Janet Hartman

“Real world” skills vs. “school taught” skills for the undergraduate computer major

The validity of what is taught in a computer science /information systems program is sometimes challenged when a student enters a “real world” environment. More often than we would like, we hear:“That won’t work here. This is the REAL world!“.After an experience as a faculty member working in the real world, WC are reassured that the things we teach do have validity. Some things that we teach, admittedly, could stand a little polishing. There are also things which are difficult to teach or learn without having experienced them. The purpose of this paper is to present some observations from a summer faculty internship and their implications for teaching.

Assessing the quality of programs: a topic for the CS2 course

Measuring the quality of programs is commonly discussed at widespread intervals in the computer science curriculum. Because discussions of quality are fragmented, the students do not develop a set of criteria by which they can evaluate the quality of a program. Since an assessment of quality must depend on the specifications that are set forth before the programming begins, it is important for students to be aware of the various criteria by which a program can be evaluated. Various measures of quality can be introduced in the CS2 course. These include evaluating the utilization of resources by a program, evaluating the correctness of the program and examining various human factors associated with program development and maintenance. Students should be provided with activities which allow them to explore and practice using thecriteria for evaluation in each context. Ultimately the development of skills in evaluating program quality will make students more effective programmers.

Teaching a course in parallel processing with limited resources

Parallel computers are no longer just experimental machines in computer science laboratories. The near future promises to put parallel computers on a desk top and make them avdiiabic to the general public, Some colleges and universities have responded to the developments in parallel architectures by offering courses on parallel processing. Because the demand for graduates who can write programs for parallel computers is expected to grow, more universities will obtain access to parallel computers and offer courses in which students can learn about parallel architectures and how to program them. The purpose of this paper is to describe the efforts of the authors to implement a course in parallel processing at a university which has no parallel computers.

Getting started with parallel programming

An insatiable desire for increased computational performance, as measured in operations per second, has always been one of the main considerations in the design of new computers. Multiprocessor architectures and vector processors provide two ways to improve performance. Fueled by the demand for faster processing, parallel architectures are moving out of the laboratories and into the work place. Given that parallel processing is becoming more common, it is important that our students be exposed to parallel programming because working with parallel processors is qualitatively different from working with sequential processors. Many of the programming techniques that were patiently learned for sequential machines are not appropriate for a parallel environment. The need to teach parallel processing presents problems, especially for smaller schools. Even though the costs are decreasing rapidly, many colleges and universities do not have any form of parallel computer, nor is it reasonable for them to acquire one in the near future. Second, many schools lack the resources to add a complctcly new course to their curriculum, especially a course that requires preliminary faculty development. Fortunately, there are ways to introduce students to parallel processing without purchasing new hardware and without developing an cntircly new course. This paper is designed for those who lack parallel hardware and a specific course in parallcl

Teaching parallel processing using free resources

Parallel processing can be taught effectively even though parallel hardware is not available. Free software is available to support the three major paradigms of parallel computing. Parallaxis is a software simulator that is based on the SIMD model. PVM and MPI allow one to treat a network of workstations as a message passing MIMD multicomputer with distributed memory. A locally developed shared memory simulator supports the MIMD model of computing with a common shared memory. While none of these products is superior to an actual parallel computer, each can be used in a variety of courses to give students experience with parallel algorithms.

VoiceXML builder: a workbench for investigating voiced-based applications

Currently, the most common interaction with the Web is visual and accomplished through the use of the keyboard or mouse. While sound files can be incorporated as part of the presentation, the user cannot interact with a Web page using speech. This orientation limits the mobility of the user and his interaction with the Web because both hands and eyes must be involved in the task. The use of speech recognition and synthesis will remove this limitation and promises to be the next wave in Web interfaces. Speech technology will promote an increased use of the Web in, as yet, untapped environments in a similar way that cell telephones have promoted the increased use of telephones. One of the limitations to the development of voice systems is the lack of easy-to-use tools for creating spoken dialogue systems, particularly by nonexperts who have no experience with or desire to learn the low level details of speech technology. One of the most promising emerging technologies for solving this problem is VoiceXML. VoiceXML is an XML-based markup language that brings the Web and content delivery together in voice response applications in an easy-to-use manner. This paper describes an editor for creating VoiceXML documents.

