| Edited by Diane McGrath, Kansas State University |
formerly Journal of Research on Computing in
Education Language Choice
and Key
Concepts in Introductory
Computer Science Courses
Chris Stephenson and Tom West
Computer Systems Research Institute,
University
of Toronto
Abstract
Because computer science is a complex and rapidly evolving
discipline, educators at all levels have been
required to
revise their curricula as new paradigms and tools
emerge.
Since 1968, there have been three major computer
science
curriculum documents for the first course at the
college/university
level (CS1), and recent research shows no
diminishment of
this rate of evolution. This article reports on a
survey
of 900 postsecondary institutions in North America
that
offer a CS1 course. The results demonstrate that
despite
differing course descriptions, there is a key set
of computer
science concepts common to most CS1 courses. They
also indicate
that over the last two years there has been a
significant
shift in programming language use for CS1,
centering on
the replacement of Pascal with C and C++. This
ascendancy
may, however, be short-lived, as many of those
presently
using C++ indicate that they are considering a
further switch
to Java over the next two years.
Contributors
Chris Stephenson is a research assistant at the
University
of Toronto's Computer Systems Research Group. Tom
West is
the vice president of research and development at
Holt Software
in Toronto. (Address: Chris Stephenson, CSRI,
University
of Toronto, 6 King's College Road, Toronto, ON M5S
1A1 Canada;
chris@hsa.on.ca.)
A PDF file of the full article is available.
Contact: jrte@iste.org. Please
specifiy Volume and Issue number and article name.
Copyright ©
1998, ISTE (International
Society for Technology in Education).
All rights reserved.
| study of the evolutionary rate of CS1 courses, programming coursework |
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