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Rethinking CS101:
Innovations in Introductory Computer Programming

Perhaps the most fundamental idea in modern computer science is that of interactive processes. Computation is embedded in a (physical or virtual) world; its role is to interact with that world to produce desired behavior. While von Neumann serial programming has it that computation-as-calculation uses inputs -- at the beginning -- to produce outputs -- at the end -- computation-as-interaction treats inputs as things that are monitored and outputs as actions that are taken over the lifetime of an ongoing process. By beginning with a decomposition in terms of interacting computational processes, we can teach our students a model of the world much closer to the one that underlies the thinking of most computer professionals.

Rethinking CS101 is a project to develop a curriculum for the first course in computer science based around the idea of computation as interaction.


Current highlights:


Areas of Interest:

Much of the work is documented in our publications and seminars. These include a journal-length description of the curriculum project and a prospectus for the textbook.
 
There's also been some press coverage of our work.
 
You can look through our course materials on our webserver http://www.cs101.org. We teach courses using these materials, both at MIT and elsewhere.
 
We are currently preparing a textbook to make it easier for other schools to use this material. This book will be published by Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, Inc.
 
A complete listing of our past course offerings is available, including web notes for some of them.
 
Coming soon! We are working on a self-paced minicourse.
 
We maintain several mailing lists for those interested in our project.
 
If you are curious as to who works on the project - look at our members and alums list!

We thank our sponsors....

Rethinking CS101 is supported by


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