Search

This paper describes a framework for measuring student learning gains and engagement in a Computer Science 1 (CS 1) / Information Systems 1 (IS 1) course. The framework is designed for a CS1/IS1 course as it has been traditionally taught over the years as well as when it is taught using a new pedagogical approach with Web services. It enables the new approach to be compared with the traditional way of teaching the courses in terms of student self-assessment of learning gains, student assessment of their engagement with the subject matter, and researcher assessment of student learning gains as measured by performance on a researcher-designed examination. The framework includes a comprehensive pre-test and post-test for students in the control and treatment sections to complete, a common assessment exam module for all students to take, and a faculty survey for the instructors to complete. This enables the researchers to answer many questions regarding the effectiveness of the Web service approach, including "Do students using the Web service approach perform better in the common assessment exam module?" and "Do students and faculty members find the Web service approach more engaging?" Results from the first semester of a 3-year multi-university study are discussed. (Contains 2 tables and 1 figure.)

An introduction to programming course can be a challenge for both students and instructors. This paper describes a study that introduced Web services (WS) and Service-Oriented Architecture in Information Systems 1 (IS 1) and Computer Science 1 (CS 1) programming courses over a two-year period. WS were used as an instruction tool based on their increased use in industry as well as their ability to provide a real world feel to student programming activities. The paper includes an example WS teaching module and a proposed implementation model for future studies based on lessons learned from the current experiment. The study was successful in showing a significant increase in student test performance for WS-taught courses over standard-taught courses. (Contains 7 tables and 5 figures.)

Flexible manufacturing systems are prone to deadlock, which may result in costly delays. Deadlock can be defined as a state where there is some blockage in the system that leaves resource requests unanswered forever unless there is outside intervention. We compare the performance of several deadlock avoidance policies in conjunction with scheduling rules as well as gauging the impact of due date tightness on the system performance. Results indicate that the deadlock avoidance policy factor has much more impact on the system performance than the scheduling rule factor. We suggest several deadlock avoidance policies to be used by production managers depending on their desired system performance and shop environment. The results also indicate that production managers should generally utilize the scheduling rule that is easiest to implement in their system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emergency planners and responders are increasingly investigating the potential of social media as an information source "from the crowd" for providing critical information for emergency response. The proposed map-based social media widget, which may be integrated into a variety of web-based mapping applications, will provide users with an organized and comprehensive pool of real-time data gathered from one of the most popular social media source, Twitter. The widget focuses on developing solutions for two primary challenges related to information from social media sources - gathering and storing real-time data, and filtering and visualizing the gathered information based on required criteria. Users can view filtered data by keyword, time, and location. A user-friendly map for graphical display of feed locations is generated in order to provide a geographic context to an emergency situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]