[an error occurred while processing this directive]
History of the Reinventing Computer Science Curriculum Project
In 2002, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE), in collaboration with the College of Education and Human Sciences (CEHS) and under the auspices of the National Center for Information Technology in Education (NCITE), undertook aligning its undergraduate curriculum to the ACM/IEEE-CS Computing Curriculum 2001. Based on a thorough and deliberate process, the curriculum was significantly updated to promote rigor. Called the Reinventing CS Curriculum Project, the goal of this process was to prepare students for the dynamic and challenging workplace in the computer science field. Our research starts with the assumption that a programming-first model is the best approach. This has been explicitly or implicitly supported in many curriculum reports for computer science starting with Curriculum'68 (e.g., ACM 1968, 1979, ACM/IEEE-CS 1991, 2001). We also believe that programming alone, without an understanding of the underlying concepts and principles, does not provide students with a sufficient foundation in computer science. The following is a timeline of the project:
- 2002 - Project created.
- Summer 2003 - Placement examination deployed as a post-test to the CS1 course.
- Fall 2003 - Placement examination has been used to place students into CS0 and CS1.
- Fall 2003 - CS1 closed laboratory was first deployed and has undergone two refinements.
- Spring 2004 - CS2 closed laboratory was first deployed and has undergone one refinement.
- Spring 2004 - First learning objects were deployed (two learning objects: Simple Class and Recursion).
- Spring 2005 - CS0 closed laboratory was over-hauled.
- Fall 2005 - project website deployed
