Introduction to Media Computation: A New CS1 Approach Aimed at Non-Majors and Under-Represented Populations

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0306050Mark GuzdialGeorgia Technology Research Corp - Georgia Institute of TechnologyIntroduction to Media Computation: A new CS1 approach aimed at non-majors and under-represented populations$250,998This proposal focuses on creating a new kind of CS1 course centered on media computation. The project is founded on the hypothesis that, for many students, computation is about communication and introducing computation in a communications context engages students and leads to increased motivation. Media computation is the use of computation to create, modify, and transform media. Multimedia, having passed the stage of requiring complex activities to create video effects or to generate novel sounds, enjoys a state of the art that makes it feasible to move its concepts from late-undergraduate/early-graduate courses to introductory courses. This project challenges traditional CS1/CS2 content which may not reflect the most common kinds of activities that software developers engage in today in the workforce. More commonly, what contemporary IT professionals do involves solving new kinds of problems in new kinds of ways. A large number of IT professionals construct multimedia as part of their careers, and that number may be increasing. While the project goal is not to prepare students for such jobs only, the point is that multimedia manipulation is an activity that can engage students. Once engaged, the students' potential for learning how to implement those "computer-based solutions to non-computing problems" is enhanced. The PI for this project hypothesizes that introducing multimedia early has the potential to improve enrollment and success rates in introductory courses. The proposal plan has three components: To build an integrated development environment for students that supports media computation; To develop a set of Java-based materials to improve dissemination of the proposed approach; To evaluate the impact of these developments -- that is, the ease of integration of a media computation approach into traditional CS courses.