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This paper describes a case study presented to students in computer science during a course on formal techniques for protocol validation. The course teaches some basic notions on specification, simulation, verification, testing and distributed observation. The case study is the classical alternating-bit protocol. The exercise first consists of some simple modeling and simulation of the specification and verification of some basic service properties. It is then followed with the problem of observation of distributed executions of the protocol. This kind of experiment was found to be useful for students, since they gain an understanding of the importance and necessity of formal methods for protocol validation.

Robust communication protocols are essential components in every telecommunication system. Formal methods are used in the protocol engineering process to cope with the complexity of distributed protocol systems. In this article the use of the formal description technique SDL (Specification and Description Language) in the context of education in protocol engineering is presented and evaluated. After a comprehensive overview of a laboratory course on protocol engineering using SDL, the paper presents a case study, which is the final and largest exercise of the course. This example is based on the SDL description of the ISDN signaling protocol Q.931. The well-known functionality of the protocol makes it a good example for the use of SDL in protocol design and development. The case study also deals with the integration of SDL-defined systems in an external environment, in this case a Tcl/Tk-based graphical user interface. The article concludes with a report on the experiences gained from our educational acti...

This paper describes the delivery of a computer networks course with accompanying materials and software. The course is offered at the fourth-year undergraduate level, and has few formal pre-requisites, other than general programming skills. There is a substantial architectural and coding component to any practical course on networks, and it is important to challenge the experienced and knowledgeable students without making the material too difficult for the inexperienced students who have minimal experience in programming practical applications. Some students have an industrial background and are expecting to build practical working applications. At the other extreme are students with no exposure to operating system principles, and therefore lacking pertinent knowledge, such as concurrency concepts. Our programming framework provides an event-polling approach to avoid the complexity of more general concurrency techniques. Protocol layers are implemented with data types and use a finite state machine mode...

This paper shows how students can quickly learn how to use neural networks as classifiers. It shows how to apply the teaching principles of problem-based learning, the inverted curriculum and action reflection to equip students to undertake a substantial classification project. The approach centers around the use of a single real-life classification problem to drive the teaching. It describes a series of experiments on the Iris data which demonstrate that it is a suitable data set to support this approach.

This paper introduces a pedagogical framework that captures our experience in applying a practical and effective approach in teaching a course in object-oriented software engineering. The framework developed as a need to overcome difficulties that we faced in teaching the course and that were mainly due (and typically are in such training contexts) to a gap between the theory introduced in classrooms and the real habitat of the theory, namely work environments and challenges.The framework is documented in terms of three pedagogical patterns: Link, Reuse and Evaluation. Its contribution is in carrying the theme of reuse to pedagogical environments through relying on patterns and in solving the disconnect problem between theory and practice through linking students' projects to real work environments and experiences. Consequently it convinces students of the viability of these concepts, achieves skill building for developing applications and permits students to realize the advantage of reuse as enabled by o...

Operating systems is an example of a subject that, with the right tools, can be taught in an applied manner, giving students the opportunity to understand, and hence appreciate, the fundamentals of commercial operating systems such as Unix and Windows. Not surprisingly, the tools needed in an operating systems course are, at a minimum, a hardware testbed and a programming language into which algorithms can be translated. This paper describes how many of the salient points concerning operating systems, such as concurrency and critical regions, can be covered in an applied manner using the PC, the C programming language, and extensions to C.

Research has revealed a significant gap between the thinking patterns and software design habits of students or recent computer science university graduates and those of expert software developers.There may be several causes for this gap, one of which is undoubtedly the fact that throughout their studies students are mostly asked to write software programs of relatively lim-ited scope, and are not usually required to work as part of a team constructing a complex program.In the present paper we will describe a study unit intended to be taught as part of a high school computer science curriculum, which emphasizes the software system aspects. In a study that accompanied the development and actual teaching of the unit, we checked, among other things, whether the students acquired skills for developing a complex software system.

This paper reports the results of studying the use of peer learning in the introductory computer science curriculum. The project involves educators from a variety of institutions who participated in two summer workshops and either introduced or continued their use of peer learning at their institutions as part of this project. The results of the collective work include much experience with different types of peer learning in different settings. Overall, the results indicate that peer learning is a valuable technique that should be used as one pedagogical approach in teaching the introductory computer science curriculum.

