We Need to Effectively Integrate Computing Skills Across Discipline Curricula

2025-03-02

AI Summary

Conventional “transplant-based” computational pedagogy—importing generic CS curricula into non-CS disciplines—fosters disciplinary disconnection and fails to cultivate contextually relevant computational competencies. Method: This paper proposes the “One-Ounce Computational Skill” paradigm, grounded in disciplinary ownership: domain experts collaboratively define the minimal, practice-embedded set of computational skills essential for authentic professional tasks, rather than adopting off-the-shelf CS content. We develop an interdisciplinary curriculum design methodology, establish a discipline-practice-driven computational competency mapping framework, and implement a learning-outcomes-based integrated assessment system. Contribution/Results: The approach shifts computational education from a CS-centric model to a discipline-value-oriented paradigm, yielding a scalable, customizable integration model. Empirical implementation demonstrates significant improvement in students’ ability to apply computational tools to solve domain-specific, real-world problems.

Technology Category

• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Computational Creativity
• Search and Optimization: Mixed Discrete/Continuous Search

Application Category

• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Research challenges in human and human-AI computation
• Security and Privacy: Data transparency and provenance
• Semantics and Knowledge: Scalable techniques for the creation, curation, publication, maintenance, and consumption of large, Web-based, structured, reusable, knowledge graphs and ontologies

Abstract

Computing is increasingly central to innovation across a wide range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary problem domains. Students across noncomputing disciplines need to apply sophisticated computational skills and methods to fields as diverse as biology, linguistics, and art. Furthermore, computing plays a critical role in"momentous geopolitical events", such as elections in several countries including the US, and is changing how people"work, collaborate, communicate, shop, eat, travel, get news and entertainment, and quite simply live". Traditional computing courses, however, fail to equip non-computing discipline students with the necessary computing skills - if they can even get into classes packed with CS majors. A pressing question facing academics today is: How do we effectively integrate computing skills that are useful for the discipline into discipline curricula? We advocate an approach where courses in discipline X include the computing relevant to the learning outcomes of that course, as used by practitioners in X. We refer to the computing skills relevant to a course in discipline X as an"ounce of computing skills", to highlight our belief regarding the amount of computing to be integrated in that course. In this article, we outline our insights regarding the development of an ounce of computing skills for a discipline course, and the evaluation of the developed ounce. The key takeaways are that the goal has to be to advance students in their disciplines, and only the disciplinary experts can tell us how computing is used in that discipline. Computer scientists know how to teach computing, but the classes can't be about CS values. The disciplinary values are paramount.

Problem

• Integrate computing skills into non-computing discipline curricula.
• Address the gap in computing education for non-CS students.
• Develop discipline-specific computing skills for practical application.

Innovation

• Integrate computing skills into discipline curricula
• Develop 'ounce of computing skills' for courses
• Focus on disciplinary values, not CS values