Computing Curricula 2001

-- DRAFT (March 6, 2000) --

Preface

This document represents the first public report of the Computing Curricula 2001 project (CC2001) -- a joint undertaking of the Computer Society of the Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE-CS) and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) to develop curricular guidelines for undergraduate programs in computing. The final report from the CC2001 Task Force is scheduled for publication in 2001. At this point in the process, one year before the anticipated publication date, we have laid much of the foundation for the final report. At the same time, we have a good deal of work ahead of us in the coming year. Our reason for circulating this early draft is to get feedback from the computing community -- practitioners, educators, and students --  on our work to date and on our overall directions for the project.

At the early task force meetings, we had decided -- as the earlier curriculum committees dating back to Curriculum '68 had done -- to direct our attention only to curricula in computer science and computer engineering. The field of computing, however, has become much broader in recent years and now incorporates many new disciplines that have established their own identity independent of traditional computer science. The feedback that we received from our prospective audience overwhelmingly supported our taking a broader view of the discipline. In this draft, we present an outline of how we intend to expand our scope without becoming so general that the report loses much of its impact.

To date, we have accomplished the following tasks:

• Completed a survey and evaluation of the impact of Computing Curricula 1991
• Assessed the major changes in the discipline over the past decade
• Articulated a set of principles to guide our work
• Developed a proposed organizational structure and strategy for the final report
• Established knowledge area focus groups to define topics for specific areas
• Reviewed the reports of those working groups
• Drafted a list of areas and topics that comprise a body of knowlege for computer science
• Proposed a set of core topics for undergraduates majoring in computer science
• Created pedagogy focus groups to consider broad issues in computing education

The major tasks that remain to be done include

• Update the structure of the report in response to feedback from this draft
• Ask the pedagogy focus groups to update their reports in light of the broader scope
• Obtain final reports for the pedagogy groups and integrate them into the report
• Finalize the definition of the core so that it encompasses more of the breadth in the computing field
• Develop specific models for courses that cover the core areas
• Write the chapters on pedagogical strategies

CC2001 Report DRAFT -- March 6, 2000 This report is a working draft and does not carry any endorsement from the sponsoring organizations