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Design Principles behind Beauty and Joy of Computing

Authors:

Paul Goldenberg,

Mary FriesAuthors Info & Claims

SIGCSE '20: Proceedings of the 51st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

Pages 220 - 226

https://doi.org/10.1145/3328778.3366794

Published: 26 February 2020 Publication History

Abstract

This paper shares the design principles of one Advanced Placement Computer Science Principles (AP CSP) course, Beauty and Joy of Computing (BJC), both for schools considering curriculum, and for developers in this still-new field. BJC students not only learn about CS, but do some and analyze its social implications; we feel that the job of enticing students into the field isn't complete until students find programming, itself, something they enjoy and know they can do, and its key ideas accessible. Students must feel invited to use their own creativity and logic, and enjoy the power of their logic and the beauty and elegance of the code by which they express it. All kids need genuine challenge and sensible support so all can have the joy of making-seeing themselves as creators, not just consumers, and seeing that it is their own intellect, not just our instructions, that is the source of that making. Framework standards are woven into a consistent social and intellectual storyline to give the curriculum integrity. Principles guide even our choice of programming language. Learners should focus on the logic and structure of their thinking, not on misplaced semicolons; attention to such syntactic detail is antithetical to broadening participation. We feature recursion and higher-order functions because they beautifully exemplify abstraction, a key idea in CS and the CSP framework. BJC also places significant emphasis on the social implications of computing, balancing fundamental optimism about computing technology with a critical view of specific uses of technology.

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Cited By

White PFlatland RMatthews JMoya JSchiller KStephenson BStone JBattestilli LRebelsky SShoop L(2024)Discovering Computer Science: A High School CS Course Co-developed by College & High School TeachersProceedings of the 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 210.1145/3626253.3635507(1855-1856)Online publication date: 14-Mar-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3626253.3635507
Wang WBacher JIsvik ALimke ASthapit SShi YTabarsi BTran KCateté VBarnes TMartens CPrice T(2023)Investigating the Impact of On-Demand Code Examples on Novices' Open-Ended Programming ExperienceProceedings of the 2023 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research - Volume 110.1145/3568813.3600141(464-475)Online publication date: 7-Aug-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3568813.3600141
Garcia DFries MBall MFox PGelosi DMock LDastur DBriccetti DKahn BDoyle MStephenson BDorn BSoh LBattestilli L(2023)BJC SparksProceedings of the 54th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3545945.3569842(451-457)Online publication date: 2-Mar-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3545945.3569842
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Design Principles behind Beauty and Joy of Computing
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computing education programs
        Computer science education

Index terms have been assigned to the content through auto-classification.

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cover image ACM Conferences

SIGCSE '20: Proceedings of the 51st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

February 2020

1502 pages

ISBN:9781450367936

DOI:10.1145/3328778

General Chairs:
Jian Zhang
Texas Woman's University, USA
,
Mark Sherriff
University of Virginia, USA
,
Program Chairs:
Sarah Heckman
North Carolina State University, USA
,
Pamela Cutter
Kalamazoo College, USA
,
Alvaro Monge
California State University, Long Beach, USA

Copyright © 2020 ACM.

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 the author(s) 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: 26 February 2020

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Cited By

White PFlatland RMatthews JMoya JSchiller KStephenson BStone JBattestilli LRebelsky SShoop L(2024)Discovering Computer Science: A High School CS Course Co-developed by College & High School TeachersProceedings of the 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 210.1145/3626253.3635507(1855-1856)Online publication date: 14-Mar-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3626253.3635507
Wang WBacher JIsvik ALimke ASthapit SShi YTabarsi BTran KCateté VBarnes TMartens CPrice T(2023)Investigating the Impact of On-Demand Code Examples on Novices' Open-Ended Programming ExperienceProceedings of the 2023 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research - Volume 110.1145/3568813.3600141(464-475)Online publication date: 7-Aug-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3568813.3600141
Garcia DFries MBall MFox PGelosi DMock LDastur DBriccetti DKahn BDoyle MStephenson BDorn BSoh LBattestilli L(2023)BJC SparksProceedings of the 54th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3545945.3569842(451-457)Online publication date: 2-Mar-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3545945.3569842
Bosley BHarrington CMorris SLe Dantec C(2022)Healing Justice: A Framework for Collective Healing and Well-Being from Systemic TraumasProceedings of the 2022 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3532106.3533492(471-484)Online publication date: 13-Jun-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3532106.3533492
Billingsley WVitale JSchulte CBecker BDivitini MBarendsen E(2021)An Accelerated CS0 for Online Mature-Age Part-Time StudentsProceedings of the 26th ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3430665.3456361(526-532)Online publication date: 26-Jun-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3430665.3456361
Meza FTorres NVasquez A(2020)Fostering Engagement and Creativity through Programming: The Beauty and Joy of Computing in a First-year Engineering class2020 39th International Conference of the Chilean Computer Science Society (SCCC)10.1109/SCCC51225.2020.9281159(1-5)Online publication date: 16-Nov-2020
https://doi.org/10.1109/SCCC51225.2020.9281159

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