Applied Computer Science for the Humanities and Social Sciences (Brown University)

PI Details

Reiss Steven spr@cs.brown.edu Brown University Computer Science

CO-PIs

Thomas Doeppner

John Hughes

Jim Jeffers

Shriram Krishnamurthi

Description

Computation and computational thinking are increasingly needed in all fields, not just the sciences. Our project involves developing an integrated and rigorous sequence of courses that teach students in the humanities and social sciences the computational skills they will need to prosper in future jobs or research. Based on exploratory work involving mini-courses and a small set of students, we taught the first course in our proposed sequence last fall. This course had the students address three specific problems, the first involving politics, the second textual analysis, and the third sociology. The course covered topics such as data gathering, data validation, data analysis, statistics, and data presentation and taught skills such as the use of Excel, creating data-oriented web pages, python programming, and geographical information systems. Students identified and then addressed their own problems using the skills they learned in group final projects. Information about the course is available at http://www.cs.brown.edu/courses/ csci0931

Audience

non-CS undergrads

Discipline

Computing in/and humanities, computing in/and social science

Pedagogic Approach

Learning computational methods by addressing specific problems in the students' areas of interest.

Success

We taught the first course in our proposed sequence and felt it went reasonably well. The students were enthusiastic.

Challenge

"Getting commitments from the department to continue teaching the course or courses after the grant expires. Convincing students in the humanities and social sciences that the course is not a ""real"" computer science course, but one they might actually be interested in."

Future Plan

We will teach the first course again next fall and plan to follow it up with the second course in the sequence in the spring.