From shriram Thu Jul 20 21:21:53 2000 From: Shriram Krishnamurthi MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <14711.46017.559998.739342@sun.cs.rice.edu> Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 21:21:53 -0500 (CDT) To: plt-design CC: sbloch@adelphi.edu Subject: trip report X-Mailer: VM 6.72 under 21.1 (patch 10) "Capitol Reef" XEmacs Lucid Reply-To: shriram@cs.rice.edu I spent the weekend at Durham giving a talk at Duke to the First Year Instruction conference founded by Owen Astrachan. The talk was a huge success. Not only did the audience enjoy the talk itself, they seemed to get quite a bit out of it. Later, I noticed that several different people had taken more notes during our talk than in the rest of the workshop. TeachScheme! also sprang up in many breakout discussion sessions, even in ones on seemingly unrelated subjects. (Once again, it helped to have Rich Clements present.) Especially interested were people from schools of a humbler disposition, schools looking to increase enrollment of some group or another, and schools without significant AP pressure on their curriculum. Another small victory came from the presence of several AP people in the audience. They recognized both the impact of the talk and the value of the curriculum. I think, frankly, it caught them by surprise. It's not much, but it could be a start. Our most significant contribution was that TeachScheme! ended up dominating almost the entire conversation. Not a session went by without a significant discussion of Scheme. Every speaker after me felt compelled to (a) rework their talk at least slightly, and (b) admit that their curricular impact likely paled in comparison. Some people were so impressed by the curriculum that they were explaining its finer points to each other. Example: Will Jones of Central Conn State U pointed out to a small group, "Don't you see it? When we ask our students to write down examples, they draw boxes and arrows, which they don't know how to translate into Java. These guys write down actual values in source syntax, so there's never any confusion about how to turn it into a test. Students are much more likely to actually use them." This from a person who had called me the previous evening (before the workshop) to chat with anyone he could find. A few observations: - Few of the people teaching Java or C++ seem to truly enjoy their content the way we do. - Many people are outright embarassed by their courses and intro curricula. Every little nudge from us helps them along in the right direction. - Our biggest argument comes not from all the benefits of TeachScheme! but rather from a combination of TeachScheme! and TeachJava. What people really want to hear is this: At the end of one year, your students from the combined sequence will come out much better prepared than those who have learned only Java until then. Remember this. Repeat it. - Many schools face engineering school pressures. It appears -- perhaps this is an excuse for some, but it isn't for all -- that without these pressures, fewer people would be so tied to industrial languages. There is definitely a realization that CS ought to take control of defining CS. - The "core of a liberal arts" argument appeals to many. I began my talk asking how many thought they could argue with their faculty senates that CS belonged in the core. Nobody. We were also recognized by powerful people from Duke, Berkeley, Arizona, Dartmouth, Washington, etc. I think they would really like to see us show up at SIGCSE, and I see their logic. Many people are sympathetic; they would like to see something like this succeed. A few different people said we ought to see this as a five year effort. That, of course, is what it's taken to get the high school program to a respectable state. Shriram