Cooperative expertise for multidisciplinary computing

Abstract

As the need for multidisciplinary computing education continues to increase, consideration for distributed expertise will become critical to implementing a successful curriculum. A model of cooperative expertise is presented in which faculty maintain responsibility for their own course, creating and evaluating assignments for their students that support learning in their colleagues' courses as well. We present outcomes of an experiment to implement this model at two geographically separated institutions through three courses (two at one institution, one at the other), by faculty in computer science, media and English. Results reported include faculty analysis of student achievement in each course and student surveys of attitudes toward multidisciplinary collaboration. Overall, student learning and attitudes are enhanced by the collaborative experience.

Exploring Journalism and Computer Science Student Collaboration

“…2. While there is a growing body of literature on computing education for non-computer science majors (e.g., Pulimood et al, 2016;Wolz et al, 2011), this article leans more heavily towards the context of journalism. Consequently, it is beyond our scope to provide a thorough examination of computing education in non-computer science education.…”

Reading mobile games throughout the curriculum

“…Collaboration is the Norm: Not only do modern programmers typically work with other programmers, they also often must work closely with experts in other disciplines [28]. If students are not permitted to use copyrighted material, then there is an incentive to either develop friendships with students majoring in digital design and music, or to explore their own latent artistic abilities, even if only to modify royalty-free media.…”

“…The quality of the artwork was exceptional, and the designers were graded and supervised by an expert in their field, rather than a computer scientist. By coordinating with an independent study, we were able to overcome some of the administrative challenges discussed by Wolz et al [28]. Furthermore, we made it explicit that the artists were on equal footing: CS students who made lastminute requests for artwork changes, or who did not work with their consultant early to specify their needs, received no sympathy from the artists or instructor.…”