Introduction to Media Computation:
Inventing a new approach to computing education at Georgia Tech

 Nationally
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Women and minority percentage of enrollment in CS dropping
High failure rates in CS1 (35-50% or more)
Fewer applications into CS
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“All programming jobs going overseas”
Research results: “Irrelevant,” “tedious,”
“boring,” “lacking creativity,” “asocial”
 At a time when we recognize the critical role of IT in our economy, in all jobs

 Motivate non-CS students to care about computing.
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Create non-traditional courses, minors, and nontraditional paths into CS
Reach out beyond Georgia Tech
 Make it relevant, social, and creative.

 121 students in Spring 2003, with 303 in Fall ‘03 and 395 for Spring ‘04
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2/3 female in Spring 2003 MediaComp
Required in Architecture, Management, Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, and Biology
 Focus: Learning programming and CS concepts within the context of media manipulation and creation
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Converting images to grayscale and negatives, splicing and reversing sounds, writing programs to generate HTML, creating movies out of Web-accessed content.
Computing for communications, not calculation

def clearRed(picture): for pixel in getPixels(picture): setRed(pixel,0) def greyscale(picture): for p in getPixels(picture): redness=getRed(p) greenness=getGreen(p) blueness=getBlue(p) luminance=(redness+blueness+greenness)/3 setColor(p, makeColor(luminance,luminance,luminance)) def negative(picture): for px in getPixels(picture): red=getRed(px) green=getGreen(px) blue=getBlue(px) negColor=makeColor(255-red,255-green,255-blue) setColor(px,negColor)

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Real users come to a user with data that they care about, then they (unwillingly) learn the computer to manipulate their data as they need.
“Media Computation” works like that
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Students do use their own pictures as starting points for manipulations.
 Starting in the second week of the course!
Some students reversed sounds looking for hidden messages.

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Defining and executing functions
Pictures
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Psychophysics, data structures, defining functions, for loops, if conditionals
Bitmap vs. vector notations
Sounds
 Psychophysics, data structures, defining functions, for loops, if conditionals
 Sampled sounds vs. synthesized, MP3 vs. MIDI
Text
 Converting between media, generating HTML, database, and networking
 Trees, hash tables
Movies
Then , Computer Science topics (last 1/3 class)

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“Writing programs is hard!
Are there ways to make it easier? Or at least shorter?”
 Object-oriented programming
 Functional programming and recursion
“Movie-manipulating programs take a long time to execute. Why? How fast/slow can programs be?”
 Algorithmic complexity
“Why is PhotoShop so much faster?”
 Compiling vs. interpreting
 Machine language and how the computer works

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In Spring 2003, 121 students
(2/3 female),
3 drops
Spring 2004: Teachers who aren’t the developers
60% of students surveyed at end of course say that they want a second course.
 These are non-majors, who have already fulfilled their requirement
We are getting transfers into the CS major.
Average
GT’s CS1
(2000-2002)
Media
Computation
Spring 2003
Fall 2003
Spring 2004
Success
Rate
72.2%
88.5%
87.5%
90.5%

 Homework assignments suggest they were.
 Shared on-line in collaborative web space (CoWeb)
 Some students reported writing programs outside of class for fun.

-Shared on the CoWeb Gallery

-Shared on the CoWeb Gallery

-Shared on the CoWeb Gallery
“Well, I looked at last years’ collages, and I certainly can’t be beat.”

-Shared on the CoWeb Gallery
Soup Stephen Hawking

 Did we make it:
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Relevant?
Creative?
Social?

 Did we make it:
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Relevant?
“I dreaded CS, but ALL of the topics thus far have been applicable to my future career (& personal) plans
—there isn't anything I don't like about this class!!!”
Creative?
Social?

 Did we make it:
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Relevant?
Creative?
“I just wish I had more time to play around with that and make neat effects. But JES will be on my computer forever, so… that’s the nice thing about this class is that you could go as deep into the homework as you wanted.
So, I’d turn it in and then me and my roommate would do more after to see what we could do with it.”
Social?

 Did we make it:
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Relevant?
Creative?
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20% of Spring 2003 students said
“Collaboration” was best part of
CS1315
Social?
“Actually, I think [collaboration] is one of the best things about this class. My roommate and I abided by all the rules... but we took full advantage of the collaboration. It was more just the ideas bouncing off each other. I don’t think this class would have been as much fun if I wasn’t able to collaborate.”
On CoWeb use: “Yes, it’s not just about the class… people talk about anything, it’s a little bit more friendly than just here’s your assignment.”

Next steps…
A second course and an alternative path
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CS1316 Representing structure and behavior to be offered in Spring 2005
 Essentially, data structures in a media context
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Context: How professional animators and computer musicians do their programming
The two courses (CS1315 and CS1316) will be sufficient to take the rest of our traditional CS courses
A CS minor has just been approved
In process of approving new BS in Computational
Media
 Joint with School of Literature, Communication, and
Culture

 Versions of Media Computation appearing at other institutions
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Gainesville College (2 year in Ga.) has been offering the course for a year.
Kennesaw is considering adopting the course.
DePauw, Brandeis (in Scheme), Georgia
Perimeter College (in Java), U. California Santa
Cruz, and U. Maryland at College Park (in Java) teaching their own versions using our materials.

 A copy of the Python programming environment (JES) that we use in our course.
 A copy of all the lecture slides we use.
 A copy of the textbook (draft) we have been using for the class.

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Faculty Collaborators: Lissa Holloway-Attaway, Craig Zimring,
Sabir Khan, Tom Morley, Matthew Realff, Pete Ludovice
Research Students: Jochen “Je77” Rick, Colleen Kehoe, David
Craig, Lex Spoon, Bolot Kerimbaev, Karen Carroll
Course Materials Development: Adam Wilson, Jason Ergle,
Claire Bailey, David Raines, Joshua Sklare, Mark Richman, Matt
Wallace, Alisa Bandlow, Ellie Harmon, Yu Cheung Ho, Keith
McDermott, Eric Mickley, Larry Olson, Lauren Biddle
Assessment: Andrea Forte, Rachel Fithian, Lauren Rich,
Heather Perry, Ellie Harmon
Thanks to Bob McMath and the Al West Fund, to GVU and CoC, to the students who participated in our evaluation, and to the
National Science Foundation

Mark Guzdial http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~mark.guzdial
http://coweb.cc.gatech.edu/csl
To get the CoWeb/Swiki software: http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/swiki
For more on course: http://coweb.cc.gatech.edu/mediacomp-plan