle. CS 1315 students study and create programs that manipulate sound, images and movies.

Specialized technology for the course was developed by a team of undergraduate students and includes an environment for programming and a suite of applications that support an exploration of media.

“The technology built for the course was more effective than we anticipated, given the pilot nature of the course and the software,” said Associate Professor Mark Guzdial, who created and taught the pilot course. “The results in our first offering of the course have been remarkable.”

Doctoral student and research assistant Andrea Forte said, “While we are still in the process of exploring its effectiveness as a learning environment, I think the simplicity of design contributed to students’ success.”

By drop day, only three students out of 120 had dropped the class, resulting in one of the highest retention rates in CoC history for an introductory programming course for non-majors.

“Many students run in fear of CS 1321, and it is a lot of pressure for non-CS majors,” said Guzdial. “So we decided to develop a pilot course (CS 1315) that was less intimidating, but equally challenging.”

CS classes traditionally emphasize issues such as speed of solutions because historically computers were slow in solving generalized problems. Instead, CS 1315 emphasizes real-world applications of computing and creative social experiences with computing. Students learn to program in the context of learning how to use computers for communication, as opposed to calculation.

Response to the pilot course indicated that a large majority of students (including non-CS majors) find it relevant to their other studies and their career plans.

Tech requires all students to take an introductory course in computing, including programming skills. The course has been one of the most unpopular courses on campus, especially among non-CS majors. Results from the pilot course, however, indicate that the new approach appeals to liberal arts majors and yet retains a focus on programming.

“Programming and computation will inevitably become part of a general liberal education,” said Guzdial, “but computing courses will need to continue evolving for this to happen.”

Results of a survey of Media Computation students indicate that they appreciated the relevance of the course and even found computer science interesting. Students wrote eight programs (six collaboratively and two individually) involving the creation or manipulation of pictures, sounds, HTML pages and movies, with some of their programs reaching more than 100 lines of code. Some students reported that they did programming on their own time “just for fun.”

Other colleges and universities have taken notice of the pilot’s success and some have started implementing the approach. Gainesville College started a Media Computation class this summer with 12 students (nine female). Other schools in the University System are talking with Guzdial about how to adapt the approach for their curricula as well.