Incorporating Research and Theory into the Undergraduate Computer Science Curriculum through Practical Case Study Projects

该项目将开发一个试点的高级课程，使用PI提出的方法组合来解决最近几份报告中出现的本科计算机科学教育中的6个需要点。这些报告在计算机科学教育和研究的背景下讨论了理论和实践以及学术界和工业界的互动。最终的目标是将所提出的方法引入较低级别的计算机科学课程。为此目的，预计在拟议项目期间获得的经验和遇到的问题--涉及较受控制但具有代表性的3所院校的高年级学生--将是至关重要的，如果不是必不可少的话。将要开发的课程将完全基于案例研究。这些不是人为设计或象征性的练习，而是从(与工业合作伙伴协商)从过去和正在进行的工业项目中收集的原始案例研究材料中获得的。这些案例研究是经过精心选择和设计的：(I)让学生接触到各种各样的大型、原型、现实世界的项目；(Ii)以非分隔的方式，将形式和理论的概念、技术和结果结合在一起，应用于现实世界；(Iii)在一系列导致解决现实世界问题的应用程序的背景下，说明最近的理论研究成果；以及(Iv)让学生参与重要的软件实施，同时意识到它在工业案例研究项目的更大背景下的作用。该项目的主要成果将有两方面：(1)统一格式的工业案例研究材料，也可供与行业没有联系的学校使用，以及补充的正式和概念材料、教学技巧等。(2)有兴趣开发自己的案例研究库的学校可以使用试点方法。这些方法将被记录下来，并通过会议论文以及可能在DIMACS举行的为期一天的研讨会传达。

The project is to develop a pilot, senior level course that uses a combination of methods proposed by the PI's to address 6 points of need in undergraduate Computer Science education that have arisen in several recent reports. These reports have dealt with the interaction of theory and practice as well as academia and industry within the context of Computer Science education and research. The eventual aim is to introduce the proposed methods into lower level CS courses. For this purpose, it is expected that the experience gained and problems encountered during the proposed project - involving the more controlled, but representative, senior-level student population at 3 institutions - would be crucial, if not indispensable. The course to be developed will be based entirely on case-studies. These are not artificially contrived or token exercises, but are to be obtained from raw case-study material collected (in consultation with industrial partners) from past and ongoing projects in industry. These case-studies are carefully chosen and designed (i) to expose students to a broad variety of large, prototypical, real-world projects, (ii) to apply, in a noncompartmentalized manner, a combination of formal and theoretical concepts, techniques and results in real situations, (iii) to illustrate recent theoretical research results in the context of a chain of applications leading to the solution of a real-world problem, and (iv) to involve the student in significant software implementation while being conscious of its role in the larger context of an industrial case-study project. The main results of the project will be twofold: (1) Industrial case-study material in a uniform format, usable also by schools with no industrial contacts, along with supplementary formal and conceptual material, teaching tips etc. (2) Pilot methodology to be used by schools who are interested in developing their own bank of case studies. These methodologies will be documented and also conveyed via a conference pape r, as well as a one day workshop, possibly at DIMACS.