Kesha Williams

Professor Brian Payne

CYSE 494

May 27, 2019

Mandatory Computer Literacy Courses

 

Situation: With our progression into the digital age, it has become apparent that these technologies have become an integral part of our daily lives. Several efforts have been made to educate the population about the proper uses of the technologies and how they can be used in the desired field of each individual. This would be mostly seen through college courses, depending on the type of degree the student is going for. Either way, there is a general education requirement that needs to be met and includes a digital literacy course. This is a great way to ensure that digital literacy can become common knowledge, but what about K-12? For many of these students, there are courses like this available, however, they are assigned as an elective that can be replaced with something else. If these courses are made to be mandatory like the history or math classes, we will negate the need to make it a general education requirement in college or at least make it possible to take a placement test to opt out of those courses.

Context: In recent years, it has been proposed to increase the level of computer literacy of youth to expedite their progression in the educational system. This shows that this is an issue that has gained the attention of some who want the best for the developers of our future. In some districts, there are supplementary courses and clubs for coding, web page development, animation, and other computer-related topics that are there for students if they had an interest in this field.

Proposed Solution: By starting from smaller, local divisions and working our way up, it could be easier to propose a change in the curriculum. According to the Virginia Department of Education, the local school boards are responsible for the day to day governance of the schools in each division. When further up the hierarchy, it would bring us to the Department of Education which is at the federal level. In order to make any change here, this needs to be a proposed bill and would need a representative like members of the U.S. Congress.

Barriers: There is a chance that the efforts to make these courses mandatory will not result in success. In the eyes of the law and policy makers, there are several factors that go into the application of new courses in the curriculum that must be considered before making any final decisions. One large factor would be the budget for the courses and the materials to properly teach the students and propel their learning. There is also the factor of finding enough teachers that are qualified enough to guide the student’s learning as well as considering the number of substitutes available if the assigned teacher is absent for any reason. Another issue that can arise would be the voting process to make this mandatory. There are some people that don’t see computer literacy as an essential skill that needs to be taught in schools as it can be learned over time through normal, everyday interactions with technology in this digital age. While this may be true for some, there are still numerous impoverished students in the public school system that may not have frequent access to these technologies and only are able to learn while they are at school or at a library. By enabling these mandatory courses, it would allow these students to expedite their learning in their most crucial learning points of life which would serve as a foundation for future academic ventures.

Assessment: The success of this proposal would be seen in the moment when there are new policies that change the curriculum. These would expand the number of mandatory courses to effectively prepare students for real world situations and to ease the progression into higher education.