CISE Educational Innovation: A Tool-Supported Programming Languages Curriculum

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EIA-0086255Waite, William M.University of Colorado at Boulder CISE Educational Innovation: A Tool-Supported Programming Languages CurriculumThis project integrates research and development in software tools development into the undergraduate computer science program at this institution with special emphasis on computer-supported cooperative work and decision support. The project strategy involves "scaffolding" content-related problem solving skills and process-related group interaction skills by integrating a suite of tools, developed by the research community, into a three-course sequence required of all computer science majors. The key idea is that students are involved in realistic projects, beginning with their introductory courses, but an infrastructure selectively hides complexity from students. As students progress to more advanced courses, more of the complexity is revealed, until finally, students are involved in realistic projects involving significant collaborative work. The project has two components: (i) a software infrastructure that manages the complexity that students are exposed to, and (ii) a collection of tools that allow students to undertake larger projects than would normally be possible in a classroom setting. Students also use a web-based journal tool to keep track of significant milestones, problems, and other issues related to tasks assigned to them. The backbone of the collaborative system used in this project consists of a repository that contains code and implementation monitors for student projects, tools that students use when interacting with the materials in the repository, and a set of policies that control how students can interact with the repository contents. This project addresses the national need of educating software practitioners who can work on large, complex software systems in teams.