Heidi J. C. Ellis

Can humanitarian open-source software development draw new students to CS?

In this paper, we present an example humanitarian open-source software project that has been used since January 2006 at a small liberal-arts college as an experiment in undergraduate CS education. Sahana (Sinhalese for relief) is a free and open-source disaster management system developed in Sri Lanka by a group of IT professionals following the 2004 Asian tsunami. It is a web-based tool that addresses the IT coordination problems that typically occur in trying to recover from a large-scale disaster. We are currently exploring the wider use of Sahana as a sustainable model and platform for teaching about open-source software development while at the same time allowing CS students and educators to make a socially useful contribution of their time, effort, and expertise. This paper presents our experiences with Sahana including the benefits for both academia and industry.

An Assessment of a Self-Directed Learning Approach in a Graduate Web Application Design and Development Course

Research has shown that adult learners have a strong desire for a self-directed and autonomous learning experience. This paper presents an evaluation of an approach to supporting self-directed learning employed in a graduate-level Web application design and development course. The approach allows students to define and develop semester-long team projects in an independent fashion including the definition of their own grading metric and the evaluation of themselves against the measure. This paper presents the results of a survey on student opinion of the self-directed learning approach and an evaluation of grades. Study results indicate that the self-directed learning approach used in the course was quite successful in providing adult students with an autonomous and self-directed learning experience

Support for Educating Software Engineers Through Humanitarian Open Source Projects

The net generation of students have characteristics which make them well-suited for participating in open source projects including being comfortable with information technologies, using IT as a form of communication, desiring to work in groups, a desire to do social good, and being fascinated by new technologies. The nature of open source projects where communities of developers from around the world collaborate to create useful applications are a natural fit for this generation of students. Humanitarian open source projects can serve as a solid foundation for providing software engineering education to the net generation of students. This paper discusses the initial stages of SoftHum, a project for developing course materials to support undergraduate involvement in humanitarian open source projects.

Andragogy in a web technologies course

The face of the student body in post-secondary degree programs in the United States is changing as an increasing number of students work full-time while attaining an advanced degree [13]. As the student population includes greater numbers of working professionals, a corresponding change in the instructional approaches used to educate the maturing student population is required. Knowles theory of andragogy [9] is a set of principles that can be used to guide adult learning. This paper describes an application of andragogy to a graduate-level Web Technologies course comprised of working professional students. In this paper, the working professional is characterized and an educational philosophy based on the theory of andragogy is presented. The application of andragogy to a Web Technologies course is described and the results are discussed.

Using open source software to engage students in computer science education

This panel will discuss issues and methods for incorporating free and open source software (FOSS) in computer science education. The panelists are investigating approaches to student participation in FOSS that produce results that are contributed to the FOSS community and actually used by others.

Conceptual-level workflow modeling of scientific experiments using NMR as a case study

BackgroundScientific workflows improve the process of scientific experiments by making computations explicit, underscoring data flow, and emphasizing the participation of humans in the process when intuition and human reasoning are required. Workflows for experiments also highlight transitions among experimental phases, allowing intermediate results to be verified and supporting the proper handling of semantic mismatches and different file formats among the various tools used in the scientific process. Thus, scientific workflows are important for the modeling and subsequent capture of bioinformatics-related data. While much research has been conducted on the implementation of scientific workflows, the initial process of actually designing and generating the workflow at the conceptual level has received little consideration.ResultsWe propose a structured process to capture scientific workflows at the conceptual level that allows workflows to be documented efficiently, results in concise models of the workflow and more-correct workflow implementations, and provides insight into the scientific process itself. The approach uses three modeling techniques to model the structural, data flow, and control flow aspects of the workflow. The domain of biomolecular structure determination using Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectroscopy is used to demonstrate the process. Specifically, we show the application of the approach to capture the workflow for the process of conducting biomolecular analysis using Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy.ConclusionUsing the approach, we were able to accurately document, in a short amount of time, numerous steps in the process of conducting an experiment using NMR spectroscopy. The resulting models are correct and precise, as outside validation of the models identified only minor omissions in the models. In addition, the models provide an accurate visual description of the control flow for conducting biomolecular analysis using NMR spectroscopy experiment.

Using a multiple term project to teach object oriented programming and design

One important concern of industry is that software engineering students have little or no experience in coming up to speed on a substantial existing software project. Indeed, the typical project course in academe tends to be soup to nut: problem statement to requirements to design to code. Many courses omit some of these steps or the instructors may provide some parts. At Rensselaer weve designed a project that lives beyond the scope of any single semester. The Stooge project began in 1996 in a section of our object oriented programming and design course and has been enhanced by the students of that course every semester since. We present some of the lessons learned in teaching such a course.

Best practices in software engineering project class management

An increasing number of institutions require software engineering as part of their computing curriculum. Technical managers and hiring personnel of many software development companies cite familiarity with software engineering principles among the top skills required for entry-level computing positions. Furthermore, technical managers and hiring personnel often consider experience with real-world group projects to be a necessary part of the computing background of prospective new hires. These conclusions are based on systematic discussions with technical and human resources personnel at 13 large Midwestern companies (50+ developers) over the past seven years (J. Beck, unpublished data, 2001–2008). Unfortunately, many computing students never benefit from the experience of a real project during their undergraduate studies. The experiences of many students are limited to toy textbook problems assigned to small groups, which means they miss out on a vitally important part of their computing education. Three areas of particular concern for providing students with class projects that incorporate real-world hurdles within the classroom are:

Delineation and analysis of the conceptual data model implied by the “IUPAC Recommendations for Biochemical Nomenclature”

Computational analysis of the bonding, geometric, and topological relationships within proteins typically takes on the order of hours, mainly devoted to the writing of scripts and code to correctly parse the data. The Structured Query Language (SQL) built into modern database management systems eliminates the need for data parsing, effectively reducing the analysis time to seconds. To this end, we have formulated a conceptual data model (CDM) for proteins based on the IUPAC recommendations for biochemical nomenclature. This conceptual data model makes explicit the inherent bonding relationships between the atoms of a protein, as well as the geometric (bond angle and torsion angle) and topological (chirality) relationships between the bonds. The validity of the CDM has been tested with a reduced implementation using commercial database software. The ease in both populating the database with data from the Protein Data Bank and formulating/executing queries supports the correctness of the model. The ability to conduct truly interactive analyses of protein structure is essential to fully capitalize on the explosion in postgenomic protein structure data.

Development of an Integrated Framework for Protein Structure Determinations: A Logical Data Model for NMR Data Analysis

Current approaches to the analysis of protein structure are time-consuming due to the lack of integration and incompatibility of data among the processing tools utilized. In addition, the enormous amount of experimental data generated is typically stored in flat file formats that cannot easily be managed or queried. Available databases that support the storage of protein structure data use data models that lack explicit definition of relationships between entities in the model necessary to support comprehensive querying and analysis. This paper presents a logical data model (LDM) for molecular structure determinations that utilize nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy as the methodology. The LDM serves as a core component in an integrated framework for the comprehensive analysis of protein structure. Two directed data mining queries about protein structure were used to validate the utility of the LDM in a database implementation