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Social networks generate interest in computer science

Published: 03 March 2006 Publication History

Abstract

For forty years programming has been the foundation of introductory computer science. Despite exponential increases in computational power during this period, examples used in introductory courses have remained largely unchanged. The incredible growth in statistics courses at all levels, in contrast with the decline of students taking computer science courses, points to the potential for introducing computer science at many levels without emphasizing the process of programming: leverage the expertise and role-models provided by high school mathematics teachers by studying topics that arise from social networks and modeling to introduce computer science as an alternative to the traditional programming approach. This new approach may capture the interest of a broad population of students, crossing gender boundaries. We are developing modules that we hope will capture student interest and provide a compelling yet intellectually rich area of study. We plan to incorporate these modules into existing courses in math, statistics, and computer science at a wide variety of schools at all levels.

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cover image ACM Conferences
SIGCSE '06: Proceedings of the 37th SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education
March 2006
612 pages
ISBN:1595932593
DOI:10.1145/1121341
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 03 March 2006

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  1. computer science education
  2. programming
  3. social networks

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