We talked about various topics, but the ones that I spoke up about had to deal with trying to get CS101 and CS102 students to be more familiar with the design aspect of programming by getting them acquainted with write-ups. If not having them turn in a one-page writeup explaining the design of the lab, at least making them answer one pointed question about the lab instead of just turning in code. That way they gain more understanding about what they implemented, and they can start thinking about they way that they implemented it.

Another topic dealt with the fact of how to make CS courses appealing to non-majors. My suggestion was to maybe look into the Summer Scholars program and trying to find a way if CS101 could be offered in the Summer Scholars program, or having the Engineering School come up with their own Summer Scholars program. That would help pre-freshmen become more acquainted with computer science.

I couldn't make it because of work/class. But I plan on talking to someone about the scripting class. Something needs to be said.

Thanks for the updates.... how was the food Amy? Cuban??

IT WAS SO GOOD! Kudos to Raquel for the idea.

Attendance was pretty pitiful however.....I counted barely more than 20 students and only 3 professors besides Catalin....

The scripting class wasn't even mentioned. There was alot of discussion about the level of expertise of the students coming out of 101/102 though. This was mostly with regards to design, but there was definitely some discussion about overall programming skill coming out of 101/102. This touched into the everlasting discussion of 306/342 and C/C++ leading into the upper level courses, but was also in regards to skill coming into 241.

I agree however that the web scripting class probably should have covered the ideas of making more modular MVC style designs though. At the same time I don't know if the intent of the class was for large scale projects, so much as teaching basic proficiency with a set of tools, for which more could be built on later.

I don't think anyone's class should be skewered though.