Introduction to Computing: Interdisciplinary Course Design

This Innovative Practice Category Work In Progress paper presents course design for an interdisciplinary course that can be offered to engineering and computer science students. Engineering disciplines use technology and engineers deal with computing machines to perform day to day activities. The engineers who use such technologies have to be informed users of technology and also are expected to aid in the advancement of technology. Engineers must have sufficient computer skills. An engineering curriculum must help students acquire these skill sets. Employers note that except for a few, most engineering graduates struggle with learning new technologies and putting them to practice. Computer science students who are technically strong are not getting enough exposure to interdisciplinary projects within their curriculum. Computer science students often note not having enough experience working with diverse problem sets inside their curriculum, which is a key for being successful in any industry after graduation. This paper is about introducing an interdisciplinary course across engineering and computer science disciplines that aims at fixing the above two deficiencies. The course is designed for freshman and will enroll students from computer science and engineering disciplines. The curriculum design will aim at teaching computing concepts with interdisciplinary engineering problem sets. This approach is a unique effort as the objectives of the course are completely different from the typical courses offered within the computer science and engineering disciplines. This course will focus on teaching basic computing skills, basic programming, implementing solutions to interdisciplinary problems sets, choice and use of software tools that aid problem solving, and effectively working across interdisciplinary teams. Designing instructional materials and assessment tools to develop this unique mix of skill sets will be addressed in this paper. This effort is just underway; the interdisciplinary course developed will aim at getting used across institutions to serve a similar purpose.