The body of knowledge presented in Chapter 5 does not by itself constitute a curriculum. To be useful, the CC2001 report must also define detailed course implementations and strategies for assembling the individual courses into a complete undergraduate curriculum. This chapter presents a brief description of the overall philosophy behind the proposed curricular models. The descriptions of the courses themselves appear in Appendix B.
The courses described in this report are divided into three categories according to the level at which they occur in the curriculum. Courses designated as introductory are typically entry-level courses offered in the first or second year of a college or university curriculum. Courses listed as intermediate are usually second- or third-year courses and build a foundation for further study in the field. Courses designated as advanced are taken in later years and focus on those topics that require significant preparation in terms of earlier coursework.
While these distinctions are easy to understand in their own right, it is important to recognize that there is no necessary relationship between the level of the course and the notions of core and elective, which apply only to units in the body of knowledge. Although introductory and intermediate courses will certainly concentrate on core material, it is perfectly reasonable to include some elective material even in the earliest courses. Similarly, advanced courses will sometimes include some core material. These designations are independent and should not be confused.
The point of establishing the distinction among introductory, intermediate, and advanced courses is to provide natural boundaries for selecting implementation strategies. This report, for example, defines six distinct instantiations of the introductory curriculum and four thematic approaches to the intermediate courses. These implementations and their relationship in the structure of the curriculum as a whole are illustrated in Figure 6-1. The idea behind this structure is to offer greater flexibility by making it possible to start with any of the introductory approaches and then follow up that introduction with any of the intermediate approaches.
Figure 6-1. Course levels and implementation strategies
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Given that the implementation strategies adopt different approaches and cover different material, it is difficult to make the various tracks directly interchangeable. To offer institutions as much flexibility as possible, we have tried to eliminate significant transition problems by adopting the following policies:
As illustrated in Figure 6-1, a complete undergraduate curriculum consists of an introductory phase to establish basic foundations for further study, an intermediate phase to cover most of the core units in the body of knowledge, and additional advanced courses to round out the curriculum. Institutions that adopt the CC2001 model will typically begin by choosing an implementation for the introductory phase and an implementation for the intermediate phase. In most cases, institutions will then adapt each of these implementations to fit the particular characteristics of the institution, the preferences of the faculty, and the needs of the students. In doing so, it is important to ensure that the curriculum that results includes at least the minimum coverage specified in the core of the body of knowledge. If specific core units are not included in the introductory and intermediate phase, the institution must then ensure that students acquire this material in advanced courses and set the requirements for graduation accordingly. Beyond the coverage of the computer science core, institutions must ensure that students acquire the necessary background in other areas, as described in Chapter 9.
Figures 6-2 and 6-3 show two examples of how to combine the courses from Appendix B so that they cover the computer science core. The model in Figure 6-2 uses the imperative-first implementation for the introductory phase and a traditional topics-based model for the intermediate courses; the model in Figure 6-3 uses an objects-first introductory strategy and the compressed approach for the intermediate level. Other combinations will work as well. To help potential adopters determine whether a set of courses covers the core, the CC2001 web site includes a curriculum worksheet implemented as a Java applet.
The tables shown in Figures 6-2 and 6-3 also illustrate the importance of redundant coverage in ensuring that the individual models are interchangeable. The final column in each table shows the number of additional hours allocated to the various units under that combination. The entry for PL3 (Introduction to language translation) in Figure 6-2, for example, indicates that the two core hours assigned to this unit are included in both CS112I and CS210T. Adopters choosing this pair of strategies could either leave the coverage out of one of the courses, thereby making time for additional topics, or include it in both to reinforce the students' understanding of the material.
Figure 6-2. Covering the core using the strategies "imperative-first" and "topics"
Figure 6-3. Covering the core using the strategies "objects-first" and "compressed"
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December 15, 2001 |
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