CS Education and Teaching Page for Kim Bruce


o Kim Bruce's recent courses.

o Kim Bruce's papers on Computer Science education available on-line.

Introductory CS Curriculum Efforts

With Tom Murtagh and Andrea Danyluk of Williams College, I have been involved in the creation of a new introductory course in computer science (CSCI 134). Our innovative approach uses objectdraw, a locally developed Java library, to support an object-first approach using truly object-oriented graphics, event-driven programming from the beginning, and featuring an early introduction to concurrency.

The project web page includes chapters of a text in progress, several papers, and files containing lecture notes, our library, assignments, and sample programs.

We have developed these materials into a text with the support of a CCLI grant from NSF. They have been tested at a wide variety of universities, colleges, and high schools. The text was published by Prentice Hall in 2005.

Involvement in national Computer Science curricula

I've been involved in several different projects involving the design of national Computer Science Curricula at the college level. These include the following:

General Computer Science Education

ETS Muckraking

I was one of those unhappy about the change of the ETS Advanced Placement exam in Computer Science to C++. I posted a letter of protest on comp.edu and sent a copy to SIGCSE members. I was also a co-signer of a letter published the summer of 1995 in the Communications of the ACM protesting both the change to the APCS exam and the way the change was made.

I wanted to see ETS and its advisory committee to reconsider this change and consider moving the course to Java. Happily, the ETS has recently decided to change the language for the AP test to Java.

Advanced Programming Languages Education

Educational Award

I was presented the 2005 ACM SIGCSE Award for Outstanding Contributions to Computer Science Education at the SIGCSE Symposium on Computer Science Education in Saint Louis in February, 2005.

Miscellaneous Items


Last updated 7/13/2005. Back to:
  • Kim Bruce's home page
  • CS Department home page
  • kim@cs.pomona.edu