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Learning Computer Science is Different than Learning Other STEM Disciplines

posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday January 10 2018, @09:10PM   
from the does-it-count-as-a-foreign-language dept.

fliptop writes:

Mark Guzdial at ACM (Association of Computing Machinery) writes:

I have three reasons for thinking that learning CS is different than learning other STEM disciplines.

1. Our infrastructure for teaching CS is younger, smaller, and weaker;
2. We don't realize how hard learning to program is;
3. CS is so valuable that it changes the affective components of learning.

The author makes compelling arguments to support the claims, ending with:

We are increasingly finding that the emotional component of learning computing (e.g., motivation, feeling of belonging, self-efficacy) is among the most critical variables. When you put more and more students in a high-pressure, competitive setting, and some of whom feel "like" the teacher and some don't, you get emotional complexity that is unlike any other STEM discipline. Not mathematics, any of the sciences, or any of the engineering disciplines are facing growing numbers of majors and non-majors at the same time. That makes learning CS different and harder.

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Original Submission

• Re: Lameness filter encountered. Article Mocked Re: Lameness filter encountered. Article Mocked (Score: 2) by Wootery on Thursday January 11 2018, @03:41PM (1 child)

  by Wootery (2341) on Thursday January 11 2018, @03:41PM (#620948)

  Computer science courses, generally, still try to teach you all of computer science

  Disagree. I had to choose my optional modules. I chose some topics, and necessarily didn't study the others. I have a passable grasp of computer architecture and compilers, but know little about, say, real-time systems, or video processing. I don't how it could be otherwise. CS isn't a small field of study.

  people expect to hire fresh computer science graduates that have detailed knowledge of things that have little relevance to an academic subject.

  There is in practice relatively little difference between a computer science degree and a software engineering degree, sure.

  Parent

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• Re: Lameness filter encountered. Article Mocked (Score: 2) by TheRaven on Thursday January 11 2018, @05:05PM

  by TheRaven (270) on Thursday January 11 2018, @05:05PM (#620981) Journal

  Disagree. I had to choose my optional modules. I chose some topics, and necessarily didn't study the others.

  When did you have to choose? In the UK, most computer science degrees only have optional components in the final year. In contrast, most places don't offer general engineering degrees, they offer electrical engineering, civil engineering, and so on. Physics and mathematics are often offered as a single degree course, but you have optional components from the first year and by the second you may be doing a completely disjoint set of courses to other people taking nominally the same degree. Two people with mathematics degrees will both know algebra, but beyond that they may have taken completely different paths. Two people with computer science degrees will almost certainly have done courses in databases, object-oriented programming, functional programming, graphics, sorting and searching algorithms, and various bits of discrete maths.

  There's a lot more material that is taught to every computer science student than pretty much any other STEM subject that isn't a narrow specialism.

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  sudo mod me up

  Parent