The NYT Asks Brawner And Krishnamurthi About CSCI 0030 And Teaching Computational Thinking
- Posted by Jesse Polhemus
- on May 2, 2017

Click the links that follow for more Brown CS content about CSCI 0030, Tom Doeppner, John Hughes, K-12 CS education, Shriram Krishnamurthi, our community outreach, and Steve Reiss.
What is computational thinking, and how should it be taught? Almost three decades after the term was coined, the answer is still being worked out. How do we help students reframe research to formulate questions to a data set instead of a human? How do we teach broad use of computation to students who won't become computer scientists?
Last month, the New York Times explored these questions with a selection of students, academics, and even developers of children's media. They took particular interest in a course (CSCI 0030 Introduction to Computation for the Humanities and Social Sciences) that was created ten years ago at Brown by Professors Tom Doeppner, John Hughes, Shriram Krishnamurthi, and Steve Reiss to help students learn this "new mode of thinking". Featured in the article and interviewed in depth, Shriram and Stephen Brawner, a PhD candidate currently teaching the course, share their experience with the challenges of helping students learn not just to program but to use programming to solve problems.
The full article is available here.
For more information, click the link that follows to contact Brown CS Communication Outreach Specialist Jesse C. Polhemus.