Computer graphics in Computing Curriculum 1991

Abstract

Computer graphics has not been treated as an important subject in computer science curriculum recommendations throughout the history of the ACM curriculum recommendations. A new report from the current ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Curriculum Task Force, entitled "Computing Curricula 1991" [6], is intended to provide curriculum recommendations for baccalaureate programs in areas of computing encompassed by ACM and IEEE-CS, replacing such recommendations as Curriculum 78 [2] and the 1983 IEEE-CS model program [4]. How does computer graphics fare in this report, and what are the implications of the report for computer graphics developments in computing curricula?Overall, computer graphics comes out fairly well in these recommendations. The report specifically recommends both computer graphics and human-cemputer interaction topics in the core curriculum. This partially reflects the Ohlson recommendations from SIGGRAPH's Education Committee [5] and is vastly better than Curriculum 78, which ignored computer graphics almost entirely. However, as we shall see, the core content of computer graphics and human-computer interaction is quite weak, and the Task Force seems to have had some question about how they should be worked into core courses. Advanced courses in both computer graphics and human-computer interaction are also explicitly suggested in the report. A description of a very standard elective computer graphics course is included in the report. The report concludes with summaries of some sample curricula, and the elective computer graphics course is listed in most of them. However, none of these include the human-computer interaction elective.