Benefits of an introductory course in computer game development

This case study discusses the incorporation of encryption systems development into the educational journey of undergraduate computer science or game development majors. We discuss the experience of first semester Daniel Webster College sophomores who attempted to develop the German WWII ENIGMA encryption system in assembly language. By incorporating a real world encryption system project into a beginning computer architecture class students become deeply immersed in numbering systems, hardware logic design, operating system services and, of course instruction set architectures. Of necessity, they also must refine and develop their programming skills to an extraordinary degree. During the past seven years we have found that most students can develop a complete software version of the complex and amazing ENIGMA encryption system. We outline in this paper the strategy that seems to lead to a successful outcome for most students.

In a previous study, we investigated a framework for teaching abstraction in computer science (CS) in the context of an introductory CS course for 7th-grade students. The framework was found effective for developing CS abstraction skills. In this paper, we describe a study that investigated teaching abstraction in CS to 7th-grade students through the perspective of gender. Specifically, we compared the CS abstraction abilities of boys and girls taking the introductory CS course in 7th grade (using the Scratch environment). We also examined the difference in the effect of the teaching strategy on CS abstraction abilities between boys and girls. Our findings show a significant advantage of girls over boys regarding several aspects of CS abstraction. We also found that the framework for teaching CS abstraction, which was already established in our previous study as effective in the context of an introductory course for 7th-grade students, has an enhanced effect in this context when it comes to girls. This enhancement was manifested by a better overall performance by the girls, when comparing boys and girls that took an introductory CS course in which this framework was used. It was also manifested by the girls' deeper and more reliable perception of CS. We conjecture that this framework has the potential to affect girls' self-efficacy, and as a result to create a positive effect by encouraging and motivating girls to pursue CS education beyond this introductory course. That is, this framework has the potential to contribute to solving the issue of underrepresentation of females at the different stages of CS education, or in other words, to widening the CS pipeline for females.

