NSF Award
2321017
Introductory computing courses in the U.S. are based on a conceptual model of computation predating the distribution of computing across the Internet and widespread use of parallel processing. Employer stakeholders reported that new graduates are ill-prepared for working with modern systems so that it can take up to two years of additional training before they become productive employees. A key impediment to modernization that academic stakeholders identified was the lack of example introductory course sequences to adopt. This project will begin to remedy that situation by pioneering a new set of introductory computing courses, built around a modern conceptual model of computation that includes parallel and distributed processing, with rigorous evaluation of their effectiveness and their adoptability across a diverse group of colleges and universities. In addition, the project will better prepare and motivate the future research workforce to leverage advanced cyberinfrastructure by strengthening their foundational understanding of modern computing systems and computational problem solving methods. Modern systems that are geared toward supporting big data, artificial intelligence, large scale simulations, cloud computing, etc., are the foundation of current research paradigms. The project serves the national interest by training a well-prepared and diverse workforce that is better able to compete globally, exploit, and meet the challenges presented by all of these aspects of the pervasive, modern, cyber-technology environment. <br/><br/>The immediate goal of this project is to overcome a key impediment that has prevented educators from updating introductory computer science curricula to address current systems: a lack of examples of modernized courses. Since parallel and distributed computing is a core component of modern computing infrastructure, the project will result in an overall modernization of the future research workforce, and enable more effective use of advanced cyberinfrastructure resources by a larger set of researchers than is now possible. The project will design a modern first year introductory computer science course sequence, based on a conceptual model that includes the fundamental elements of parallel and distributed computation as found in current systems. The sequence will be implemented at two colleges, using two different programming languages, to demonstrate the generality of the model. The project will develop a set of pre-treatment and post-treatment instruments, based on education science, to evaluate the effectiveness of the approach. Evaluation will first be done for unmodified courses, as an experimental control group. Then the modified courses will be evaluated to gather data documenting the outcome of the intervention. Six additional institutions, selected for diversity (size, schedule, student population, connections to other institutions such as community colleges, etc.), will be recruited to subsequently adopt and evaluate the new course sequence, and thus discover enhancements that expand its potential for widespread use, as well as providing evidence of effectiveness. Instructors at the additional institutions will go through intensive summer training workshops to learn how to use the evaluation instruments and how to adopt the new course designs. In addition to public dissemination of the new course sequences with their supporting materials through an active outreach effort, including the NSF-sponsored ACCESS program, the project will result in book chapters and publications describing the courses and the evaluation results.<br/><br/>This award by the Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure is jointly supported by the Division of Computing and Communication Foundations within the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