New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) has convened the yearly Conference on Computer Science Education in the Secondary Schools since 1995 to discuss and carry out a systematic study of issues facing computer science education in the state of New Jersey. The goal is to address the implications of these curricular issues, identify the obstacles to classroom implementation, and to make suggestions for possible solutions. The outcome of these conferences is a clear indication that a seamless articulation between high-school programs and those at university level is of critical importance for secondary school educators and could serve as the foundation for implementing a computer science curriculum in the schools. This paper reviews the current status of secondary schools computer science education in the state of New Jersey and discusses curriculum guidelines formulated by conference participants, themselves classroom teachers. This work, along with previous curriculum re commendations reported in the li...

This paper describes how the algorithm called parallel merge sort can be used to teach fundamental concepts in the design of parallel algorithms for a network of workstations (NOW). First, the basic algorithm is introduced and its performance studied. Then, through a series of improvements based on a close examination of the algorithm and the underlying communication network, students are shown how performance can be significantly enhanced. This incremental approach lets students observe, first-hand, the critical importance of communication overhead, granularity, latency, and load balancing in designing efficient distributed parallel algorithms for a NOW environment.

Basic to any data structures course is the introduction of linked lists, their applications and implementations. In this paper we trace the evolution of the exposition of linked lists, as influenced by the language of instruction. We found that while the node pool implementation of linked lists was originally prominently discussed, the current trend is to present only the pointer-based implementation. We feel that the shift toward object-oriented programming should not preclude a presentation of various implementations. We present our own approach to introducing linked list implementations, in which the pointer-based implementation is used to motivate the node pool approach, using pointers to implement the node pool.

One of the main problems faced within departments of computer science is how to encourage students to use their algorithmic and programming skills in the real-life context. This paper deals with control technologies for higher education. We define controlware as a toolkit for creating the control part of a mobile robot in interactive learning environments and educational micro-worlds. Intelligent behavior of mobile robots is created through the composition of constituent control units. The overall behavior of a mobile robot is half cooperative and half-competitive realization of the goals of the control units. To construct this composition behavior and resolve the corresponding conflicts, a partially ordering priority arbitration subsystem is defined. It is shown that the suggested approach links educational processes both in a control curriculum and an intelligent robotics curriculum. We hope that the spreadsheet-based controlware will make the mobile robots lear ning environment an accepted educational ...

This paper presents an online reviewing tool, Poser, written in the Java programming language. Online quizzing tools have proliferated lately, but most are not so wellsuited for reviewing. Poser’s basic functionality is to provide students with a convenient, interactive way to review course materials in a question/answer format. Incorrect responses are corrected, along with an optional explanation. The program keeps usage statistics and information on responses to questions. Poser can be an important part of any course, because it gives students an easy way to test their understanding of the course materials from any Internet computer. We used Poser in two introductory Computer Science courses and gathered some formative data which was used to modify and evaluate the program. Over 100 students used the program and they answered over 38,000 questions while reviewing for their final exams. Student comments indicate that the program was very helpful. Overall, we feel that Poser was a huge success and are planning a controlled study in the coming semesters to measure how much the use of the program facilitates student learning and understanding.

Software analysis, testing, and verification (ATV) is a major activity in the real world of software development, yet it remains underemphasized in the undergraduate computer science curriculum at most colleges and universities. This paper discusses the importance of software ATV and its relationship to other subject areas in computer science. Concepts, terminology, and techniques from software ATV are presented, and examples are given to show how they may be integrated into the undergraduate computer science curriculum.

Summary A network-centric university teaching and research environment based around mobile robots is described. It supports teaching a wide spectrum of computer science and engineering subjects (eg digital electronics, computer architecture, operating systems, communications, distributed processing, software engineering, machine vision, artificial intelligence, embedded computer design, real-time computing, HCI, Computer Graphics, Virtual Reality etc) within a single unified experimental environment. This enables students to combine their coursework so as to build more complex, interesting and industrially relevant systems thereby significantly increasing their motivation and knowledge. The laboratory infrastructure makes extensive use of networks to produce a versatile and cost effectiveness teaching and research environment. This paper will focus on the teaching aspects of the laboratory describing the technical infrastructure showing how it is used to support the Essex University information technology curriculum and report on the effectiveness of the approach. Finally, to demonstrate the more general academic synergy provided by this laboratory a short overview of some of the research applications is presented.

