Computing Curricula 2001
-- DRAFT (March 6, 2000) --
Chapter 3
Computing and Change
Today, as we enter a new millennium, computing is an enormously vibrant field.
From its inception just half a century ago, computing has become the defining technology
of our age. Computers are integral to modern culture and are the primary engine behind
much of the world's economic growth. The field, moreover, continues to evolve at an
astonishing pace. New technologies are introduced continually, and existing ones
become obsolete in the space of a few years.
The rapid evolution of the discipline has a profound effect on computing education,
affecting both content and pedagogy. When CC1991 was published, for example,
networking was not seen as a major topic area, accounting for only six hours in the
common requirements. The lack of emphasis on networking is not particularly
surprising. After all, networking was not yet a mass-market phenomenon, and the World
Wide Web was little more than an idea in the minds of its creators. Today, a mere ten
years later, networking and the web have become the underpinning for much of our
economy. They have become critical foundations of the computing domain, and it is
impossible to imagine that undergraduate programs would not devote significantly more
time to this topic. At the same time, the existence of the web has changed the nature of
the educational process itself. Modern networking technology enhances everyone's
ability to communicate and gives people throughout the world unprecedented access to
information. In most academic programs today -- not only in computing but in other
fields as well -- networking technology has become an essential pedagogical tool.
The charter of the CC2001 Task Force asks us to "review the Joint ACM and
IEEE/CS Computing Curricula 1991 and develop a revised and enhanced version for the
year 2001 that will match the latest developments of computing technologies." To do so,
we felt it was important to spend part of our effort getting a sense of what aspects of
computing had changed over the last decade. We believe that these changes fall into two
categories -- technological and cultural -- each of which have a significant effect on
computing education. The major changes in each of these categories are described in the
individual sections that follow.
Much of the change that affects computing comes from advances in technology. Many of
these advances are part of a ongoing evolutionary process that has continued for many
years. Moore's Law -- the 1965 prediction by Intel founder Gordon Moore that
microprocessor chip density would double every eighteen months -- continues to hold
true. As a result, we have seen exponential increases in available computing power that
have made it possible to solve problems that would have been out of reach just a few
short years ago. Other changes in the discipline, such as the rapid growth of networking
after the appearance of the World Wide Web, are more dramatic, suggesting that change
also occurs in revolutionary steps. Both evolutionary and revolutionary change affects
the body of knowledge required for computing and the educational process.
Technological advancement over the past decade has increased the importance of
many curricular topics, such as the following:
- The World Wide Web and its applications
- Networking technologies, particularly those based on TCP/IP
- Graphics and multimedia
- Embedded systems
- Relational databases
- Interoperability
- Object-oriented programming
- The use of sophisticated application programmer interfaces (APIs)
- Human-computer interaction
- Software safety
- Security and cryptography
- Application domains
As these topics increase in prominence, it is tempting to include them as
undergraduate requirements. Unfortunately, the restrictions of most degree programs
make it difficult to add new topics without taking others away. It is often impossible to
cover new areas without reducing the amount of time devoted to more traditional topics
whose importance has arguably faded with time, such as assembly language
programming, formal semantics, and numerical analysis.
Computing education is also affected by changes in the cultural and sociological context
in which it occurs. The following changes, for example, have all had an influence on the
nature of the educational process:
- Changes in pedagogy enabled by new technologies. The technological
changes that have driven the recent expansion of computing have direct implications
on the culture of education. Computer networks, for example, make distance
education much more feasible, leading to enormous growth in this area. Those
networks also make it much easier to share curricular material among widely
distributed institutions. Technology also affects the nature of pedagogy.
Demonstration software, computer projection, and individual laboratory stations have
made a significant difference in the way computing is taught. The design of
computing curricula must take into account those changing technologies.
- The dramatic growth of computing throughout the world. Computing
has expanded enormously over the last decade. For example, in 1990, few
households -- even in the United States -- were connected to the Internet. A U.S.
Department of Commerce study [33] revealed
that by 1999 over a third of all Americans had Internet access from some location.
Similar growth patterns have occurred in most other countries as well. The explosion
in the access to computing brings with it many changes that affect education, including
a general increase in the familiarity of students with computing and its applications
along with a widening gap between the skill levels of those that have had access and
those who have not.
- The growing economic influence of computing technology. The
dramatic excitement surrounding high-tech industry, as evidenced by the Internet
startup fever of the past five years, has significant effects on education and its available
resources. The enormous demand for computing expertise and the vision of large
fortunes to be made has attracted many more students to the field, including some who
have little intrinsic interest in the material. At the same time, the demand from
industry has made it harder for most institutions to attract and retain faculty, imposing
significant limits on the capacity of those institutions to meet the demand.
- Greater acceptance of computing as an academic discipline. In its
early years, computing had to struggle for legitimacy in many institutions. It was, after
all, a new discipline without the historical foundations that support most academic
fields. To some extent, this problem persisted through the creation of CC1991, which
was closely associated with the Computing as a Discipline report [14]. Partly as a result of the entry of computing
technology into the cultural and economic mainstream, the battle for legitimacy has
largely been won. On many campuses, computing has become one of the largest and
most active disciplines. There is no longer any need to defend the inclusion of
computing education within the academy. The problem today is to find ways to meet
the demand.
- Broadening of the discipline. As our discipline has grown and gained
legitimacy, it has also broadened in scope. In its early years, computing was primarily
focused on computer science, which had its roots in mathematics and electrical
engineering. Over the years, an increasing number of fields have become part of a
much larger, more encompassing discipline of computing. Our CC2001 Task Force
believes that understanding how those specialties fit together and how the broadening
of the discipline affects computing education must be a critical component of our
work.
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CC2001 Report
DRAFT -- March 6, 2000
This report is a working draft and does not carry
any endorsement from the sponsoring organizations
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