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A Computer Previous Page | Contents | Zoom in | Zoom out | Front Cover | Search Issue | Next Page M S BE aG F 88 COMPUTER EDUCATION The Computing Accreditation Commission specifies similar criteria for the accreditation of computing programs. The broad field of computing cuts across disciplines in unique ways. Computing typically has a domain presence as a necessary tool rather than an area of detailed study— students must learn the fundamentals of computing to successfully apply it in all their work. Perhaps more important, they also must learn when a project has a computing component that requires deeper expertise. This becomes an opportunity for educators to blend programs in computing, engineering, and other disciplines across an institution. MULTIDISCIPLINARY IN THE SMALL There are conflicting definitions for the terms multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary, but educators shouldn’t get stuck on what to call it. Any approach that gets students interacting with material and people outside their own technical discipline, or in ways that are atypical for their discipline, is beneficial. Those who want to experiment with a multidisciplinary approach should start small within one of their courses by assigning exercises to students that require them to think from unfamiliar perspectives. In one course, I ask students to capture their thoughts on aspects of the course material in Haiku poems. Here’s an example of one called “Basic Principles” from a software engineering design course: Coupling, Cohesion Antagonistic forces Tradeoffs to be made. In that same course, I have students ask themselves about the structure shown in M.C. Escher’s Waterfall (www.mcescher.com/ _____________________ Gallery/recogn-bmp/LW439.jpg). For each of those questions about this illusionary structure, I ask them to pose an analog question when studying the design of a software system. This exercise isn’t what most readers may have in mind when they think multidisciplinary, but on a small scale that a faculty member can do in any course, it requires students to think using paradigms from other disciplines. The next step would be to have students enrolled in courses in different The students as well as the instructor must commit to the multidisciplinary approach. disciplines collaborate on projects. Individual faculty can coordinate this with little administrative support. As in all such instances, the students as well as the instructor must commit to the multidisciplinary approach: A project that serves as an extracurricular or small-credit activity for some students but counts as significant coursework for others won’t be very effective. MULTIDISCIPLINARY BY DESIGN If educators intend the multidisciplinary experience to satisfy accreditation requirements, it’s preferable to carefully design it into a program. All ABET-accredited software engineering programs require students to be able to work in one or more major application domains. However, what constitutes an application domain varies widely across programs (D. Bagert, “The Role of Application Domain Tracks in Software Engineering Programs,” Proc. 2006 Ann. Conf. Am. Soc. for Eng. Education, ACEE, 2006; http://soa.asee.org/paper/ _______________________ conference/paper-view.cfm?id=2832). Our software engineering program at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) uses application domains as a vehicle to expose students to uses of computing outside their comfort zones. Each domain requires three courses, at least two of which must be taken from colleges other than our College of Computing and Information Sciences. This prevents the application domain from being simply a set of computing electives. A cross-curriculum multidisciplinary approach involves designing a course, or course cluster, with multi-disciplinary interaction as a basic course principle. Educators must make the course material interesting and accessible to students from all the disciplines expected to participate. This can be challenging. With a computer engineering colleague, I created a cluster of three courses in real-time and embedded systems at RIT (J. Vallino and R.S. Czerniskowski, “Interdisciplinary Teaming as an Effective Method to Teach Real-Time and Embedded Systems Courses,” Proc. 2008 Workshop Embedded Systems Education, 2008, pp. 25-32). Even with closely related disciplines like software engineering and computer engineering, it was more difficult than we originally thought to keep the course interest balanced between the two. Educators must carefully select course projects to ensure that all disciplines contribute in different but equivalent ways. Some registration controls may be needed to help maintain balance across all disciplines. Ideally, these courses are team taught, but unless an institution’s teaching-load accounting easily accommodates that arrangement, it may have to settle for more traditional single-instructor teaching. A Computer Previous Page | Contents | Zoom in | Zoom out | Front Cover | Search Issue | Next Page M S BE aG F
