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This paper appeared in SIGCSE Bulletin in 1982 (citation). The Computer Science Department and Computing Center at NCSU
had purchased a new IBM time-sharing system, and the paper describes how
the department configured and enhanced the system to facilitate the
teaching of programming classes.
 It is at least a little strange to reread this paper from the pre-PC
era, when even some time-sharing systems were influenced by batch
processing, electronic mail of any sort was a novelty, and the World
Wide Web was still in the future. Nonetheless, the basic issues of
providing a computing environment to students, faculty-student
communication about assignments, grading computing assignments, and
administering grades are still matters of concern, although we have
substantial resources to deal with them that we can take for granted.
Read this paper to recall the old days (if you are so old as to
remember them) or to get a sense of how strange older computing
environments could be. What is perhaps most important here, however, is
the attempt to assemble a coherent system to be used by
instructors for teaching programming, and particularly for the
collection and independent testing of programs. Long before “software
engineering” was of much concern on most campuses, NCSU was teaching a
disciplined approached to software development that began in the first
computer science courses.
By the way, the paper only alludes to the documentation provided to
instructors and says nothing of the materials developed specifically for
students. Producing this material was a major component of making the
new computer system useful to the department.
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CMS at North Carolina State
University:
Tailoring a Time Sharing System
for Computer Science Education (PDF) |
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— LED, 1/13/2003
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