Design Process for a Contextualized Non-majors Computing Course

Introduction to Media Computation is a new CS1 aimed especially at non-majors which was taught in Spring 2003 with some success. The course is contextualized around the theme of manipulating and creating media. Of the 121 students who took the course (2/3 female), only three students dropped (all male), and 89% completed the course with a grade C or better. We attribute the success of the course to the use of a domain context and the process used in designing the course, which involved building upon known issues from the CS education literature and seeking frequent feedback from stakeholders.