User:Bwillkie

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1 What am I doing here?
2 Why a Programming Class for Liberal Arts Majors?
3 Classes
4 Computing and the Humanities Resources
5 People who do Computing and the Humanities
6 Resources on Curriculum Development
7 Books on CS Pedagogy
8 Computing and the Humanities Bibliography
9 Languages to consider
10 Miscellaneous

What am I doing here?

I'm a Ph.D. student here at LSU studying music composition with a strong background in electronic music and computer programming. Here's some shameless self-promotion. I hope to find a job teaching, preferably building on my programming expertise, possibly teaching computer programming to artists / liberal arts majors. I'm interested in developing courses such as Multimedia Literacy, Introductory Programming for Liberal Arts research, Image Processing/Digital Signal Processing for artists and/or scientists, distributed computing. etc. This page represents the results of my efforts (with the help of fellow workshop participants and instructors) at articulating this goal, evidence for it's adaptation, and examples of prior work. Feel free to look over my notes below. Any suggestions/advice as to how to develop courses like this, or even better, how to convince an administrator to add such courses, is greatly welcome.

Why a Programming Class for Liberal Arts Majors?

computers are tools that can make research easier, or in some cases make it possible

computers are tools that can make it easier to create digital art, or in some cases make it possible

computers are general purpose tools. sophisticated computer processing skills can transfer from one domain to another opening up new opportunities for creative expression, interdisciplinary research, funding, and job opportunities (particularly for disciplines that may have intangible deliverables like the fine arts)

computers are increasingly required to solve large-scale, complex, interdisciplinary problems. these research problems also require specialists from multiple domains. there is increasing funding and support within the sciences for interdisciplinary research. the absence of interdisciplinary courses in the liberal arts puts students in those disciplines at an even greater disadvantage than they already face in a society so strongly driven by tangible deliverables.

interdisciplinary research can pose opportunities for liberal arts majors and science majors to interact with each other, perhaps developing a better understanding of their own disciplines as well as other disciplines, a healthy respect for each other, and an appreciation of what each has to offer the other

computer science departments have enough to do offering courses for CS majors and really cannot be taxed with supporting all of the CS pedagogy needs of every department

non-CS majors have different needs than CS majors, again it is beyond the scope of the CS department to support these specialized needs

a number of large, well-funded, big-name universities are already on the bandwagon:

Prior Examples of CS in the Humanities

Prior Examples of CS in the Liberal Arts

Classes

One problem I have is that there are too many things I want to learn/teach. Listing them all here helps me articulate my argument, but I'm not likely to add more than one or two classes at a time. I can focus on the novice level classes, but how can I present projects that are compelling enough to catch the interest of novice students and convince them to come back for more? N.B. Some of this could be handled by people in other disciplines (especially statistics based data analysis and advanced domain-specific applications), but then again, perhaps not...

Note: these ideas are not fleshed out yet...

Multimedia Literacy

Breadth/Overview (maybe this could/should be split/repeated between Multimedia Literacy and Programming Lite. Just how much programming can you do without the basics, or what are the bare minimum basics necessary to do something interesting?)

Data Representation

Programming Lite

Distributed Computing (this is interesting, partly because I have some experience with it, and partly because this is a likely direction for programming over the next 15 to 20 years, but frankly I have a hard time coming up with sufficiently large programs, particularly for the uninitiated...)

Advanced Seminar in Domain-Specific Applications (this is what I'm really interested in, but my opportunity to put together courses like this will depend on department support/interest/need)

Data Analysis (really interesting, but likely requires statistics and higher level math)

Computing and the Humanities Resources

Language, Resources, and Evaluation

Computing and the Humanities (no llink available)

Digital Humanities Quarterly

People who do Computing and the Humanities

(incomplete list)

Nancy M. Ide at Vassar's Department of Computer Science

Joseph Raben, Professor Emeritus of English at Queens College of CUNY

Robert S. Tannenbaum at the University of Kentucky

Joseph Rudman staff at Carnegie Mellon Physics Department

Resources on Curriculum Development

(incomplete list)

The National Academy for Academic Leadership

Curriculum Development Process Handbook from the Morain Valley Community College!

Books on CS Pedagogy

(incomplete list)

How to Design Programs: An Introduction to Programming and Computing by Matthias Felleisen, Robert Bruce Findler, Matthew Flatt, and Shriram Krishnamurthi 5-star rating at Amazon

How to Think Like a Programmer: Problem Solving for the Bewildered by Paul Vickers (found this at the ICAD 2008 conference)

Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software by Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, and John M. Vlissides

A Little SmallTalk by Timothy Budd