Computer Science Curriculum Workshop

Wednesday–Friday, July 17–19, 2013

Agenda Versions: Pre-workshop agenda Revision for Thursday Revision for Friday
  Time Main Topic Starting Activities/Questions Links
Day 1: Theme: Feedback from Interviews and Surveys 9:00 Review of department activities, goals, and priorities
  • Develop a list of various jobs and activities in the department
  • Review who does what
 
9:30 Exit Interviews
  • Reporting of responses
  • What themes can we identify?
Notes from student exit interviews
11:15 Alumni Surveys
  • Review of Alumni Survey Data
  • What topics do we seem to be covering well?
  • What new or different topics should we consider?
  • What additional themes do alumni suggest?
Notes from alumni surveys
11:40 Academic Honesty policies and practices
  • What practices do we follow?
  • What recent issues have we encountered?
  • How should we handle citation of individual versus collaborative procedures?
  • How can we clarify and enforce rules for individual work on assignments?
  • How can we distinguish between rules for labs and rules for other activities (when we want to make those distinctions)?
Policy statements for various courses
  Additional Topics as Time Permits
  • Change in format/approach for CS2013 template spreadsheet
  • Status of tutors, mentors, assistants for 2013-2014
  • Nominations for students for Iowa Women of Innovation
  • Schedule for LACS
  • Schedule for Iowa Private College Week
  • Screening of Codebreaker film scheduled for Friday, October 11, at 7:00 pm;
    how to organize question and answer session
  • Contributions for CS Computer Museum
    • from Nathaniel Borenstein
    • from Bob Cadmus
  • Regularizing Computer Vision course
  • Admission talk on CS on July 24 at 10:00
  • Hanging new art work
  • Possible use of ACM authorize option for published-paper access
  • Ongoing discussion of helping students feel/be included in group work
  • Feedback welcome on Noyce Fun Facts for Admission
 
Day 2: Theme: Review of Current Course Content 9:00 Mapping Grinnell's curriculum to CS2013 General review of all courses CS2013 Ironman Draft
9:45 Small groups to work on CS2013 spreadsheet CS 2013 link to spreadsheet template "Course and Curriculum Exemplars" and then "Curriculum"
11:00 Review of draft CS2013 spreadsheet
11:20 Email on MathLAN Discussion of Policies, Procedures, Adjustments
11:40 Bulletin boards
  • What needs to be displayed (departmental materials, SEPC, announcements, posters, others?)
  • How much space is really needed?
  • Constraints
  • Options
Day 3: Theme: Possible New Directions 9:00 Projects in the CS Curriculum
  • Should projects span over 2 semesters?
  • Should projects be 2 credits/semester or 4 credits?
  • Should projects extend over multiple semesters with multiple groups?
  • Should MAPs be allowed to count toward the project requirement?
10:00 The major requirement in systems
  • Should there be a 1-semester systems course introducing concepts of both architecture and operating systems?
  • Should concurrency be a separate 2- or 4-credit course?
  • Where might issues of networking fit within the systems requirement?
  • Where might issues of security fit within the systems requirement?
11:00 The major requirement for languages
  • What are our goals for our language requirement?
  • How much formalism should be included?
  • Should scripting languages have a more central role?
  • Should event-driven problem solving be emphasized somewhere?
  • Should parallel languages be emphasized?
11:30 Identification of next steps
  • What, if any, changes do we want to make short term? long-term?
  • Are there areas for which we need additional discussion?
  • Who wants to do what?