Computing as a Discipline. 1989. This report from an ACM/IEEE task force, chaired by PJD, introduced the term computing for "computer science and engineering". It offered a way to understand the field in terms of nine major technology areas and the three processes theory, abstraction, and design. These three processes represent the perspectives of math, science, and engineering that are embedded into computing.
Educating a New Engineer. 1992. From ACM Communications, December 1992. The customers of the university have formed new expectations about profession, work, teaching, research, innovation, and the university itself. These expectations portend fundamental changes in our approaches to curriculum, research, and engineers as human beings. Exhibitions are a good way to organize curricula to meet the new expections. Examples of programming exhibitions are given.
Business Designs for the New University. 1996. Every organization with customers has a business design. What happens if the business design of a university becomes obsolete? Published in Educom Review (November-December 1996).
How We Will Learn. 1997. From Beyond Calculation: The Next 50 Years of Computing (Peter Denning and Bob Metcalfe, eds.), Copernicus Books, 1997. A look at how people will view education and learning and the ways in which universities are likely to evolve. A new theory of learning, centered on embodied knowledge, will emerge.
Quantitative Practices. 1997. From Why Numbers Count, Lynn Steen (editor), College Board Press, 1997. Practices are every bit as important as mental knowledge in determining who is literate about computing.
Where Will All The Teachers Go? 1998. A response to the contention that teachers are being pushed out by multimedia systems, testing machines, and databases. The teacher is indispensable. Published as a commentary "Skewering the Stereotype" on David Noble's "Digital Diploma Mills", Educom Review 33, May-June 1998.
The New Engineer, Newly Revisited. 1998. An interview with CareerTech editor Charlotte Thomas explores the implications of The New Engineer for students preparing for engineering careers.
Teaching as a Social Process. 1999. The common stereotypes of teacher as sage or guide don't capture the social value of teaching. They make it appear that teachers can be replaced by machines. Teachers are representatives of professional communities. Students look to them for access to those communities and for assistance in becoming professionals themselves. Published in Educom Review, May-June 1999.
On Active and Passive Writing. 1984. A short essay written in 1984 decrying the overuse of passive voice in much writing and offering active guidance. (With apologies to Raymond Quineau, author of Exercises in Style.)
Designing an IT College. 2000. In 2000, PJD and a team of faculty from different IT specialties designed a model curriculum for an IT school. The curriculum is being implemented at the IT College of the University of the United Arab Emirates. This overview was presented at the World Congress on Computers in Education, August 2001. Also available is the full report on the model curriculum.
Are Students Customers, or not? 2002. In September 2002, the George Mason University Faculty Senate adopted a resolution declaring that students are not customers and that a customer based model is inappropriate for universities. Ten students respond.
The Somatic Engineer. 2003. PJD discusses an usual claim, that engineers need to embody a value dimension, in which they are able to listen to customers, craft offers of value to them, and deliver. The discipline, Value Dynamics, cannot be taught by training the mind. It is taught through immersion, practice, and coaching. Engineers who teach Value Dynamics must already have the value skills. Without this, engineers will be technicians only and not leader-professionals.
Great Principles in Computing Curricula. 2004. In October 2003, the CS Department at NPS initiated a new curriculum organized around a Great Principles framework. Here's an overview of the framework, why it has been difficult to articulate such a framework, experience at NPS, and reflections about computing curricular in general.
Transformational Events (with John Hiles). 2006. As part of a June 2006 special issue of Computer Science Education, the authors disuss a recurrent pattern of innovation and transformation. The pattern includes (1) a "mess" -- a period of discontent with ad hoc solutions to a pervasive problem, followed by (2) a "transformational event", usually a seminal invention or paper, followed by (3) a "settling" period in which the new idea is incorporated into common systems and eliminates the original problem. The authors discuss how this pattern can be used to organize a course on how great discoveries in computing were made. They discuss more generally how to maximize one's chance of being an innovator by identifying and understanding current "messes".