Presented by:
Mark Guzdial
Mark Guzdial is a Professor in Computer Science & Engineering and the Director of the Program in Computing for the Arts and Sciences (PCAS) in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts at the University of Michigan. He studies how people learn computing and how to improve that process, with a particular focus on students using programming to learn something other than CS. He was one of the leads on the NSF alliance “Expanding Computing Education Pathways" which helped US states improve and broaden their computing education. With his wife and colleague, Barbara Ericson, he received the 2010 ACM Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator award for developing Media Computation as a way to teach computer science. He is an ACM Distinguished Educator and a Fellow of the ACM. He wrote the book Learner-Centered Design of Computing Education: Research on Computing for Everyone (Morgan & Claypool, 2015). He received the 2019 ACM SIGCSE Outstanding Contributions to Education award.
“Computer science” was invented as something that should be taught to everyone in order to facilitate learning other subjects and to reduce the danger of having this powerful new technology controlled by only a few. Computing education has not become the democratizing force that early computer scientists imagined. Only a privileged class understands and creates a critical part of our world. To achieve the original democratic goal, we have to change how we teach computing, change what we mean by programming, and support alternative end-points for computing education. In this talk, I introduce the University of Michigan’s Program in Computing for the Arts and Sciences and our first classes which use teaspoon languages and Snap! to broaden access and participation in computing to include students in arts, humanities, science sciences, and natural sciences. The talk includes demonstrations and links to resources for other computing teachers who want to teach computing for all, not just for software development.
- Duration:
- 1 h
- Room:
- Auditorium (Online)
- Conference:
- Snap!Con 2023
- Type:
- Keynotes
- Presented via:
- In person