Teaching and assessing an interdisciplinary science of design pilot course

The role of design and creativity is well established in many disciplines in science, engineering and art. However, in computing science disciplines, specifically in the development of software systems and information technology, the computing educational community is struggling to include creativity and design in their teaching and research. Existing curriculum in computing science lacks the foundation necessary to systematically include these concepts in the learning experience. At Humboldt State University (HSU), as part of the National Science Foundation Science of Design (SoD) initiative, the authors have initiated a NSF funded educational and research project CNS-0614003, to build an interdisciplinary community with interest, experience and knowledge in teaching and learning creativity and design. During the fall of 2006, fifteen faculty from thirteen disciplines explored a variety of activities to facilitate the teaching and learning of creativity and design from an interdisciplinary perspective. In this paper we share the interdisciplinary curriculum developed and the results of the independent evaluation of students self assessment of teaching the course for two consecutive years.