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CS for All

cs.hmc.edu

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Re: CS for All

#11

Post by tathougies »

PascLeRasc wrote: post #10
mjn wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a good idea, but fwiw it's not CS-specific. Harvey Mudd's idea isn't that CS is so uniquely important that everyone should take it, but rather than everyone should take a lot of things, regardless of major, and CS is one of those things. The curriculum is designed with a philosophy of fairly broad education, kind of in line with a liberal-arts college ideal, but with more of a STEM flavor. I was a CS maj…

What do they cover in the basic general engineering course?

The course covers signals and systems. We talk about ways of modeling physical and electrical systems (or any other system really) as combinations of smaller components, and use the characterizations we derive of the smaller systems to characterize behavior of the larger ones. We use tools like the fourier transform to simplify the analysis.

This wikibook seems to cover the same topics: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Signals_and_Systems

Re: CS for All

#13

Post by Zombieball »

mynameisvlad wrote: post #6
allencoin wrote: post #2

>At Mudd, this course is taken by almost every first-year student—irrespective of the student’s ultimate major—as part of our core curriculum. Thus, it serves as a first computing course for future CS majors and a first and last computing course for many other students. This is a great thing to offer students and I wish my University had made this a part of the curriculum. Somehow I managed to have practically zero e…

The University of British Columbia also has something similar, CS110 which uses a subset of Racket (Beginning/Intermediate/Advanced Student Language) to teach core CS concepts to a wide range of students. The course videos are all available on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7dEjIUwSxSNcW4PqNRQW8w/pla... and I believe the "Systematic Program Design" courses on EdX are an expanded version of the course.

Interestingly there is a common tie between Mudd and UBC: Maria Klawe (a truly inspirational woman). I would t doubt she had her part in both these courses.

Re: CS for All

#14

Post by bgribble »

PascLeRasc wrote: post #10
mjn wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a good idea, but fwiw it's not CS-specific. Harvey Mudd's idea isn't that CS is so uniquely important that everyone should take it, but rather than everyone should take a lot of things, regardless of major, and CS is one of those things. The curriculum is designed with a philosophy of fairly broad education, kind of in line with a liberal-arts college ideal, but with more of a STEM flavor. I was a CS maj…

What do they cover in the basic general engineering course?

When I took it ~25 years ago it was called Intro to Systems Engineering, and covered the foundational principles of control systems design and analysis of linear dynamic systems. A lot of Laplace transforms, first- and second-order differential equations, relationships between time-domain and frequency-domain behavior, etc.

Re: CS for All

#15

Post by JustSomeNobody »

Before we move to CS for all, can we at least solve the problem of Computer Literacy for all!?

There's a huge population of people who simply cannot effectively use a computer. Can we fix that first? Otherwise we're leaving them behind and that's not right.

Re: CS for All

#16

Post by rdudek »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #15

Before we move to CS for all, can we at least solve the problem of Computer Literacy for all!? There's a huge population of people who simply cannot effectively use a computer. Can we fix that first? Otherwise we're leaving them behind and that's not right.

I don't think this is a solvable problem, especially when people just don't care. There are plenty of resources from websites to youtube videos to teach users how to be more computer literate. But instead of learning, people would rather watch someone unbox candy on youtube.

Re: CS for All

#17

Post by [deleted] »

bgribble wrote: post #14
PascLeRasc wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do they cover in the basic general engineering course?

When I took it ~25 years ago it was called Intro to Systems Engineering, and covered the foundational principles of control systems design and analysis of linear dynamic systems. A lot of Laplace transforms, first- and second-order differential equations, relationships between time-domain and frequency-domain behavior, etc.

[deleted]

Re: CS for All

#18

Post by ggchappell »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #15

Before we move to CS for all, can we at least solve the problem of Computer Literacy for all!? There's a huge population of people who simply cannot effectively use a computer. Can we fix that first? Otherwise we're leaving them behind and that's not right.

How about we try to solve them simultaneously?

Re: CS for All

#19

Post by JustSomeNobody »

rdudek wrote: post #16
JustSomeNobody wrote: post #15

Before we move to CS for all, can we at least solve the problem of Computer Literacy for all!? There's a huge population of people who simply cannot effectively use a computer. Can we fix that first? Otherwise we're leaving them behind and that's not right.

I don't think this is a solvable problem, especially when people just don't care. There are plenty of resources from websites to youtube videos to teach users how to be more computer literate. But instead of learning, people would rather watch someone unbox candy on youtube.

"... people would rather watch someone unbox candy on youtube."

That made me laugh out loud. Then it made me sad again.

Look, I get we can't all know everything. I mean, we can't all be mechanics, right? But every driver should know how to check their fluids, air, etc. Maybe change a tire.

Same with computers. I don't think everyone should have to learn to code. I think that's not an ideal scenario. But I do think everyone should be computer literate for some basic definition of computer literate.

Re: CS for All

#20

Post by thescriptkiddie »

rdudek wrote: post #16
JustSomeNobody wrote: post #15

Before we move to CS for all, can we at least solve the problem of Computer Literacy for all!? There's a huge population of people who simply cannot effectively use a computer. Can we fix that first? Otherwise we're leaving them behind and that's not right.

I don't think this is a solvable problem, especially when people just don't care. There are plenty of resources from websites to youtube videos to teach users how to be more computer literate. But instead of learning, people would rather watch someone unbox candy on youtube.

Give them all copies of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Maybe they will spot the connection between John's behavior and they own.
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