International Computing Issues as a Freshman Seminar Chris Healy Furman University CCSC-E October 31, 2009

Introduction Freshman seminar program The need for verbal-oriented course Global & green issues was my focus ACM/IEEE curriculum 2001 – SP2 (Social context of computing) – SP7 (Privacy and civil liberties) – SP9 (Economic issues in computing)

Approach Articles, mostly from IEEE Computer and CACM Sought quality articles for careful reading Suggested questions, types of things to look for in a paper Two essays: vertical and horizontal views of IT development in the world Class participation

Example papers “From Subject of Change to Agent of Change – Women and IT in Brazil” “Engineering the Irish Software Tiger” “Google’s China Problem” “Recycling E-Waste: The Sky is the Limit” “Competitiveness and ICTs in Africa” “The Effect of National Culture and Economic Wealth on Global Software Piracy Rates” “Web Searching in a Multilingual World” “Computing in Post-War Afghanistan” “Little Finland’s Transformation to a Wireless Giant”

Retrospect Easy to find good papers – Economic issues – IT by region, e.g. China, India, Africa, Middle East, Brazil, Australia, Canada, Singapore, Malaysia, Ireland, Russia, Finland – 56 papers were assigned in total World Economic Forum Communications of the ACM IEEE Computer; IEEE Spectrum

Retrospect (2) Participation activity – Award points for contributions – standard error = ¼ letter grade – Laptop & wireless network Benefits of course – Freedom: Independent of rest of curriculum – Suite of seminars helped to increase total enrollment 30% over previous year – Grade distribution: unipolar but still challenging ABCDF 25511

Student Survey Positive responses – Appropriate articles and sufficient variety – Appropriate work load (preparation, essays) Lukewarm – Easy to understand – “I learned a lot”; “Opened my eyes” Negative – Routine – Don’t want to take another CS course ?

Conclusion Seminar: More variety at the front door of the department’s offerings Show students professional, “human”, and inter- disciplinary issues Accessible Practice critical reading, thinking, writing Captive audience may be double-edged sword Course Web site: