Grand Challenges – A New Course and a New Program

From http://www.wefeelfine.org

Oh, the poor students that I spoke to today. We have a new degree program starting, the Bachelor of Computer Science (Advanced), and it’s been given to me to coordinate and set up the first course: Grand Challenges in Computer Science, a first-year offering. This program (and all of its unique components) are aimed at students who have already demonstrated that they have got their academics sorted – a current GPA of 6 or higher (out of 7, that’s A equivalent or Distinctions for those who speak Australian), or an ATAR (Australian Tertiary Admission Rank) of 95+ out of 100. We identified some students who met the criteria and might want to be in the degree, and also sent out a general advertisement as some people were close and might make the criteria with a nudge.

These students know how to do their work and pass their courses. Because of this, we can assume some things and then build to a more advanced level.

Now, Nick, you might be saying, we all know that you’re (not so secretly) all about equality and accessibility. Why are you running this course that seems so… stratified?

Ah, well. Remember when I said you should probably feel sorry for them? I talked to these students about the current NSF Grand Challenges in CS, as I’ve already discussed, and pointed out that, given that the students in question had already displayed a degree of academic mastery, they could go further. In fact, they should be looking to go further. I told them that the course would be hard and that I would expect them to go further, challenge themselves and, as a reward, they’d do amazing things that they could add to their portfolios and their experience bucket.

I showed them that Cholera map and told them how smart data use saved lives. I showed them We Feel Fine and, after a slightly dud demo where everyone I clicked on had drug issues, I got them thinking about the sheer volume of data that is out there, waiting to be analysed, waiting to tell us important stories that will change the world. I pretty much asked them what they wanted to be, given that they’d already shown us what they were capable of. Did they want to go further?

There are so many things that we need, so many problems to solve, so much work to do. If I can get some good students interested in these problems early and provide a coursework system to help them to develop their solutions, then I can help them to make a difference. Do they have to? No, course entry is optional. But it’s so tempting. Small classes with a project-based assessment focus based on data visualisation: analysis, summarisation and visualisation in both static and dynamic areas. Introduction to relevant philosophy, cognitive fallacies, useful front-line analytics, and display languages like R and Processing (and maybe Julia). A chance to present to their colleagues, work with research groups, do student outreach – a chance to be creative and productive.

I, of course, will take as much of the course as I can, having worked on it with these students, and feed parts of it into outreach into schools, send other parts in different levels of our other degrees. Next year, I’ll write a brand new grand challenges course and do it all again. So this course is part of forming a new community core, a group of creative and accomplished leaders, to an extent, but it is also about making this infectious knowledge, a striving point for someone who now knows that a good mark will get them into a fascinating program. But I want all of it to be useful elsewhere, because if it’s good here, then (with enough scaffolding) it will be good elsewhere. Yes, I may have to slow it down elsewhere but that means that the work done here can help many courses in many ways.

I hope to get a good core of students and I’m really looking forward to seeing what they do. Are they up for the challenge? I guess we’ll find out at the end of second semester.

But, so you know, I think that they might be. Am I up for it?

I certainly hope so! 🙂