Curtis A. Carver

Enhancing student learning through hypermedia courseware and incorporation of student learning styles

This paper outlines attempts to enhance student learning by addressing different learning styles through course hypermedia. Students learn by a variety of different learning styles. Previously, instructors were unable to effectively address these different learning styles outside the classroom. Two approaches were developed to address this problem. The first approach was the development of hypermedia courseware. This provided a wide variety of tools which students could use to prepare for lessons. In this way students retained complete control over how they prepared for a lesson and could choose those hypermedia tools that were most conducive to their learning. An assessment of the multimedia and hypertext documents in the course revealed that the value of a particular multimedia tool to a student varied widely. Each student was traversing the course material according to his/her unique learning style. Unfortunately, the plethora of tools confused some students because they were uncomfortable making active choices of what course material would be most conducive to their learning. As a result, a second approach was adopted. An adaptive hypermedia interface was developed that provided dynamic tailoring of the presentation of course material based on the individual students learning style. By tailoring the presentation of material to the students learning style, the authors believe students learned more efficiently and more effectively.

Phishing for user security awareness

User security education and training is one of the most important aspects of an organizations security posture. Using security exercises to reinforce this aspect is frequently done by education and industry alike; however these exercises usually enlist willing participants. We have taken the concept of using an exercise and modified it in application to evaluate a users propensity to respond to email phishing attacks in an unannounced test. This paper describes the considerations in establishing and the process used to create and implement an evaluation of one aspect of our user information assurance education program. The evaluation takes the form of a exercise, where we send out a phishing styled email record the responses.

Using an isolated network laboratory to teach advanced networks and security

This paper discusses the use of an isolated network laboratory to teach computer security using persistent cooperative groups and an active learning approach. Computer security and computer security education are areas of increasing importance as computer systems become more interconnected. When offered, undergraduate and graduate computer security courses are routinely taught using a traditional lecture format. If the course includes a class project, the class project is limited in scope and constitutes a relatively small portion of the students grade. This paper examines a different approach in which the class project is the dominant factor in the students grade. The students work in persistent cooperative teams as either a black or gold team. Black teams attempt to break into other black team computers or attack the gold team. The gold team operates Windows NT, LINUX, and Solaris-based servers and attempts to defend their servers and role-play system administrators. The entire exercise takes place in an isolated lab so as to separate student class activities from the rest of the departmental intranet. Four years of experience running the class with this format suggests that the use of persistent cooperative groups and active learning are effective approaches for teaching network security and are preferred over a lecture-based course.

Puzzles and games: addressing different learning styles in teaching operating systems concepts

Because students have different learning styles, its important to incorporate multiple teaching techniques into the classroom experience. One such technique is the use of puzzles and games in the classroom to reinforce the learning objectives. Many topics in Computer Science are well suited for coverage in such a game. Several in-class puzzles and games have been used in the Computer Science program at this institution in recent years. In basic and advanced courses, simple crossword puzzles reinforce terminology and Jeopardy!®-style games help students master material with short answers. In the most recent iteration of the Operating Systems course, a BattleThreads game and a Process State Transition game helped students appreciate different approaches to process and thread management. The latter two games have been assessed for their effectiveness, providing several insights into what makes a good in-class game for teaching operating systems concepts, and how the existing games can be improved.

Felder's learning styles, Bloom's taxonomy, and the Kolb learning cycle: tying it all together in the CS2 course

LN’I’ROI)UCTION One problem that faces computer science teacher-s today, and teachers everywhere, 1sthat the process of teaching well is no lunger as simple as Wdnding in front of a classroom and lecturing for 55 minutes. Professional educators must choose between the myriad of educational tools and techniques available to them that over the years have proven to enhance the student learning experience. The following short list presents some of the most promising.

Identifying Top Java Errors for Novice Programmers

All freshmen at the United States Military Academy take an introductory programming course. We use a custom-built integrated development environment to help teach Java. During previous work, we implemented an integrated semantic and syntax error pre-processing system to help novice programmers decipher the otherwise cryptic compiler error messages in order for them to focus more on design issues than implementation issues. The syntactic errors that we checked were gathered by an informal survey of the current and former faculty members teaching the course. We noticed over the course of the year that there were discrepancies between the errors that the instructors had identified and the errors that the students were encountering. In response, we developed a real-time, automated error collection system that logged 100% of the Java errors in a central database that all users, students and faculty alike, encountered while using the integrated development environment over the course of a semester. This paper discusses the implementation and results of our system as well as the implications for novice programmers

Empowering students and building confidence in novice programmers through Gauntlet

All freshmen at the United States Military Academy take an information technology course in which they learn fundamental programming skills using Java. For novice programmers, Javas compile-time errors can be undecipherable. Instructors noted that students made the same mistakes and became frustrated trying to understand the error messages and correct their code often wasting hours of time on a simple error. Given our focus on problem solving in the course as opposed to debugging code, we needed a new approach. Our initial premise was that we could significantly enhance the student experience and instructor workload by catching and explaining the top fifty programming errors in a pre-compiler. To empower the students, we developed a program called Gauntlet that pre-processes student source code and explains in laymans terms each of the syntax errors. Gauntlet also finds many common novice-level semantic errors that do not necessarily result in syntax errors. Gauntlet empowers students to solve their own problems with system development efforts.

Incorporating multimedia and hypertext documents in an undergraduate curriculum

The United States Military Academy presents an interesting and challenging environment for teaching undergraduate courses. While the students are highly motivated, they must balance many demands on their time. To provide students with greater control, flexibility, and utility as to when and how they learn course material, the Academy converted their course, information systems, from overhead transparencies and reading assignments to network-based multimedia presentations and hypertext documents. This paper looks at each of these components in detail.

A methodology for active, student-controlled learning: motivating our weakest students

This paper outlines a methodology to improve the performance of the weakest students through networked hypermedia and in-class exercises. These efforts are an outgrowth of experiments using networked hypermedia in the form of the World Wide Web (WWW) as the basis for networked courseware [1-4]. While initial approaches significantly enhanced the performance of the average and best students, there was no noticeable gain in the performance of the weakest students [4]. They continued to come into class without preparing and expected to somehow condense the learning process into five 55-minute sections every two weeks. In order to enhance the performance of these students, a series of procedures were developed that should increase their performance while minimizing any negative impact on the rest of class. The first procedure uses a networked, Common Gateway Interface (CGI), form-based Student Response System to enhanced communications and expectations between the student and professor. The Student Response System automates the grading of homework assignments, and as a result, facilitates nightly homework assignments without increasing the grading load on the professor. The second component of this methodology involves developing a series of graded, in-class, group exercises that can be easily graded in-class, represents a substantial portion of the final grade, and requires a public presentation of the groups results. Together, these tools and practices form a methodology for reaching the weakest students and enhancing their performance.

A curriculum framework for evolving an information technology program

Curriculum development is always a challenging and interesting experience since it usually must be done while continuing to teach and support an existing curriculum. This paper outlines a methodology for the creation of a new information technology major at the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. The methodology uses the notion of a three-course thread of existing courses that typically have a shared prerequisite structure. Over time, these threads can evolve as new courses and new threads are developed. The new West Point Information Technology major consists of a four-course core curriculum, multiple three-course threads, and a senior-level integrative experience. Information technology threads cover a wide range of topics in depth, including such diverse subjects as sensors, computer programming, information assurance, electrical engineering fundamentals, computer science fundamentals, computer theory, information systems engineering, databases, network and web technologies, and human factors. Students are allowed to select three threads.