A Computer Previous Page | Contents | Zoom in | Zoom out | Front Cover | Search Issue | Next Page M S BE aG F Finally, what seems like it should be easy could require regular attention. Each term, we have to schedule multiple course listings at the same time, in the same room, and with a common final exam time. We’re currently applying lessons learned from the successful multidisciplinary real-time and embedded systems cluster to an applied cryptography cluster incorporating computer science, computer engineering, and software engineering. LARGEfiSCALE MULTIDISCIPLINARY EXPERIENCES More ambitious forays into multidisciplinary work require significantly more coordination and administrative support. RIT has implemented many such programs for seniors in its College of Engineering (P.H. Stiebitz, E.C. Hensel, and J.R. Mozrall, “Multidisciplinary Engineering Senior Design at RIT,” Proc. 2004 Ann. Conf. Am. Soc. for Eng. Education, ACEE, 2004; http://soa.asee.org/paper/conference/ _________________ paper-view.cfm?id=20471). Extended multidisciplinary efforts start with designing appropriate content and uniform assessment mechanisms for courses that encompass a wide range of projects. It’s usually necessary to designate a project coordinator to solicit sufficient cross-disciplinary content from internal and external sponsors. Faculty coaches or advisors must be assigned to every project along with a student team. To achieve faculty buy-in, it may be necessary to give teaching credit to those working with project teams. Accreditation requirements initially motivate many college-level multidisciplinary programs. Once the programs have overcome startup problems and are steadily operating, however, the benefits beyond accreditation become evident. Ultimately, educators may want to embrace a multidisciplinary culture that spans the entire institution—for example, including business, fine arts, and liberal arts as well as engineering and computing. This might be tied to initiatives requiring undergraduate students to have research or international study experience. Cutting across disciplines with diverse curriculum models adds new challenges to making multidisciplinary work a reality. There should be a way to define projects from any corner of the campus. Each project needs at least one faculty member as an advocate to specify the necessary team skills. Every program must offer students an opportunity for required or elective multidisciplinary project work. Students could search a project registration database for interesting projects, or the system could suggest projects based on students’ selfdefined skill sets. Some material, such as discussion of problem-solving techniques and how to be a good team player, should be common to all projects or integrated into prerequisite courses, perhaps hosted by multiple entities using different paradigms. Students could be required to, for example, take a problem-solving course appropriate for their home discipline and one from another area. To satisfy accreditation requirements, a faculty member in a student’s home discipline would need to review the student’s work to ensure that he or she has gained discipline-appropriate experience on the project. The pressure on engineering and computing curricula is to broaden programs (National Academy of Engineering, The Engineer of 2020: Vision of Engineering in the New Century, National Academies Press, 2004). Many educators view the current curriculum model for most programs as being too focused. I’ve been in meetings where a view was expressed that highly structured engineering programs are a primary impediment to creative and innovative thought. I certainly don’t subscribe to that view, but given the direction that engineering and computing education is headed, I have some concerns. Teams work best when they bring together people with individual depth in multiple disciplines who are open to cutting across the disciplines. Will a collection of broadly trained students be as effective as one of students who have depth in their own individual disciplines? One benefit of multidisciplinary projects is the presence of “low-hanging fruit” between the disciplines. As institutions broaden programs and students attain breadth across disciplines, will educators abandon individual disciplines themselves in pursuit of easy-to-pick fruit? Will students be able to tackle the hard problems in the individual disciplines or even in the multidisciplinary domain? When redesigning curricula to incorporate multidisciplinary activities, educators must be careful. To students’ potential employers, it could be a short curricular distance from “Your students need more breadth” to “Your students don’t know very much.” Jim Vallino is a professor in the Department of Software Engineering in the B. Thomas Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences at Rochester Institute of Technology. Contact him at j.vallino@se.rit.edu. _____________ Editor: Ann E.K. Sobel, Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Miami University; sobelae@muohio.edu ____________ Selected CS articles and columns are available for free at ____ http:// ComputingNow.computer.org. APRIL 2010 A Computer Previous Page | Contents | Zoom in | Zoom out | Front Cover | Search Issue | Next Page M S BE aG F 89
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