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NSF Supports Universal Undergraduate Computing Literacy聽

无忧视频 is the headquarters for a new project to develop undergraduate-universal computing curricula. HMC, Claremont McKenna College and Caltech are working together on Computing-As-Literacy (CAL): Undergraduate Universal Computing, recently funded by the National Science Foundation as part of the Improving Undergraduate 无忧视频 Education: Education and Human Resources initiative.

鈥淐omputing has long been a valuable specialty and worthwhile liberal art,鈥� says Zachary Dodds, Leonhard-Johnson-Rae Professor of Computer Science and CAL co-principal investigator at HMC, along with computer science professor Lucas Bang. 鈥淚n our era, computing is also becoming a means through which other fields stage explorations and express their insights. An expressive, generative, reproducible medium, computing shares space with the venerable literacies of critical reading, compelling presentation and cogent writing. Creative computing is joining that list, for many professional and personal paths.”

The goal of the project is to develop computing curricula to be offered among other universal undergraduate literacies, much like the traditional English composition class. CMC and Caltech will make computing鈥攖he intellectual and professional literacy of authoring and creatively partnering with computational artifacts鈥攔equired of all their undergraduates. 鈥淗MC has required every student to make creative computing part of their skillset since before I arrived in 1999,鈥� says Dodds. 鈥淢ore and more schools are looking to adapt this kind of student support within their own mission and priorities. Partnerships among those schools help everyone.鈥�

Students will be integral to the curriculum, its development and evolution as the new Computing 1 (Comp1) courses are piloted and assessed.  Dodds believes the collaboration between HMC, CMC and Caltech will be fruitful. 鈥淭hese three schools certainly have distinct points of pride. Even so, all three channel their students鈥� ambition for broad, positive impact beyond their campus experiences. Handled thoughtfully, computing can help amplify those impacts.鈥�

The project’s premise is that our future is personal and communal, not computational. Dodds and the project team intend CAL to re-place computing as the personal and communal literacy it is. CAL’s goal is to deepen all undergraduates鈥� personal skillsets, both to include our era鈥檚 defining technologies鈥攁nd in service to our era鈥檚 defining challenges.