Theoretical Computer Science for Diverse-Skilled Students

EasyChair Preprint 10263

Abstract

Theoretical Computer Science (TCS) classrooms are known to be very challenging to handle. The difficulty is not directly related to the technical nature of the courses, but rather to the diverse skills and knowledge of attending students. These courses are offered to computer scientists, engineers, or even students with major in mathematics. The diversity of students makes it hard to assess how to efficiently engage students by introducing appropriate teaching activities in the classroom. Some of the major difficulties are connected to inclusion, group formation, and type of assessment. This paper aims at exploring the teaching techniques used in the field and identify strategies that best fit and align with TCS classrooms. In this paper, we will reflect on a TCS course, named “Testing, Debugging, and Verification (TDA567/DIT084)”, that the author is currently responsible for, and teaches for a mixture of students from Chalmers University of Technology and Gothenburg University.

Keyphrases: Differentiating Instruction, Teaching Theoretical computer science, active learning, diversity

@booklet{EasyChair:10263,
  author    = {Yehia Abd Alrahman},
  title     = {Theoretical Computer Science for Diverse-Skilled Students},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint 10263},
  year      = {EasyChair, 2023}}