Writing in the Discipline (WiD)

Introduction

Dickinson College’s educational mission is “to prepare young people, by means of a useful education in the liberal arts and sciences, for engaged lives of citizenship and leadership in the service of society.” Or more colloquially to provide a “Useful education for the common good.”

Broadly, a Dickinson education seeks to develop the following abilities in its students in service of this mission:

• Think critically
• Communicate effectively, orally and in writing
• Apply analytical skills
• Solve problems
• See a complex issue through multiple perspectives
• Be creative
• Work effectively with others
• See and use evidence as the basis for inquiry

In addition, you each have individual goals and passions that have led you to choose a major in computer science. This assignment asks you to reflect on your experiences in the computer science major, the senior seminar and in your open source projects. To think about how they have (or possibly could better have) contributed both to achieving Dickinson’s mission and your own personal goals.

Reflective Blog Post

Respond to the following prompt in a post to your blog:

• How have the experiences in the computer science major, in the senior seminar and in working with your Open Source Community helped to cultivate the above abilities, prepare you for an “engaged [life] of citizenship and leadership in the service of society” and ?

You do not need to be exhaustive in your response. Instead, take a little time to reflect carefully on your experiences in the major, in the senior seminar and on your engagement with your project community. Then respond in depth focusing on the aspects that resonate most strongly with you and discuss how they have connected both to Dickinson’s mission and to your personal goals.

Writing in the Discipline

The Writing in the Discipline (WiD) graduation requirement can be satisfied in the computer science major through completion of a writing portfolio. This portfolio is the collective result of all of the writing assignments that you have completed in your courses. In each course that contributes to the WiD portfolio you have been instructed to upload your writing to your WiD Portfolio on GitHub.

COMP 492 WiD

For COMP 492 you will need to:

• Create a COMP492 Folder in your WiD Repository
• Place the following items in that folder.
  • A README.md file with links to your blog posts from this semester.
    • Blog Post #1
    • Blog Post #2
    • The Reflective Blog Post assigned above.
  • The poster your team produced.
  • The slides from your Project Checkpoint Presentation.
  • The slides from your Final Presentation.
• Ensure that the remainder of your WiD repository is complete and organized.
  • Have one folder for each course (e.g. COMP132, COMP256, …)
  • All of the materials for that course should be in its folder.
  • Ensure that the content of all files is easily recognizable from its filename (e.g. poster.pdf).
  • If you have kept up all along, this should not require any work.

The WiD Graduation Requirement

At the conclusion of COMP 492 the instructor will review your WiD Portfolio on GitHub and determine if it meets the threshold for satisfying the WiD Graduation Requirement. If so, then the registrar will be asked to designate the WiD credit in association with COMP 492.