Overview of the Discipline of Computer Science - Guide to Teaching Computer Science: An Activity-Based Approach - page 51

3.9 Computer Science: An Integrated and Integral Part

of Other Disciplines

Computer sciences become an integral part of many disciplines. This integration is
expressed in two main ways: (1) use of computational power and methods of data
representations, for example, in the Human Genome Project, or in computational
linguistics; (2) the use computer science computational models, for example, in the
design of a biological computer.
It is important to discuss the valuable part of computer science within other
disciplines when exploring the significant place of computer science these days.
This issue can be explored by looking for example at the Towards 2020 Sciences
(Microsoft 2005 ) document. To address this challenge, Microsoft brought together
an international expert group for a workshop to define and produce a new vision
and roadmap of the evolution, challenges and potential of computer science and
computing in scientific research in the next 15 years. The document sets out the
challenges and opportunities arising from the increasing synthesis of computing
and the sciences, e.g., biology, earth sciences and climatology, chemistry, physics,
linguistics, and economics.

Activity 24: Integration of Computer Science with Other Disciplines
• Stage A: Trigger, Group work
Locate at least five resources which address connections between com-
puter science and another scientific field.
• Stage B: Reflection and class discussion
Following the students work on the trigger, a class reflection can take
place in which the following issues (and many others, of course) may be
addressed: Among the connections you located, what was new for you?
Did you change your perspective at these domains following the above
examination?
• Stage C: Summary
It is recommended to summarize this lesson with a representative list of
topics that illustrate the high connectivity of computer science to other
fields, e.g.: robotics, information systems, game theory, bioinformatics,
and computational biology. In parallel, the mutual contribution of com-
puter science and these fields can be addressed.
• Stage D: Homework

Draw a concept map (Chap. 7) that summarizes the above lesson. Upload it
to the course forum and discuss with your classmates the different concept
maps that each of you drew.