November 14, 2007

Purdue to integrate computational thinking into general science education

Representatives from a broad range of institutions, including other Big Ten institutions, small liberal arts colleges in the Midwest, and representatives from industry will attend the workshop, which is funded by the National Science Foundation. The workshop, Science Education in Computational Thinking, will address how computation and computational thinking should be integrated into the curriculum so that science students are better prepared for the future. The workshop is part of a three-year project funded by the NSF's Pathways to Revitalize Undergraduate Computing Education initiative.

"The project focuses on teaching students to think in terms of computational processes, understand what can be computed and use computation to solve, model and analyze scientific problems without having to become a traditional programmer," said Susanne Hambrusch, who leads Purdue's project and is a professor of computer science. "Computing has become indispensable to scientific inquiry and is set to permeate science in a transformative manner.

"Our goal is to bring together computer scientists and natural scientists to develop new courses focused on the computational understanding relevant to tomorrow's scientist and to change computing from a service discipline for the sciences into a fundamental paradigm for science in general."

Other members of the multidisciplinary group include professors of computer science Christoph Hoffmann, Antony Hosking and Tim Korb, in addition to professor of physics Mark Haugan, professor of statistics and computer science Olga Vitek, and professor of chemistry Sabre Kais.

The group has been awarded a three-year grant totaling $446,000. The project consists of two main components: new course development and annual workshops.

The first workshop will include talks, panel presentations and roundtable discussions. It will cover topics including creating a dialog between natural scientists and computer scientists, programming in the small- versus the big-picture approach, relevant projects for science students, use of visualization in understanding computational and scientific processes, building a community for sharing resources, and the next generation of scientists in the work force.

The course development effort complements the new College of Science curriculum, which includes a requirement that all science students take at least one course in computing and at least one course that provides a multidisciplinary experience.

The project team will design a two-course sequence introducing science majors to computational thinking, to the parallels between computational concepts and scientific models, and to the role of computation in exploring and understanding physical phenomena.

The first course "Introduction to Computational Thinking" is currently being developed and will be offered in spring 2008. A second course "Computation and Scientific Discovery" will focus on simulation and the management of massive data.

More information is available online at https://secant.cs.purdue.edu

Writer: Elizabeth Gardner, (765) 494-2081, ekgardner@purdue.edu

Source:    Susanne Hambrusch, seh@cs.purdue.edu

Nicole Piegza, computer science department secretary, (765) 494-9431, piegza@cs.purdue.edu

Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu

Note to Journalists: The workshop will be in the Lawson Computer Science Building, Room 3102.  A full agenda for the workshop is available online at https://secant.cs.purdue.edu/agenda.

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