Whereas hackathons are widespread within and outside academia and have been argued to be a valid pedagogical method for teaching interdisciplinarity, no detailed frameworks or methods are available for conceptualizing and organizing educational hackathons, i.e., hackathons dedicated to best achieving pedagogic objectives. This paper is dedicated…

In this paper we discuss the types of knowledge used by six middle school students as they engaged with a debugging task designed to integrate ideas from computer science, mathematics and science. Our findings show that the computational thinking practice of debugging is a rich source of opportunities to integrate these different disciplines. The…

Computing education in schools faces several problems, such as a lack of computing teachers and time in an already overloaded curriculum. A solution can be a multidisciplinary approach, integrating the teaching of computing within other subjects, creating the need to motivate teachers from other disciplines to teach computing in middle school.…

With the continuous growth of cyberinfrastructure throughout modern society, the need for secure computing and communication is more important than ever before. As a result, there is also an increasing need for entry-level developers who are capable of designing and building practical solutions for systems with stringent security requirements.…

With the rising popularity of digital games, a growing number of universities are developing programmes in various areas of digital design and interactive media to meet the needs for game-related courses. Faculty of this emerging field are grappling with the complexity of developing curricula which integrate art, design and technology and of…

While the ready-made Lego[TM] Robotics kits are popular in schools and are used by students at both primary and secondary year levels, using the Picaxe microcontroller (chip) to create simple electronic devices, including robotic devices is less popular. The latter imposes an additional challenge as a result of the need to construct the universal…

In the last decades, the technological and scientific evolution of the computing discipline has been widely affecting research in software engineering education, which nowadays advocates more enlightened and liberal ideas. This article reviews cross-disciplinary research on a computer architecture class in consideration of its switching to…

Most users have no more knowledge of what their computer or code is actually doing than most automobile owners have of their carburetor or catalytic converter. Nor is any such knowledge necessarily needed. But for academics, driven by an increasing emphasis on the materiality of new media--that is, the social, cultural, and economic factors…

The rapid evolution of System-on-Chip (SoC) challenges academic curricula to keep pace with multidisciplinary/interdisciplinary system thinking. This paper presents a curricular prototype that cuts across artificial course boundaries and provides a meaningful exploration of diverse facets of SoC design. Specifically, experimental contents of a…

Computer games are increasingly being considered as a means of promoting learning, especially the use of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) games in the classroom. This article extends this idea by proposing an innovative method of fostering interdisciplinary collaboration through the design of computer games. The game to be developed, "On the…

Although the author is a computer scientist, he has been involved with issues of diversity for many years. He developed an online gamelike environment to teach inner-city kids algebra, using culturally relevant learning technologies, and he has applied data-mining techniques to help universities admit diverse classes without relying on just one…

Among educational researchers and practitioners, there is a growing interest in employing computer games for pedagogical purposes. The present research integrated a technology education class and a science class where 5th graders learned about environmental issues by designing games that involved environmental concepts. The purposes of this study…

The critical role of computers in scientific advancement is described in this panel report. With the growing range and complexity of problems that must be solved and with demands of new generations of computers and computer architecture, the importance of computational mathematics is increasing. Multidisciplinary teams are needed; these are found…

The strategy used by St. Olaf College to integrate computing into a liberal arts curriculum is discussed. Faculty computer literacy was developed first, followed by the use of computing in a wide variety of courses. Computer science, problem analysis, symbol manipulation, and information processing are discussed. (Author/MLW)

Santa Clara University's Robotic Systems Laboratory conducts an aggressive robotic development and operations program in which interdisciplinary teams of undergraduate students build and deploy a wide range of robotic systems, ranging from underwater vehicles to spacecraft. These year-long projects expose students to the breadth of and…