Curriculum Design & Assessment
The strategic plan of Virginia Tech stresses the need of graduates to acquire core competencies in CT, information literacy, and analytical methods. Starting fall 2014, in line with this plan, Virginia Tech has been offering a general education course titled “Computational Thinking” to students from all disciplines. I was involved in the course design and assessment.
The following link will take you to the e-book we developed for the course
http://think.cs.vt.edu/book/static/compthink/index.html
The course takes an interdisciplinary approach of teaching computational concepts to non-computer science majors. Students from different disciplinary backgrounds were grouped into teams of 4/5 students each. The notion was that these interdisciplinary groups of students will collaboratively learn computational modeling, data abstraction, construct algorithms, identify and modify pre-existing code. By the end of the semester, students were expected to come up with their own project. Each student also maintained a written journal of their learning and their understanding of ethical implications of computing.
Taking an authentic, situative approach towards assessing students’ learning, I observed students in class and analyze students’ project work to evaluate how students apply computational knowledge and skills within their projects and their own discipline.
The following link will take you to the e-book we developed for the course
http://think.cs.vt.edu/book/static/compthink/index.html
The course takes an interdisciplinary approach of teaching computational concepts to non-computer science majors. Students from different disciplinary backgrounds were grouped into teams of 4/5 students each. The notion was that these interdisciplinary groups of students will collaboratively learn computational modeling, data abstraction, construct algorithms, identify and modify pre-existing code. By the end of the semester, students were expected to come up with their own project. Each student also maintained a written journal of their learning and their understanding of ethical implications of computing.
Taking an authentic, situative approach towards assessing students’ learning, I observed students in class and analyze students’ project work to evaluate how students apply computational knowledge and skills within their projects and their own discipline.
Bushra Tawfiq Chowdhury