mpj@mist.cs.orst.edu (Michael P. Johnson) (10/31/90)
The Oregon State University Computer Science Department just switched from the College of Science to Engineering. As a result, we're taking a look at our service courses and trying to answer the following questions: 1. What, if any, service courses should be taught by the Computer Science Department? (We currently offer a popular applications/implications course, FORTRAN, and COBOL. In addition, a large number of non-majors take our introductory programming/data structures sequence to learn Pascal, and a growing number of non-majors are taking our Unix/C course and our operating systems sequence.) 2. Should all service courses be separate tracks, or should non-majors and majors be mixed in some classes? 3. Should we offer courses like COBOL that are targeted specifically at narrow groups of students, or have the departments that benefit from those courses take them over? 4. How, in general, should service courses be funded? 5. Should enrollment be restricted in large service courses, and if so, how? Since these are questions that almost all CS departments have to deal with at some time, we decided to turn to the net for input. What are your experiences at other schools? How have you solved these problems? Please mail responses to curriculum@mist.cs.orst.edu. If there's sufficient interest, we'll post a summary. Thanks in advance. Curriculum Committee Computer Science Department Oregon State University
gln@cs.arizona.edu (Gary Newell) (11/05/90)
In article <21435@orstcs.CS.ORST.EDU>, mpj@mist.cs.orst.edu (Michael P. Johnson) writes: > The Oregon State University Computer Science Department > just switched from the College of Science to > Engineering. that is too bad..... seems to me it is a mistake to put CS in the Enineering school of any University but.... > As a result, we're taking a look at our > service courses and trying to answer the following > questions: > 1. What, if any, service courses should be taught by the > Computer Science Department? This would depend a great deal on the particular University requirements (how many students will actually be looking to your department for servie credits?) but here at Arizona we teach a CS I course which is an intro to CS using Pascal or C (we've considered using Icon and stressing problem solving) and we cover basics of programming and simple data structures and implementation - the focus is on problem solving and debugging and learning fundamental concepts of CS. We also have a CS II course which focuses on program design and development and introduces more sophisticated concepts. The other course are a Data Structures and Intro to Algorithms course as well as a Machine Organization course (using Tannenbaum's book). There are other undergrad courses but they are intended for our own undergrads (Operating systems, Theory, Algorithms, AI etc.) > (We currently offer a > popular applications/implications course, FORTRAN, and > COBOL. In addition, a large number of non-majors take I assume that OSU has no MIS department or some similar department where COBOL would be more appropriate? Are you responsible for handling all of the buisness majors and such? At Arizona, COBOL and RPG and various software packages are handled by MIS in the school of Buisness (thank GOd...) and Fortran is handled by the ECE department. The languages we handle are Pascal, C, C++, Icon, and Macro-11. We do have a comparitive language course which touches on other languages but I wouldn't consider the students who take this course to be very competent programmers in many of these languages. > 2. Should all service courses be separate tracks, or > should non-majors and majors be mixed in some classes? WE mix them a great deal and have little problem(although few non-majors take our CS undergrad-specific course) we also offer an honors section for each service course which our ug's are expected to take- this allows us to introduce them to 'higher level' topics without putting the non majors on the line... > 3. Should we offer courses like COBOL that are targeted > specifically at narrow groups of students, or have the > departments that benefit from those courses take them > over? See above- personally I can't see any reason for a CS department to be teaching these courses any longer unless resources are a problem.... > 4. How, in general, should service courses be funded? With what respect? We use the resources of the University to handle most of these courses - at least when it comes to machines and printers, and save are own equipment for our students grad and undergrad. As far as faculty payment- I suppose that it would greatly depend on the university policies.... > 5. Should enrollment be restricted in large service > courses, and if so, how? I'd say no - why bother? I believe that we are a larger school and we average about 180 students per semester in our CS I course - many of these students will drop and if you offer discussion sections handled by TAs it usually works out well - limits your teaching techniques a bit but hell you are never going to get it down to 15 students so you might as well leave it open...... again this assumes that your resources (tas, space, machines, etc) will allow an open enrollment. > Please mail responses to curriculum@mist.cs.orst.edu. If > there's sufficient interest, we'll post a summary. oops....sorry - anyway please note that Arizona has only just begun our undergraduate program in CS - until last year we had only graduate students and our undergraduate courses existed only as service courses. gary newell