Debra L. Banks

COOL (computer outreach opportunities for learning) development and assessment

The COOL (Computer Outreach Opportunities for Learning) project is concerned with increasing the number and diversity of computer science graduates. To accomplish this objective the project is providing an integrated approach to attracting and retaining students beginning at the high school level and continuing into the university environment. At the high school level, the project is developing and refining an innovative secondary school software development curriculum. This paper overviews the high school component of the COOL project. At the university level, to help the students who do not have the computer skills expected of freshmen, including many underrepresented minority students, a pilot placement exam was developed to help identify students who should take a computer basics course before they undertake a computer science class in C++ or Java. The placement exam was given to two groups of students. An analysis was done on the predictability of the placement exam and suggestions for improvement were explored. In addition, the paper includes an analysis of the effectiveness of academic success workshops designed to help the students with concept building in the Java class.

Teaching undergraduates data mining in engineering programs

The teaching undergraduates data mining in engineering programs project was supported by the National Science Foundation. The project was jointly executed between universities. The project objectives were to: (1) develop an undergraduate data mining course that could be taught in semester or quarter systems and within institutions of varying demographics, (2) establish vehicles and approaches to increase student retention in such a course, and (3) identify data mining skills essential to problem solving. This paper reports on the results of our research effort regarding teaching engineering undergraduates data mining techniques in two different university environments in 2003.

Increasing the probability of success in the first computer science course

It is well known that many students struggle and eventually are unsuccessful in their attempt to complete their first computer science course. At Arizona State University, the first course taken by computer science majors and a few other majors is CSE 110. CSE110 teaches first year college students basic programming principles using the Java programming language. In order to do well in this course, students need to not only have a background in basic logical thinking, but also need to know basics about using computers along with Internet and file transfer protocol. To address this problem, a CSE110 workshop has been designed for incoming freshmen that have little or no background in computers. This paper defines the content and instruction of this workshop as well as an assessment of its effectiveness. To help ensure that future freshmen are better prepared, software development curriculum materials are being developed for use at the high school level. Two summer teacher workshops have already been held and a third is planned.