The curriculum of the Department of Computer Science at  NCTU has always been well recognized by the industry, academia and society for its emphases of on both theoretical foundations and practical skills, as well as the strong teaching by the faculty. The curriculum was originally planned and set in 2005 when the College of Computer Science was founded. Upon reviewing the current teachings and student learning status, and given that the current industrial needs have vastly changed in recent years, we found a need to review the issues of course arrangement and how to enhance students’ practical skills. It was therefore decided that a full review of the undergraduate curriculum be conducted. The “Curriculum Improvement Planning Committee”  consists of Associate Dean Jung-Hong Chuang, Chairman Wen-Guey Tzeng, Director I-Chen Wu and faculty representatives, as well as external commissioners Dr. Tzi-Cker Chiueh, Dr. Yih-Tay Tsay and Director Ben Jai. The full review began in April , 2012.  Over 40 committee meetings and discussion sessions  were held, with the focus on improving the current curriculum so that we can  equip the students with IT skills and a wide range of abilities in line with the current trends. The new curriculumwere finalized in early June, 2012, and implemented in the 2012 academic year.  

The tasks of the Committee involve multi-oriented reviews and improvement planningcovering such aspects as undergraduate compulsory subjects, program-required electives, subject overlaps, programming ability enhancement, needs of domestic IT industry, strengthening innovative integration, and encouraging diversity of abilities. The finalized plan significantly reduces the number of compulsory and program-required elective subjects. Based on the core IT competencies expected of our graduates  and the core professional competencies of their fields of interest, the revised curriculum include a series of key hands-on programming  courses for the freshman and sophomore years ande key programming-intensive courses  for the individual programs, such as the specialty course “Introduction and Practices of Hardware and Software Co-design” of the CS+EE Program; “Introduction to Compiler Design” of the Computer Science and Engineering Program,  with its emphasis  on program design and experiments; and “Introduction to Network Programming” and “Introduction to Computer Graphics” of the Network and Multimedia Engineering Program.The committee also planned for supporting measures The overall objective is to  systematically enhance the students' hands-on programming ability . In addition, we have planned a number of courses that are in great demand by the industry, such as “Operating System Design and Implementation” and “Web System and Application”, as well as programs in “Cloud System” and “The Internet of Things”.

Through the improvement  of the curriculum, we expect to significantly upgrade the teaching quality and the learning results, especially practical programming skills, of our students . Due to time constraints, the current curriculum review  only covers computer-related technical courses. In the future, the focus will be extended to enhance student’s virtues in other areas, such as: basic competencies (English reading, writing, oral report, etc.), interdisciplinary learning, cultivation of creativity and even entrepreneurship.