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One of the key components to an introductory Computer Science course is the lab component. This serves as a time for students to gain hands on experience with the concepts they are learning in lecture that week. Typically, the way the lab time is structured is students will be given the assignment and be allotted the entire lab period to work on their own with instructor help available if need be. While straightforward enough, this approach is less than ideal. With lab sizes in introductory courses increasing the number of students who need instructor help during the lab time increases. This approach leads to students not being able to get the attention they need as the instructor needs to move between students quickly or even worse...students may "fall through the cracks" as demand for help outpaces the instructor resources available. The result is students leaving lab with knowledge gaps regarding the topic that prevent them from creating a solid foundation on which to build their basic programming knowledge. Even worse is the fact this approach teaches students when they are handed a programming task to dive straight to code as fast as possible which may not be consistent with how they will work in industry. The goal of this paper is to outline a new paradigm for structuring the lab period which teaches students how to work with peers to solve a problem, think before they code, and build conceptual understanding. In this approach students do a combination of group work, individual work, and whole class work to solve the problem. This allows the instructor to better manage the students in the class and enables them to point out common "pain points" with the material being covered that week and show ways to optimize / speed up the code being written. This paper discusses the effectiveness of this approach by looking at qualitative student feedback as well as analyzing the student performance (grades) across sections of the class that had this new, combination approach versus the normal approach to lab of giving students the lab and having them work independently. The initial statistical analysis (difference in means, 95% confidence level) shows a statistically significant increase in lab, homework, and overall course grades for students that experienced the new, combination approach when compared to the students that experienced the normal approach to the computer science lab experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the fundamental paradigms early Computer Science / Software Engineering classes seek to teach students is object-oriented programming. Typically this is done using Java, an object-oriented programming language. Part of Java is JavaFX, a graphics library that allows programmers to create graphical applications using Java. While it would be beneficial to use this graphics package to help demonstrate object-oriented concepts, a student starting out with Java will not have the necessary knowledge to implement this package in their programs. This paper discusses a JavaFX based graphics library students can easily use with little to no prior experience coding in Java to get exposed to object-oriented concepts in a graphical way. One library that was of particular interest in the development of this library was the Wheels library created by Sanders and van Dam and was an easy way for students starting out learning object-oriented programming to create graphical programs with little to no previous programming knowledge. This library was built on the AWT graphics package which limited the number of shapes that were available to students as well as the color pallet they could easily pick from. This creates an issue as Wheels was based off AWT it is now obsolete as AWT has been replaced by JavaFX. The new library detailed here, named WheelsFX, is a Java library that is based off the current JavaFX graphics library. It is designed to wrap JavaFX in a much more approachable set of methods and objects that students can interact with starting the first week of an object-oriented programming course. This means students do not need to know concepts such as inheritance which is needed to work with JavaFX. Aside from ease of use, this library was also designed to be easily extensible by heavily utilizing polymorphism and current best practices in programming including the use of Maven for dependency management. This results in a package that can be easily enhanced to add in additional functionality in the future and easily redeployed to provide students the enhanced functionality in a timely manner. This paper discusses a graphics library implemented in Java that students can easily use with little to no prior experience coding in Java or objectoriented programming to get exposed to object-oriented concepts in a graphical way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On campus, faculty and staff are given a document called the "Red Folder"- a paper folder that contains resources to help identify students that may be in crisis and get them connected to mental health resources on campus. This folder, while useful does have its drawbacks. Most importantly is the fact that it can be easily lost or damaged since it is just paper. Additionally, many faculty store this in their office or in a bag which they may not always have on them limiting their access to this information. On top of all this, only faculty and staff were given the Red Folder so students did not have the same level of access to this information. To solve this problem, students under faculty guidance worked to create an app called LionHELP. LionHELP had two main goals; the first was to create a tool that would give students access to the same mental health resources as the faculty. The second was to create a replacement for the Red Folder that could live as a native app on each person's smartphone to facilitate access at a moment's notice. To develop this app, three students were selected to work with a faculty mentor. The students were majoring in either Computer Science or Software Engineering. To assist with the development and help steer the project, two outside experts were also enlisted. The first was a faculty member from the English department at the school who specializes in English composition and in creating inclusive content that can be understood by a variety of levels of English fluency. The second was a member of the campus counseling center and a certified case manager. The students worked as a team with one student leading the charge on iOS development and the other on Android development with the third serving as a go between and aiding both projects as needed. Each week the students met with the faculty mentor as well as the outside experts to review progress and plan next steps. Prior to the start of the Fall 2021 semester, the app was deployed to both the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store as free downloads for students. The app has been welcomed by faculty, staff, and students with other campuses in the school system being interested in adapting this app for their own uses. Students have been interested in the app as well prompting an article from the student run newspaper to be written and published. The successful development of this app opens the door to future development efforts that include adding in resources to help students get connected to resources on campus related to learning disabilities and other situations that can make a difference in student success on campus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]