Developing effective multimedia-based laboratory modules

Laboratories have become a common phenomenon in computer science curricula, and the advent of inexpensive multimedia computers has broadened the range of activities that can be incorporated in laboratory exercises. Together, laboratories and multimedia have the potential for great impact on educational practice. A variety of software exists for authoring interactive multimedia applications including programming languages and authoring tools. In addition to authoring tools, potential authors need to know how to use other tools like image editors, audio and video capture software and hardware, and audio and video editors. The purpose of this paper is to describe the process of developing a multimedia-based laboratory activity and potential inexpensive tools that can be used to create it.

Corporate clips

inroads – The SIGCSE Bulletin 17 Volume 35, Number 2, 2003 June software professionals most exceeded their current knowledge. (Negotiation was ranked first.) It has been noted that 50% of the code written for software applications is specific to the user interface and that the quality of the user-interface can “make or break” a software product. It was also mentioned that the computer science mainstream has been slow to recognize the importance of this area [3]. A perusal of the SIGCSE symposia proceedings for the last four years discovers only a smattering of papers and a couple of panels on HCI or user-interface design pedagogy. There haven’t been all that many at the recent SIGCHI conferences either! In her position statement [3], Sarah Douglas, who chaired the HCI Knowledge Focus Group, states that getting HCI into the Computer Curriculum 2001 was a struggle, due in part to assumptions about HCI held by many academics. She further suggests that part of the problem is that the HCI research community has isolated itself from the mainstream computer science community. Certainly many of us mainstream computer scientists do not know much about what goes into creating a high quality user-interface. After all, many of us are very comfortable with the VI (does that mean Visual Interface?) editor! As “techies,” we are quite comfortable with interfaces that would not be suitable for software marketed to a more general population. A chapter on “human factors” has been included in software engineering texts for quite a while. But, is a chapter enough? The second HCI knowledge unit prescribed in Computing Curriculum 2001 devotes two hours to building a GUI interface. Almost anyone can learn to build a GUI interface – but how do we know it is a good one? What factors should we consider? This is where the study of HCI comes in. HCI is a confluence of computer science and psychology, and unfortunately many of us don’t have the psychology background. So, where can we educators find out more about it and, perhaps, interact with others in this area? The ACM Special Interest Group on Human-Computer Interaction is a reasonable place to start looking for information. [4] However, this interest group is focused on HCI research and not education. Although some of its publications address education, those seem to be targeted mostly to training workshops for industry professionals. So, while there is a lot of information available from their web site, an undergraduate educator might not find much there that will help them in the classroom. In addition to the SIGCHI resources, there is another centralized location for HCI information. It is called the HCI Bibliography [5] and it is maintained by Gary Perlman at the Online Computer Library Center [6]. This is a comprehensive bibliography of references to all kinds of information on HCI including educational materials, books, news groups, etc. I believe that this is the site that the undergraduate educator should peruse. While its focus is not strictly educational, it provides links to all kinds of useful HCI information including definitions, suggested readings, educational materials including a link to the SIGCHI HCI curriculum guidelines, published articles and columns, education email list archives, and much, much more that you are likely to find interesting. HCI will no doubt be moving into the CS education mainstream during this decade. When I wrote this column, the SIGCSE Education Links [7] site included only a single entry in the category of HCI. However, I will not be surprised to find more resources provided by undergraduate educators in the near future.

Teaching introductory graphics with web assistance

The introduction of high speed computers with excellent graphic rendering capabilities and software that takes advantage of those capabilities have precipitated a change in the philosophy of teaching introductory courses in graphics. Studies of introductory computer graphics courses have indicated that algorithms, such as line and circle drawing and polygon fills, and the study of data structures to support graphics are common topics taught in introductory courses. A cursory review of available software tools for teaching computer graphics topics indicates that there is a lack of web-based visualizations of commonly taught computer graphics algorithms. The purpose of this paper is to describe a web-based tutorial that has been used to supplement an introductory computer graphics course.

Providing activities for students to apply data structures concepts

This paper will describe possible types of activities that can be used in a data structures course to give students experience applying the concepts being taught. It is suggested that problems be presented within a real context and in situations where there is more than one reasonable solution. Having students develop possible data structure solutions for a problem, determine appropriate criteria for comparison of the solutions, evaluate the solutions, and select a solution for a particular problem will provide them with valuable experience. In order to successfully do this, students need to have some experience using their analysis and synthesis skills to solve problems involving data structures. Many real life problems require not just one data structure but a combination of several data structures. Students will benefit from designing data structures for both simple and complex problems. They will not only have learned what each data structure is and how to manipulate it, but also when to use each particular data structure.