Search

The decline of student enrollment in computer science (CS) is a pressing issue for computing educators. One of the solutions is to provide K-12 teachers with CS related training. K-12 teachers play an important role in preparing students for college and helping them thrive in the 21st-century global workforce. This paper presents a comprehensive study of K-12 teacher training programs that target improving CS education. These outreach programs are provided by universities, mostly by computer science faculties. The paper first describes each individual training program with highlights for its particularities and contributions. Then it provides a side-by-side comparison of the programs based on different categories such as targeted K-12 teachers, workshop durations, curriculum development information, training tools, etc. At the end, summaries of these programs are presented. The successful strategies and lessons learned from these programs could be beneficial for future K-12 teacher training program development. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Across the United States, interest in computer science as a major is down, as are the number of Bachelor's degrees in computer science. While there are obvious factors like the dot com bust that may explain much of our communal enrollment crash over the last few years, anecdotal reports also suggest that the No Child Left Behind act of 2001 (NCLB), and specifically the fact that computer science is not an area that students are tested on, may be a factor in the decreased presence of computer science at the high school level. But how can we empirically separate the effect of the dot com bust from that of NCLB given the proximity in time of the two events? This paper presents a first attempt to do so: recognizing the fact that private schools are exempt from NCLB, it seems appropriate to compare public school students with their private school counterparts. We present some initial results of our investigation focusing on our home state of New Jersey. This paper discusses these results and further directions of study. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Teamwork is recognized as an important skill for engineering and computer science professionals. Both potential employers and accrediting agencies, such as ABET, expect students to gain proficiency in teamwork skills through experiential learning. Teamwork based projects challenge the student to apply the technical knowledge they gain in school to solve meaningful and complex problems. However, to be truly proficient in teamwork, a student must also learn and practice a large number of peripheral skills. These include planning, estimating, tracking progress, taking corrective actions, managing change, controlling and managing risks, maintaining ethical and professional conduct, communicating complex ideas clearly and concisely, using design automation tools, leveraging web-based tools for team collaboration, and most importantly participating effectively as team members. It is essential that students should be taught these important skills. It is unlikely that without adequate faculty guidance students can pick up these skills through ad-hoc project experience. Yet, many engineering and computer science programs expect the students to do just that. We feel strongly that we need to employ a more pragmatic approach in teaching students the skills necessary to function as effective and productive team members. Additionally, we need to develop criteria for assessing the effectiveness of teaching teamwork and the tools to measure learning outcomes. Among the problems contributing to this situation are the following: engineering and computer science instructors themselves often have had little or no experience operating in teams; training or guidance in effective ways to teach teamwork is seldom provided; and tools and effective approaches to assist in the teaching and assessment of teamwork are lacking. Another problem is that, it takes a great deal of faculty time, effort and energy to guide groups of students in doing effective teamwork. We will describe an approach that we have used to teach team collaboration skills using free and freely available web-based tools. Students learn to use tools for design automation, metrics collection, project management, and web-based collaboration. Our approach encourages students to learn teamwork skills and improves levels of collaboration among team members while reducing demands on faculty time and effort. Use of web-based collaboration tools allows students to participate without the need for frequent face-to-face meetings; this our students love. In an effort to maximize the use of techniques like the ones described in this paper, we hold regular informal sessions of interested faculty to share ideas on improving teaching teamwork and to develop methods and tools for assessment. The paper and the conference presentation will describe both our approach and the results we have obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In order to better prepare students for professional practice, we have created a software engineering curriculum that provides an end-to-end perspective that begins with the business context of software, and goes all the way to the ongoing management of software services after deployment. This paper examines how the theoretical aspects of this broad-based curriculum may be effectively delivered through a single course within a traditional computer science program. This curriculum is under a diverse set of constraints and requirements, such as the need for pedagogical consistency, faculty development, consideration of the learning style of computer science students, and a need for an effective continuous improvement process. Our approach uses “engineering-oriented” analysis frameworks such as Porter's Five Forces model for the business aspects, and attribute-driven design for software architectures, an “inverted” classroom mode of teaching where lectures are delivered on line with interactions and exercises that promote active learning reserved for the classroom, case studies developed from real projects to serve as concrete examples, open discussion boards and weekly short quizzes for concept refinement and retention, and a paper-based project where students apply the concepts learned. Faculty development and replication outside the current site are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper will briefly summarize the current state of women in the sciences (especially computer science and engineering), examine current trends, and explore the needs of potential female scientists. One recognized need for academic achievement is the availability of mentors. Female mentors serve as role models and offer tangible proof that a woman can succeed in the field. This paper will explore one approach to inspiring and providing role models for women interested in the sciences. At the University of Mary Washington (UMW), a member of the Department of Computer Science introduced an innovative and novel freshman seminar: "Beauty and Brains — Women in the Sciences". This course is designed to expose students to the achievements and lives of many female scientists. Details about teaching methods, successful assignments, and outcomes are included in the paper. Feedback has been very positive. