Pilot Project: Teaching Introductory Programming Utilizing the Liberal Arts

当前的本科计算机科学课程确实为学生做好了充分的准备，使他们能够与其他技术学科交流和解释技术技能。有效和高效的编程需要技术技能和创造力，心理纪律和智力开放，但计算机编程通常是从技术中心的观点来教授的，因此学生没有培养能够为多样化和严格的应用程序开发程序的技能。因此，学生对编程技能如何解决现实世界的问题缺乏足够的上下文理解。其结果是项目困难表现在软件应用程序的管理、设计和实现上。这个试点项目通过设计、实现、测试、改进和传播一门使用ALICE编程语言讲故事的本科计算机编程入门课程，提高了我们对软件设计背景下的创造性过程的理解。智力价值：该项目推进了介绍性编程的教学策略，通过关注计划、关注过程、协作解决问题以及设计细化和重构来培养创造力。使用讲故事的方法来教授编程是扩展ALICE项目（部分由NSF资助）开始的工作的一种非常新颖的方法。这将通过将编程技能嵌入到综合文科环境中来实现，并特别注重学习和使用编程结构来服务于更广泛的任务。更广泛的影响：建议的项目提供了一种教学策略，以提高教师？能够通过讲故事的方式识别、表达和展示创意和技术技能之间的整合点。它将增强学生解决问题和协作的能力，帮助他们建立不同任务之间的联系，以及编程作为解决问题工具的适用性。它将帮助It（信息技术）学生建立扎实的计划和协作技能，并邀请更多不同群体的学生通过编程来增强他们的创造性努力。在对具有编程专业知识的个人需求迅速增长的时代，它有可能为培训新一代技术专家提供一种新模式。

Current undergraduate computer science curricula do adequately prepare students to communicate and interpret technical skills to other technical disciplines. Effective and efficient programming demands technical skill and creativity, mental discipline and intellectual openness, but computer programming is usually taught from a technocentric viewpoint, so that students do not develop skills that enable them to develop programs for diverse and rigorous applications. Students therefore lack adequate contextual understanding of how programming skills solve real world problems. The result is project difficulties manifested in the management, design and implementation of software applications.This pilot project improves our understanding of the creative processes in the context of software design, through the design, implementation, testing, refinement, and dissemination of an introductory undergraduate computer programming course through storytelling using the ALICE programming language.Intellectual Merit: The project advances instructional strategies for introductory programming that foster creativity through focus on planning, attention to process, collaborative problem solving, and design refinement and refactoring. The use of storytelling to teach programming is a highly novel approach to extending the work begun in the ALICE project (partially funded by NSF). This will be accomplished by embedding the programming skills into an integrated liberal arts environment, and specifically focusing on learning and using programming structures in the service of a broader task. Broader Impacts: The proposed project provides an instructional strategy to enhance teachers? ability to recognize, articulate, and demonstrate integration points between creative and technical skills through the use of storytelling. It will enhance the problem-solving and collaborative skills of students and help them build connections between diverse tasks and the applicability of programming as a problem-solving tool. It will help build solid planning and collaboration skills in IT (Information Technology) students and invite a more diverse group of students to enhance their creative endeavors through programming. In a time of rapidly growing need for individuals with programming expertise, it has the potential to provide a new model for training a new generation of technical specialists.