CISE Educational Innovation: Radically Rethinking CSI

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9979859Stein, Lynn A.Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyCISE Educational Innovation: Radically Rethinking CS1This CISE Educational Innovation (EI) proposal requests funds for the development and dissemination of an introductory computer science course based on the idea that computation is made up of concurrent interacting entities. At present, most CS1 courses are based on Turing's and Von Neumann's models of sequential execution, i.e. computation as a sequence of steps executed by a CPU. However, these models no longer describe modern systems like servers, operating systems, and robots. Systems like these are judged by their ongoing interactions rather than their end results. Their constituent parts are conceptually contemporaneous entities rather than rigidly sequenced steps. The transition to Java in many CS curricula provides an excellent leverage point for the proposed approach to CS1. The proposed project has the potential to dramatically change the way that CS1 is taught and the way that students think about computer science.