The Robotics Education Workshop (http://projects. csail.mit.edu/rss/RobotEd/) took place in connection with the 2005 Robotics Systems and Science (RSS) symposium (http://www.roboticsconference.org/) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on 11 June 2005. It was organized by John Leonard, Una-May O'Reilly, Nick Roy, Daniela Rus, and Seth Teller. The workshop’s main goal was to discuss what it would take to turn robotics into a core course that can be taught in every accredited CS, ME, and EE undergraduate program in the United States and elsewhere around the world. We were inspired to organize this workshop during an introductory robotics course we have been developing as a team (http://courses.csail. mit.edu/6.141) and were encouraged by Hal Abelson. There are many reasons why we believe now is an important time to consider teaching robotics broadly. The computing revolution is bringing computers closer and closer to interactions with the physical world. We have seen the progression from mainframes to desktops to laptops to pervasive computing by networking. Most of today’s computers have integrated sensors, such as microphones, primitive motion sensors to park the disk drive, light sensors to detect when to automatically illuminate the keyboard or dim the screen, and cameras to collect images from the surrounding environment. Recent advances in the cost, size, performance, and capabilities of actuators show us that actuation will become native to a computing environment so that today’s personal computers (PCs) will become tomorrow’s personal robots (PRs). Robotics brings an interesting perspective to computer science education as it naturally puts together continuous and discrete computation and provides an opportunity to reason about error and uncertainty, an important new topic in the study of computation at the undergraduate level. Last but not least, the love of robots is as pervasive as can be. Robotics is hard to teach because the expertise in robotics is concentrated at a few institutions. And, there are no established curricula, no robust and inexpensive teaching platforms, and no collections of labs and projects with solutions. Teaching robotics well relies on integrating together ME, EE, and CS topics; creating a balanced syllabus is a huge challenge. Yet, robotics provides the perfect educational tool for introducing students to embedded systems and computation for interacting with the physical world, and to making intelligent autonomous machines. Several universities have already introduced special topics courses on robotics. The curricula and hardware platforms for these courses are quite varied, and the goals of the courses differ across ME, EE, and CS departments. We wished to leverage this excellent body of knowledge and discuss how to develop an integrated approach to teaching robotics that would train students simultaneously in foundational aspects of designing, controlling, and programming robots and embedded systems. To this end, the discussions at the RSS education workshop were focused on 1) evaluating the state of the art for undergraduate robotics education, 2) discussing how to build on this experience toward a broad integration of robotics in the undergraduate curricula, and 3) discussing how to best share course materials. Over 30 professors from universities and colleges in the United States, Europe, and Asia met for a full day. The program alternated presentations on existing courses and educational material with lively discussions on the key issues of integrating robotics in an undergraduate curriculum. The workshop program included presentations by Gaurav Sukhatme (University of Southern California), Mark Yim (University of Pennsylvania), Illah Nourbakhsh (Carnegie Mellon University), Brad Nelson (ETH-Zurich), Jonathan Bredin (Colorado College), Holly Yanko (University of Massachusetts, Lowell), Matthew Stein (Roger Williams University), Matt Mason (Carnegie Mellon University), John Hollerbach (University of Utah), Nick Roy (MIT), and Stewart Tansley (Microsoft). Three discussion sessions focused on 1) hardware kits, software packages, and lessons learned (moderated by Una-May O'Reilly, MIT); 2) integrated syllabus and projects (moderated by Seth Teller, MIT); and 3) what to share and how (moderated by Daniela Rus, MIT). The presentations were all exciting, inspiring, and filled with interesting lessons learned, and workshop participants were highly engaged in the discussion sessions. The most important outcome was a general goal of creating an open repository of robotics course materials in order to better coordinate the teaching of robotics across universities. Such a repository would enable the sharing of course materials. By providing easy access to teaching materials, the teaching of introductory robotics courses everywhere will be facilitated, and robotics will become a core component of computer science and engineering academic programs. This will strengthen the education and research activities for our field. More specifically, the participants discussed the possibility of developing an open repository of robotics course materials similar to MIT's OpenCourseWare (OCW) initiative. This repository would contain a suite of robotics curricula for teaching all aspects of robotics, ranging from undergraduate introductory courses E D U C A T I O N

This article presents the findings of a study to determine the degree of consistency in what is taught and learned in high school and college-level introductory courses in geographic information science and technology (GIS&T). A content analysis identified sixteen topics that are generally representative of the knowledge, skills, and abilities developed in introductory undergraduate courses. The findings were used to propose a standard college-level survey course in GIS&T that could inform future efforts to introduce more academically rigorous GIS&T coursework in high schools, such as through the Advanced Placement Program.

Most people who have taught the introductory undergraduate course in Artificial Intelligence agree that it is a difficult course to teach well. Recently attention has been directed to achieving a better understanding of the objectives, prerequisites, themes, pedagogic methodologies, topics, and support resources for this course [1]. Also, recently a number of professors who teach the course, acting independently have created and made available on the World Wide Web (WWW) simple Course Support Environments (CSEs) which include both pedagogic and administrative information.

Graduation rates are generally low among undergraduate Computer Science (CS) majors, so we are motivated to employ flipped classroom model at CSUB to improve 4-year graduation rates. There is a plethora of literature supporting improved information retention using the flipped classroom model. However, its impact on upper-division core CS courses has been understudied. An active learning environment using Just-in-Time-Teaching (JiTT), pair instruction, and computational thinking has been implemented in this study. This flipped classroom model was applied to two upper-division CS courses, Computer Architecture II and Artificial Intelligence. A year-long study measured the impact on performance through surveys, performance on group activities, and class performance such as test scores, with comparison to a control population (non-flipped classroom class) normalized for a specific instructor. An increased student performance and ultimately better graduation rates among the 40 flipped classroom model students is anticipated.