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In a typical introductory AI class, the topic of reinforcement learning may be allocated only a few hours of class time. One engaging example of reinforcement learning uses a crawling robot that learns to use its two-degree-of-freedom arm to drag itself forward. Unfortunately, the cost of the required hardware is prohibitively expensive for many departments for what is typically a once-a-semester demonstration. So we decided to port the algorithm to a platform that many departments may already have on hand: the LEGO Mindstorms RCX 2.0. Initially the task seemed relatively straightforward: build a robot base out of LEGO parts and implement the algorithm in the Not Quite C language. However the challenges of designing a robot arm without servos and attempting to trim code down to a size that would fit on the RCX has proven to be as educational to the undergraduates working on the project as we hope the final product will be to students in AI classes. This paper describes the challenges we have faced and the solutions we have implemented, as well as the work that remains to be completed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An e-portfolio is an online multimedia-capable portfolio that showcases a student's collection of academic learning, achievements, knowledge, and skills. While using e-portfolios to showcase student work has been a hot topic in the engineering education community, the topic has received less attention in the computer science education community. This paper presents a work in progress comparing the use of e-portfolios early in a computer science student's academic career versus late. We find that there are benefits to each approach, both from a student perspective and an instructor perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A dissatisfaction appears to permeate the process of educating computer science students. Both students and instructors seem uninspired in the classroom, resulting in many attempts to enliven, freshen, and improve the experience. These attempts show efficacy, but the pace of improvement is slow. 100 Problems (100P) is an innovative guided discovery curriculum in which students are freed from the classroom and instead work on 100 concept- and research-related problems throughout their undergraduate careers. The 100 problems guide the students to discover the fundamental knowledge and skills required of a graduate of the degree program. Each student is free to create an individualized mode of learning and discovery. As such, the curriculum fosters deep learning among students and challenges students' intellectual growth. In this paper we introduce the 100P curriculum, describe the 100P course format and our experiences offering courses in this format, and report our early findings. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Capstone courses in many disciplines often fall into a single paradigm: they allow students to practice the skills they should have gathered through their progress in the department curriculum in a real-world or near-real venue. However, these courses often fail the real-world test by one important factor: they are not interdisciplinary projects, which is not indicative of industry experiences. We are attempting to create an interdisciplinary environment for capstone courses, involving both design and computer science students, to more adequately prepare students for industry work. This work-in-progress paper describes our experiences and plans for bettering the interdisciplinary capstone experience. The experiences show that there is a fundamental miscommunication between students of different disciplines that hinders their ability to collaborate. By analyzing qualitative questionnaires from thirty-three computer science students, we have affirmed the existence of this rift in inter-departmental understanding. This realization has formed our basis for creating educational modules to ease the collaboration between computer science and design students. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Changing from a co-education to a single-gender learning environment could be an opportunity and a challenge to any institute. Software engineering is one of the fields that could be affected by gender-segregation policies. Teaching the subject involves group and individual activities which could be dramatically affected in single-gender settings. In this paper, we present our experience in teaching software engineering in gender segregated classes. We will compare the performance of students before and after gender segregation. We will show samples of the activities and the findings. We will have a discussion about the impact of gender segregation on the overall course performance. Our findings could be useful in providing strategies to enhance the higher education learning experience and to eliminate future gender divide issues in the workplace. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In Fall 2010, 98 students in a one-credit Academic Scholarship Success Class were given an assignment to write a life plan for the ten years after their Bachelor of Science or Bachelor of Science in Engineering degree. The students in this class were either NSF S-STEM Scholarship students (engineering or computer science majors), transfer students who would receive a $300 scholarship after successful completion of the class, or other upper division students who had heard that the course was very helpful. The programs supporting the class have an emphasis on women and underrepresented minority students. The students were to address a summary of goals and professional objectives, current status in education and personal life, education goals and planned coursework, research importance, industrial importance, community service importance, personal mentoring plan, graduate school, professional goals, lifelong learning, family planning, travel plans, contingency plans, and their philosophy of life. