Computation in the undergraduate curriculum

Abstract

Many of the current applications of computer technology to education deal not so much with the quality of education as with its packaging and cost‐effectiveness. A great deal of money and effort is being devoted to assembling computer dialogues out of standard course material, designing automatic individualized examinations or modifying homework problems to make use of computational facilities. At the same time, the relative superficiality of these methods when contrasted with the extravagant claims of their proponents has led many sensitive and sensible educators to regard computer aided instruction as a new and dangerous canonization of the most shallow and least humanistic aspects of education.

This is unfortunate because undergraduate education can indeed be greatly enriched through the use of computers. To bring this about, however, will require that workers in educational technology stop worrying so much about designing languages for authoring computer dialogues and tailoring operating systems according to vague or narrow conceptions of educational use. Instead there must be a more serious concern with the significant ways in which computational resources can be used to improve not so much the delivery but rather the content of university courses. This paper outlines three broad areas in which the use of computers seems particularly promising.