Dive Brief:
- A reimagined computer science course at Carnegie Mellon University is aimed at serving more students more effectively with the same level of teaching resources and classroom space.
- Campus Technology reports the introductory computer science course will replace traditional lectures with online content and augment them with small-group instruction geared toward specific learning levels of students.
- The experiment will test the effectiveness of the new methods, study scalability and transferability, and, in later phases, bring high school and community college instructors into the mix for material-sharing, according to the article.
Dive Insight:
Carnegie Mellon is studying scalability of this learning model in an attempt to find solutions to the computer science skills gap in the U.S. economy. If it is possible to teach more students the skills they need to be successful computer scientists without increasing the number of faculty or classrooms needed to serve them, it will be a major success. Universities across the country are struggling to increase their capacity in computer science majors but running into roadblocks when it comes to space and resources. A $110 million donation from Microsoft is helping the University of Washington double its capacity with a new building. It remains to be seen how many additional students the blended learning format will help Carnegie Mellon teach.