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the reaction of the students to this assignment. The students were asked at a later time for their evaluation: was the assignment helpful, what did they learn doing the assignment, was the assignment thorough enough, and what changes would they make in the assignment. A summary of these findings is presented. Some students were surprised at how much their goals and plans in some areas changed in just a semester. The conclusion of the study is that this is a very helpful, important, and interesting assignment that should be given in mentoring situations and academic success classes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Object-oriented software design and programming is an essential part of a computer science curriculum. We have observed that novice software developers, such as fresh college graduates who have been taught object-oriented design, are able to apply good design principles in theory. However, this rarely extends into their professional practice, when they are asked to design software intended to run inside a software framework. In fact, we observe that even advanced software developers abandon good design practices when developing software while using a framework, and focus on simply “making it work.” This paper presents and discusses a methodology developed for designing software in the context of frameworks to overcome these issues. We show how design patterns can serve as the bridge between the paradigms imposed by the framework and the ideal, unconstrained design of the system. We also suggest an evaluation method for observing the results of using this methodology when used by the students. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Master in Computer Science programs (MS-CS) are critically important in producing competitive IT professionals and preparing students for doctorate research. A major challenge is how to integrate the latest computing technologies into MS-CS programs without compromising the computer science foundation education. This paper shares Pace University's study and experience in renovating its MS-CS program to address this challenge. The study started with the identification of the most important progress in computing over the past decade and its relationship with the fundamental computer science concepts and theory. In particular Internet and web technologies, cloud computing, mobile computing, and Internet/web security are analyzed. Based on this theoretical analysis Pace University's MS-CS program was revised into a 30-credit program with a 12-credit program core for comprehensive theoretical foundation, 12-credit concentrations for in-depth study in selected technology areas, and three 6-credit capstone options for knowledge integration and application as well as life-long learning. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Undergraduate students often start their academic course of studies with inadequate learning and thinking skills. Our college has a policy of setting high standards, while supporting students' learning in a variety of ways. In this paper we present two distinctive courses designed to aid students develop logical and algorithmic thinking, essential for coping with software engineering studies. The courses are taught independently from but in parallel to Introduction to Computer Science and Math courses of first semester. Courses elaborate on algorithmic thinking, logical reasoning and argumentation while explicating abstract ideas which are often hidden in a loaded curriculum of the disciplinary courses. At the same time, connections are made to the application of the abstract ideas in the disciplinary courses. Feedback from participants in the two courses demonstrates an increased awareness and appreciation of abstract ideas beyond mathematical and programming knowledge, improved problem-solving skills and deeper understanding of concepts and principles. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

For many years educators have operated in “silo mode” providing the benefits of depth and rigor, but often short-changing context and applicability. This is particularly important when addressing the current Reality TV Generation that demands immediate relevance. In stark contrast to the silo approach, Informatics brings together technology, information, and people. Scientific principles of analysis, hypothesis, and evaluation are at the heart of informatics, but they are not sterile notions. Informatics makes these principles relevant by working with specific domain information. In the case of high school teenagers, examples of relevant domains include movies, music, and college selection. This paper describes a high school course in informatics that is currently under development. In addition to the natural interdisciplinary nature of informatics, our 3-way partnership and 3-strategy approach to adoption makes this project special. The goal of the project is that by working together and utilizing these diffusion strategies, this team can not only develop and deliver a successful course, but also lay the groundwork for widespread adoption. We believe that successful completion of such a course would empower both college-bound and career-oriented students by helping them work comfortably and effectively with digital information in the 21st century. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Our students' reading comprehension skills underpin their ability to learn the concepts and competencies in computer science. However, there has been little attention given to evaluating how well our students comprehend what they read and the effectiveness of strategies to improve their reading comprehension. In this paper we focus on the case of a non-major course on internet ethics and the reading of the original writings of key figures in ethical theory. Due to the observed weakness of the reading comprehension skills of the students, we have been teaching our students strategies to improve their skills in reading comprehension and meta-comprehension within the framework of an in-class group reading. The reading strategies we have been using are described, evaluated, and placed in the context of the reading comprehension literature. Increased awareness of the limitations of the reading comprehension skills of our students and of ways to teach the students strategies to improve those skills should prove useful in helping instructors ensure that our students have the foundation they need to be successful in their computer science studies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]