Work in progress: a freshman course for engineering and computer science students

Primarily as a result of the move of computer science into the college of engineering, the first-semester engineering course taken by all first-year engineering students at Virginia Tech was significantly redesigned. The primary goal of the redesign was to switch from an inherently procedural programming language (Matlab) to an object-oriented language (Alice). This object-oriented approach to learning programming was also believed to be better for students bound for computer science and computer engineering. In addition, coverage of ethics, which had been constrained to engineering topics, will be broadened to include software issues. Previously implemented hands-on early design portions of the course will not be significantly modified. The first offering of the new course will be in fall Semester 2004, with approximately 1,200 students enrolled.