Dancing with DynaLab: endearing the science of computing to students

INTRODUCTION How can we entice young students into computer science? How can we convey—much earlier than is common—the excitement of our discipline to students who may only have a passing interest in programming and computing, encouraging them to continue studies in computer science? How can we keep students who have initially committed to computer science enthralled with their chosen discipline? These, of course, are specific questions that echo much broader concerns of education: how do we motivate young people to consider careers as scientists and engineers in general? Much sentiment has been expressed in both professional circles and the popular media regarding the need to excite students about science and engineering at an early age. The hope is that young people will not only acquire a better understanding of the world around them, but that more of them (especially women) will choose careers in science. With respect to the science of computing, these questions imply that the foundations of the discipline of computing be somehow presented in clear fashion early on in a student’s experience. By ‘(foundations of the discipline of computing” we mean what is generally captured by the term aigorithmics (see, for example, [Har92])—the world of interesting problems, algorithms as solutions to problems, unsolvable problems, intractable problems, and efficient solutions to tractable problems. In this paper we present one approach to reaching this objective through the use of DynaLab, a software system designed for performing experiments with programs.