Another way to teach computer science through writing

1 5 Today's computer scientist needs to b e adept at both oral and written communications . Basic skills are imparted in various Englis h classes; however, students should have to utilize these skills in a computer science setting t o reinforce the fact that this expertise is for life , not just for the duration of an English class . An other troublesome area is that students in undergraduate computer science classes do no t appreciate the breadth of the discipline . This , coupled with a need to provide the student s with opportunities to practice communication skills, led us to require what has become well known locally as "The Literary Assignment . " Students are required to read, to write, and , when class sizes are small enough, to spea k about computer science topics . In addition, this exercise is designed to give students more information about professional societies; indeed for many this is their first exposure to ACM or th e Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineer s (IEEE) . Students are provided with (see Appendix ) the one page "Top Two Levels of CR Classifica tion Tree " (1) from ACM's Computing Reviews and are given instructions to report on an aver age of 1 article per week during the semester . Thus for a 16-week semester, the student mus t report on 16 articles published during the las t six to 12 months . The report consists of : (1) complete bibliographic information o n each article , (2) CR classification as assigned by th e student, (3) a synopsis of the information in the article (4) the student's reaction to that information .