The evaluation of student projects is a difficult task, especially when they involve both a technical and a creative component. We propose an artificial intelligence (AI)-based methodology to help in the evaluation of complex projects in engineering and computer science courses. This methodology is intended to evaluate the assessment process itself allowing to analyze the influence of each variable in the final grade, to discover possible biases, inconsistencies and discrepancies, and to generate appropriate rubrics that help to avoid them. As an example of its application, we consider the evaluation of the projects submitted in an undergraduate introductory course on computer science. Using data collected from the evaluation during five academic years, we follow the proposed methodology to create AI models and analyze the main variables which are involved in the assessment of the projects. The proposed methodology can be applied to other courses and degrees, where both technical and creative components are considered to evaluate the projects.

� This article discusses five years of experience using three international mobile robot competitions as the foundation for educational projects in undergraduate and graduate computer science courses. The three competitions—(1) AAAI Mobile Robot, (2) AUVS Unmanned Ground Robotics, and (3) IJCAI RoboCup—were used in different years for an introductory undergraduate robotics course, an advanced graduate robotics course, and an undergraduate practicum course. Based on these experiences, a strategy is presented for incorporating competitions into courses in such a way as to foster intellectual maturation as well as learn lessons in organizing courses and fielding teams. The article also provides a classification of the major robot competitions and discusses the relative merits of each for educational projects, including the expected course level of computer science students, equipment needed, and costs.

Computer science (CS) is a field of practical and scientific approach on computation and applications. Consequently, the CS students should be able to adjust to develop different types of software applications. However, even though video games are one type of software, they also impose additional requirements for the developers. In this paper we present the results of our qualitative studies on how prepared CS students are to function as game developers. The paper assesses the knowledge gaps between students majoring in computer science and game developer needs in two ways; a longitudinal study on a game development course and a focused case study on developing a game. Based on our results there are differences in communication and planning approaches between the CS students and game developers, and skill needs for game development content on a traditional computer science course curricula.

Computer science is a fast-growing field in today’s digitized age, and working in this industry often requires creativity and innovative thought. An issue within computer science education, however, is that large introductory programming courses often involve little opportunity for creative thinking within coursework. The undergraduate introductory programming course (CS1) is notorious for its poor student performance and retention rates across multiple institutions. Integrating opportunities for creative thinking may help combat this issue by adding a personal touch to course content, which could allow beginner CS students to better relate to the abstract world of programming. Research on the role of creativity in computer science education (CSE) is an interesting area with a lot of room for exploration due to the complexity of the phenomenon of creativity as well as the CSE research field being fairly new compared to some other education fields where this topic has been more closely explored.To contribute to this area of research, this article provides a literature review exploring the concept of creativity as relevant to computer science education and CS1 in particular. Based on the review of the literature, we conclude creativity is an essential component to computer science, and the type of creativity that computer science requires is in fact, a teachable skill through the use of various tools and strategies. These strategies include the integration of open-ended assignments, large collaborative projects, learning by teaching, multimedia projects, small creative computational exercises, game development projects, digitally produced art, robotics, digital story-telling, music manipulation, and project-based learning. Research on each of these strategies and their effects on student experiences within CS1 is discussed in this review. Last, six main components of creativity-enhancing activities are identified based on the studies about incorporating creativity into CS1. These components are as follows: Collaboration, Relevance, Autonomy, Ownership, Hands-On Learning, and Visual Feedback. The purpose of this article is to contribute to computer science educators’ understanding of how creativity is best understood in the context of computer science education and explore practical applications of creativity theory in CS1 classrooms. This is an important collection of information for restructuring aspects of future introductory programming courses in creative, innovative ways that benefit student learning.

In recent years, to cultivate international computer professionals and improve the education quality for foreign students, some Chinese universities have established computer science majors where all the courses are taught in English. As the introductory course to computer science majors, "introduction to computer science" plays an important role in helping students lay a professional foundation and cultivate their interest in the major. As one of the pioneering universities in China to set up computer science majors taught in English, Jinan University has ten years' teaching experience in delivering such a course. The reform and practice of teaching "introduction to computer science" in English at Jinan University is expounded in this paper from the following three aspects: (1) Developing a teaching-content system that conforms to professional training direction, adapts to the characteristics of freshmen and the teaching characteristics of a course delivered in English; (2) Comprehensively using various advanced teaching methods; (3) Creating an evaluation system with multiple assessment modes that focuses on examining students' comprehension and practical skills. The reforms and practices at Jinan University provide a reference for other universities, especially those in non-English-speaking countries.

