Introducing Computer Science in a Summer Science Program

Typical schedule

• first four weeks:
  • 9a-12:30p: core courses - biology, chemistry, math, physics and CS. Each meets 4 hours/week.

  • 1:30p-4:30p: lab or team project

  • 4:30p-5:30p: elective

  • 8:00p-10:00p: social activity (optional)

• last week:
  • 8a-8p: team project

Students are very busy. Three weeks in, they're already short on sleep. By the end, most are truly exhausted.

Today I am discussing the CS core course. It's a small part of the entire PGSS academic experience: Each student attends the four sessions for each of the first four weeks. All 90 students are in the same class

Course goals

• Understand the scope of CS. The graphic I use illustrates the different aspects of CS as ``Theory,'' ``Systems,'' ``Industry,'' ``Artificial intelligence,'' and ``Programming languages.''

• Learn programming fundamentals.

• Have some fun! At a summer program like this, fun is especially important.

Topics

1 Introduction, algorithms
2  Programming    Self-study
3 fundamentals    exercises
4      "             "
1      "             "
2      "             "
3      "             "
4  Recursion         "
1       Game playing
2        Internet
3            "
4      Cryptography
1     Big-O notation
2       Algorithms
3            "
4     Conclusion, quiz

The handout (PDF) outlines the details of these topics.

While discussing programming fundamentals, the more experienced students go to the cluster to work on a sequence of exercises. After a couple of relatively simple procedural-programming exercises, there are a couple of recursion exercises, which have proven to be a challenge.

I'm planning on covering computability instead of big-O notation and algorithms, which have proved to have a high overhead before you get to the more fun stuff. The neat aspects of computability - automata, the Church-Turing thesis, and the halting problem - are more accessible.

Assignments

• each weekend, 3-6 hours.

• TAs and I have lab hours.

• two parts:
  • written portion
  • program, for which students work in self-selected teams of 1 to 3
• assignment performance forms most of evaluation.

The handout (PDF) describes the assignments in more detail.

Results

Student responses on end-of-course evaluations:

• ``How would you rate the amount and quality of learning?''

    14 among best courses even taken
    36 more/better than average (for PGSS)
    30 average (for PGSS)
     9 less/worse than average (for PGSS)
     0 almost nothing
  

  Cross-analysis with student experience shows not much difference based on previous experience.

• ``How interesting was each assignment?'' Rate on scale of 1 (boring) to 5 (fascinating).

    Assn 0    3.57
    Assn 1    3.85
    Assn 2    4.02
  

• ``How were the topics?'' Rate on scale from 1 to 5.

                  difficulty    interesting
  programming        3.17          3.36
  self-study         3.35          3.47
  Internet           2.89          3.40
  cryptography       3.32          3.61
  game playing       3.25          3.64
  big O              3.46          2.87
  algorithms         3.42          2.86
  

Gender equity

I have done no systematic analysis of females vs males, but PGSS - with its 50/50 gender ratio, all of talented, technically minded individuals - provides an interesting field for analysis.

• Students with prior experience overwhelmingly boys.

• Self-segregation into ``self-study'' very positive for regular class. They feel less intimidated from asking questions.

• Unexperienced welcome opportunity to learn. They appreciate the value of subject and want to seize the opportunity to learn something.

• Some see it as equalizer preparing for future CS classes.

One evaluation comment: ``I was very worried about the CS core course because I had never programmed before... I am much more computer literate than I was 4 weeks ago!''

My observations at PGSS lead me to believe that a required computer science course for all students - even just half a semester long - could help open the field to women and other groups. Among female students at PGSS, I do not perceive much disinterest; I do perceive concern about the ability to succeed in CS classes, a worry that leads to avoiding the subject altogether.