We report students’ experiments with a small mobile robot Khepera developed in the Microcomputing Laboratory of Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (LAMI‐EPFL). Khepera makes teaching of fuzzy‐control theory easier and more compelling for students. In the experiments, reported in this paper, students learn how to implement a simple fuzzy control algorithm for obstacle avoidance. The students have to build a fuzzy controller step‐by‐step using software package LabVIEW. Although very simple, this experiment focuses on methodology required for building controllers based on fuzzy logic. It allows students to understand basic fuzzy logic concepts, the advantages and drawbacks of fuzzy controllers as well as the difficulties of their practical design.

Core computer science is about virtual machines, whereas computer applications and robotics are about the real world. The hypothesis that we will pursue in this paper is that real‐world autonomous robots provide a tool that enables us to learn about how to design intelligent computer systems for the real world. They can teach us many powerful ideas about intelligence and computer systems in general. We will show a number of case studies illustrating how complex behaviors can be achieved by very simple mechanisms (e.g. how robots can clean up without knowing about it), and how robots learn to form concepts about the real world depending on how they are built. We also show how intelligence does not require central control and how the real world is not something to fight against, but something to live with and to exploit beneficially. We discuss how real‐world autonomous agents can be used to teach an interdisciplinary audience. Finally, we discuss potential ways in which ideas like the ones developed in thi...

This paper reports on experience with project courses, especially those concerning the design and construction of an autonomous aerial robot. Dealing with this complex application task in small tea...

The phenomenon of control is an essential component of our everyday natural, social and artificial environment. Control‐related concepts have become a central component of many core topics in modern technology education. However, evidence already collected shows that students have serious difficulties in transcending the phenomenal or behavioral understanding of a system's functioning, towards more formal definitions of the control process. In this paper we suggest a framework for the design of learning environments of control concepts and design skills. Two main paradigms are suggested as the conveyors of very different cognitive approaches to control: programmingor software oriented and designor hardware oriented paradigms. The control of a Lego robot is used to elaborate on the different paradigms, and an example of computer implementation of control using spreadsheet software ‐the spreadsheet‐book metaphor for representing control‐ is presented in detail.

The cheap and powerful personal computer (PC) has become an important and efficient tool for supporting engineering education. In this paper a PC‐based training module, AIROBOT,is presented. The purpose of this module is to provide a platform for students to develop and experiment with artificial intelligence techniques. The training module, AIROBOT,utilizes an electronic noughts and crosses game board which is interfaced to the Scorbot‐ER VII robot and a PC. The development and implementation of the module are discussed. Two techniques developed by the students are presented to illustrate the utilization of the module. The first technique involves searching a game tree data structure. The learning involves the on‐line generation of the game tree as the games are played. An evaluation function is used to facilitate the search. The other technique is based on the artificial neural network approach using the backpropagation paradigm. The structure of the neural networks, training and performances are presen...

In this paper we describe a system for visualizing correctness proofs of graph algorithms. The system has been demonstrated for a greedy algorithm. Prim?s algorithm for finding a minimum spanning tree of an undirected, weighted graph. We believe that our system is particularly appropriate for greedy algorithms, though much of what we discuss can guide visualization of proofs in other contexts. While an example is not a proof, our system provides concrete examples to illustrate the operation of the algorithm. These examples can be referred to by the user interactively and alternatively with the visualization of the proof where the general case is portrayed abstractly.

We teach students to become researchers through a kind of apprenticeship. Experienced researchers take graduate students under their wing and tutor them individually on how to do research: a slow and somewhat erratic procedure. This article describes a course that is designed to accelerate the process by imparting professional research skills. It has been taught for three years to incoming graduate students, and includes seminars by experienced researchers, presentations by students in the class, and lectures and discussions on topics that relate to particular research skills. Strong emphasis is placed on the critical analysis and evaluation of research ideas, and students practice by writing reviews, presenting papers, and constructing a thesis proposal.

There is considerable variation in the terminology that is used in discussing the subject of (abstract) data types. Further, discussions of individual data types often combine several types into unnecessarily complex or interlinked structures and sometimes refer to a single data type in inconsistent ways. This paper resolves many of these problems by proposing a unified classification of a wide range of data types.