Designed for introductory undergraduate courses in fluid mechanics for chemical engineers, this stand-alone textbook illustrates the fundamental concepts and analytical strategies in a rigorous and systematic, yet mathematically accessible manner. Using both traditional and novel applications, it examines key topics such as viscous stresses, surface tension, and the microscopic analysis of incompressible flows which enables students to understand what is important physically in a novel situation and how to use such insights in modeling. The many modern worked examples and end-of-chapter problems provide calculation practice, build confidence in analyzing physical systems, and help develop engineering judgment. The book also features a self-contained summary of the mathematics needed to understand vectors and tensors, and explains solution methods for partial differential equations. Including a full solutions manual for instructors available at www.cambridge.org/deen, this balanced textbook is the ideal resource for a one-semester course.

Designed for introductory undergraduate courses in fluid mechanics for chemical engineers, this stand-alone textbook illustrates the fundamental concepts and analytical strategies in a rigorous and systematic, yet mathematically accessible manner. Using both traditional and novel applications, it examines key topics such as viscous stresses, surface tension, and the microscopic analysis of incompressible flows which enables students to understand what is important physically in a novel situation and how to use such insights in modeling. The many modern worked examples and end-of-chapter problems provide calculation practice, build confidence in analyzing physical systems, and help develop engineering judgment. The book also features a self-contained summary of the mathematics needed to understand vectors and tensors, and explains solution methods for partial differential equations. Including a full solutions manual for instructors available at www.cambridge.org/deen, this balanced textbook is the ideal resource for a one-semester course.

Designed for introductory undergraduate courses in fluid mechanics for chemical engineers, this stand-alone textbook illustrates the fundamental concepts and analytical strategies in a rigorous and systematic, yet mathematically accessible manner. Using both traditional and novel applications, it examines key topics such as viscous stresses, surface tension, and the microscopic analysis of incompressible flows which enables students to understand what is important physically in a novel situation and how to use such insights in modeling. The many modern worked examples and end-of-chapter problems provide calculation practice, build confidence in analyzing physical systems, and help develop engineering judgment. The book also features a self-contained summary of the mathematics needed to understand vectors and tensors, and explains solution methods for partial differential equations. Including a full solutions manual for instructors available at www.cambridge.org/deen, this balanced textbook is the ideal resource for a one-semester course.

Why do so few women major in computer science (CS) or management information systems (MIS)? Are the reasons for women’s underrepresentation in these two disciplines the same? I will address these issues by reporting on my research on female and male undergraduates majoring in CS or MIS. I hypothesize that results from one area of information technology (IT), such as CS, do not necessarily generalize to other areas of IT, such as MIS. Structural barriers exist that keep women from advancement in IT careers (cf. Ahuja, 2002). However, an examination of these is beyond the scope of this article, which focuses on gender differences in IT students. In 2002 only 27.6% of U.S. Bachelor’s degrees in CS and 36.8% in MIS were conferred on women (U.S. Department of Education, 2002), limiting the number of women qualified to enter into the IT workforce. The problem of women’s under representation in IT is not limited to the U.S. Women are underrepresented in CS majors in other Western countries such as Canada (Gadalla, 2001), Germany (Huber, Reiff, Ben, & Schinzel, 2001), Norway (Berg, Gansmo, Hestflatt, Lie, Nordli, & Sorenson, 2002), and Ireland (MacKeogh, 2003). IT cannot afford to underutilize such a valuable and significant part of the workforce. Increasing the representation of women is imperative because “greater diversity among those who create computing technology ensures that those technologies are relevant to and usable by a wider range of people” (Roberts, 2003).