Engineering a New Curriculum: Experiences at Ohio University in Incorporating the IEEE-TCPP Curriculum Initiative During a Transition to Semesters

This paper describes the efforts at Ohio University to incorporate selected topics from the IEEE-TCPP Curriculum Initiative into the Computer Science/Computer Engineering curriculum prior to a transition to semesters at Ohio University that will occur in the Fall of 2012. In particular, this paper describes our efforts to incorporate (and evaluate) selected elements of the IEEE-TCPP Curriculum Initiative into three courses in order to best determine the appropriate placement of topics related to parallel and distributed computing in the new CS/CpE curriculum under the semester calendar. In particular, we plan to add or revise existing modules and assignments for CS2 (CS 240B, CS 240C at Ohio University, CS 2401 under semesters), DS/A (CS 361 Data Structures at Ohio University, CS 3610 under semesters), and Systems (CS 442 Operating Systems and Computer Architecture I, CS 4420 under semesters) to help us determine which curricular recommendations belong in those three courses in the new semesters curriculum and which topics are more appropriately placed in new required courses entitled EE 3613 Computer Organization and CS 4000 Introduction to Parallel, Distributed, and Web-Centric Computing or in other existing advanced courses such as CS 4040 Design and Analysis of Algorithms or CS 4100 Formal Languages and Compilers.