Intermediate Computing at Stanford, a computer class in its second year that focuses on multimedia and presentation skills, is now offered in six freshman dorms, up from four last year. The one-unit CS2C class is taught by dorm Residential Computer Coordinators (RCCs).

“A lot of students come into college with more experience with computers, so what we teach in CS1C [including programs such as Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel] is not as relevant,” said senior ChenLi Wang, coordinator of the CS2C program. “So the idea of CS2C was born to be taught winter quarter, not exactly as a continuation sequence for 1C, but as a level up.”

“I think the primary difference [between CS1C and CS2C] is that the focus is on presentation in CS2C, sort of like the difference between PWR 1 and PWR 2,” said Freshman/Sophomore College RCC and CS2C instructor Nick Cheng, a junior.

“In PWR 2 especially, there’s generally a media component, which is either PowerPoint or sometimes like editing a sound clip, or even making a short film or something like that, which is all technology-intensive,” he added.

“We’re definitely working with the PWR 2 program to try and make sure that we can give people the technical skills they need to present things in a world where so much presentation is digital,” Cheng said.

“PWR instructors have often taken students into media labs to have a quick intro to things like iMovie,” Wang said. “But we thought it’d be great if very knowledgeable people within the dorms, the RCCs, could teach that.”

Last year’s curriculum included work with Audacity, a sound editing program, iMovie, a video editing program, Microsoft PowerPoint, a presentation-making program, and Adobe InDesign, a publishing program — “technologies we don’t usually cover in 1C,” Wang said.

Cheng emphasized that the skills taught in CS2C are useful not just for classes like PWR 2.

“The software that we’re teaching has a lot of different applications,” he said. “We try to plan each class with a pretty big interactive component, to make sure that people get to actually play around with the software.”

According to Wang, new equipment such as microphones and video cameras were purchased for the CS2C program this year. These purchases were funded by a grant to the ResComp program from the vice provost for undergraduate education.

This year, said Wang, “we have more equipment ready to go from the beginning.”

“We have a pretty good foundation to build upon [this year],” he added. “And I think one of my main roles is to make sure that this program becomes stronger. Also, we hope to start achieving this core set of curriculum and teaching materials and experience, so that it becomes a more established and easier to run program in future years.”

Wang said that last year’s class was a pilot program needed to gauge student interest, but that it was “very successful in terms of the reports from student feedback.”

In fact, of the 30 students in last year’s CS2C classes, 70 percent said they would definitely recommend the class to others, and 100 percent rated the course materials as excellent or good.

Unfortunately, said Wang, since the class was not offered in every dorm, “it only extended to a certain number of people.”

“This year we decided to [offer the class] in all-freshman dorms, because we feel that’s where the most interest is and also because it ties into PWR 2,” he said. “So this year we expanded [from four dorms last year] to six dorms — EastFlo, WestFlo, Donner, Larkin, Branner and FroSoCo. Hopefully, depending on interest, it might expand to become like a CS1C, where every single dorm can teach it.”

Wang said this year’s program goals are “to get a bigger program and get more freshmen into it.”

However, he acknowledged that there are “time and budget constraints on how big this program can get in the near future.”

“We meet every single week to talk over the curriculum,” Wang said. “It’s quite time intensive for the RCCs.”

Freshman Savil Srivastava said the class was fun and the CS2C class environment as “very relaxed — there’s no pressure.”

Wang also described the atmosphere as unique and informal.

“It’s a very easygoing environment to learn technology,” he said, which plays into the goal of the course — “to learn more about computers in a relaxed environment.”