Curricular and Pedagogical Considerations in Computer Science Education: The Role of Community Colleges for the Next Decade

Abstract

Community and Technical Colleges are pivotal two-year educational institutions within the United States. These colleges have been at the crossroads of numerous educational initiatives and partnerships, spanning K-12 education, traditional four-year colleges, and collaborations with various workforce and industry sectors. A highlight of Community Colleges lies in their diverse and heterogeneous student body, which is further shaped by the influence of workforce demands that guide the crafting of specific curriculum components. As a result of these dynamics, Community Colleges present a rich array of computing programs, among them Computer Science degrees, particularly the Associate in Science (AS) and Associate in Arts (AA) variations, commonly known as academic transfer degrees. These transfer-focused degrees are meticulously structured to harmonize learning outcomes, objectives, and competencies with the esteemed ACM/IEEE curricular guidelines. This alignment primarily aims to forge comprehensive two-year pathways that seamlessly bridge curricula and facilitate the transfer of credits to Computer Science programs at four-year institutions. Computer Science programs offered at the lower-division undergraduate level face curriculum-related challenges and emerging prospects while embracing the recommendations set forth by curricular guidelines such as ACM/IEEE-CS/AAAI CS2023. These challenges encompass factors like the allocation of transfer hours, the breadth of subject matter within computer science, and the evolving efforts to secure ABET accreditation for two-year computing programs. In this paper, authors from several community colleges present significant curricular and pedagogical challenges confronting Computer Science programs in two-year programs, additionally to contextualize the role of community colleges in the ACM/IEEE-CS/AAAI CS2023 project.