This paper describes a research project that was designed to provide a group of bright undergraduate students with a meaningful research experience that would encourage and motivate them to attend graduate school for further education and research. The project illustrated basic research techniques and the nature of the job of a researcher to undergraduates who had had limited or no opportunities for research. The students were involved in all phases of the project to ensure that they would gain the confidence needed to do research on their own. In this project the students were given an opportunity to do research that involved parallel processing.

This paper describes the successful integration of statistics and computer science in a course that combines topics from “Survey of Computer Languages” and from “Applied Statistical Modeling.” The benefit to the computer science half of the course is that computer concepts, which are often illustrated in simplified or clean cases, are demonstrated in very sophisticated, yet highly useful settings. The benefit to the statistical portion of the course is that it allows the use of methods that are conceptually related but algorithmically disparate.

Independent of the content and placement of the discrete mathematics course in the computer science curriculum, a common goal is to improve the students’ ability to read and communicate mathematical or technical material. This paper describes a teaching format for the discrete mathematics course that fosters this goal. Instead of lecturing, the instructor responds to questions and asks questions over material the students have read. In periodic problem sessions, student groups polish and present problem solutions for the rest of the class to critique. This approach not only improves the technical reading and communication skills of the students, but involves students more actively in the total learning process.

Students drop out of university courses for a multitude of reasons. Whatever the cause, the costs of an unsuccessful attempt to complete a course are significant to student and university alike. This paper examines student attrition in computer science classes with the hope of identifying common causes and ultimately reducing the number of students dropping computer science courses. Survey data were analyzed to determine if reasons for dropping differed for various groupings of students including undergraduate/graduate, male/female, computer science major/non‐major, and service/non‐service courses.

I am very pleased to be introducing this Special Issue on pedagogic patterns, which has been an interest of mine for over 10 years. This issue is formed of six papers that represent a spectrum of i...

When a liberal arts college decides to include computer science as one of its academic disciplines, a number of questions arise. What is an appropriate curriculum? What sort of laboratory support does this new discipline need? How does a small liberal arts school attract, retain, and evaluate faculty in this area? Do computer science faculty become a separate department or remain joined with mathematics or some other discipline? In short, what must be done to put computer science on equal footing with mathematics and other scientific disciplines? This paper addresses these questions.

I have discovered that, by giving my students quizzes at the end of each class, I can noticeably improve their learning without having to improve my teaching. In this paper, I want to discuss how this “discovery” might be used by others, how it might be studied scientifically, and how it might be developed into a well engineered teaching tool. I want to suggest that developing simple, well engineered, educational tools might be a worthwhile goal for those who want to try to improve computer science education.

This paper discusses the teaching of computer science and engineering in the laboratory. A case is made for the use of laboratory experiences together with the classification of the types of laboratories both in and out of the university environment. Emphasis is placed on the design component. The current problems in establishing, developing, and maintaining laboratory programs are addressed and the response to these from the IEEE Computer Society and the ACM are presented. Typical costs are given to set up the components of a laboratory program for a full curriculum.

Current research stresses that the success or failure of a new system depends on the education and training that users receive. Implicit in these findings is the warning that automation without appropriate education will lead to chaos. This paper reports the development of a plan to educate managers to fully utilize new computer systems and to recognize the potential of automation. The plan is unique in that it is a cooperative endeavor between a major university and a large government agency. The motivation for providing the education is first presented by reviewing current literature that addresses reasons to educate; who should educate, and what education and training should be conducted to ensure success. The curriculum guidelines, developed by the government agency, were specifically stated, and the joint curriculum reconciled these guidelines with normative goals for curriculum development. This was accomplished through close cooperation between the two groups of participants. The article discusses ...

For several years business and industry have recognized serious problems associated with software development. These problems have collectively been referred to as “The Software Crisis” (Pressman, 1987). This crisis is most characterized by problems of software planners to project accurate schedules and reliable cost estimates. It is now widely accepted that applying an engineering approach significantly reduces software development problems. This method includes using standardized management techniques in conjunction with technical tools to improve the development, testing, and maintenance of software. This paper will present a method of incorporating a unified presentation of software engineering techniques in several computer science courses in the undergraduate curriculum.