Creative Computing and Society: When Undergraduates Design a Curriculum for an Introductory Computing Course

Abstract

Understanding of computing skills and concepts is no longer viewed as optional, but is knowledge that is required to progress in several fields outside of computer science, even outside STEM fields. Despite the need for this knowledge, non-STEM majors' participation in computing courses is still lacking. This is especially true for women and other minority groups. In our work, our main motivation was creating a course at our institution, Bucknell University to make computer science more accessible to non-STEM majors on our campus. We adopted an approach of situating course design in the experiences and perspectives of undergraduate students themselves. To achieve this, the course curriculum and materials were mainly designed and created by three undergraduate students, all below the junior level, who connected course topics to a wide variety of topics outside computing. This project is based on the precept that students from varied disciplinary backgrounds and intermediate computing knowledge can provide a unique lens to articulate the needs of their fellow students. In order to serve the purpose of emphasizing creativity and society, we chose a sketch based programming language, namely p5.js (a JavaScript library which brings Processing to the web), which gives students the possibility and flexibility to create projects that are directly relevant to their own interests, while gaining a basic conceptual understanding of Computer Science