The new science students in too much, too soon an abbreviated, accelerated, constructivist, collaborative, introductory experience in CS
Samuel A. Rebelsky · ACM SIGCSE Bulletin · 2005
Although faculty are most accustomed to teaching semester-long traditional courses, they are encountering an increasing number of situations in which they must teach "courses" of only a few hours that are intended to give others a "flavor" of the discipline. Such situations include alumni events, orientation activities for incoming or potential students, and community outreach programs. In many disciplines, faculty can rely on participants' academic or basic skills (e.g., how to dissect an argument; basic laboratory skills). In computer science, faculty must accept not only a lack of basic skill in the discipline, but also a potential gap in knowledge of what the study of computer science entails.This paper explores the design of one such introductory experience, which is held in two two-hour sections for selected incoming science students at Grinnell College. The course emphasizes hands-on discovery, algorithm design and algorithm analysis grounded in the problem of sorting. Different faculty members in the department have taught the course three times to general success.