Janet Mei-Chuen Lin

Critical concepts in the development of courseware for CS closed laboratories

In this paper we present some of the experiences that we have gained from having developed a number of laboratory-based courseware for teaching computing concepts. We point out that lab-based teaching is a special category of computer-based instruction (CBI). The intended lab usage imposes certain constraints on lab-based courseware such that the methodologies for developing traditional CBI software do not seem to fit the development of lab-based software very well. Lab-based software requires special considerations as to the presentation of its course content and the design of its user interface.

USING SIMCPU IN COOPERATIVE LEARNING LABORATORIES

This article reports the research findings of an experimental design in which cooperative learning strategies were applied to closed-lab instruction of computing concepts. SimCPU, a software package specially designed for closed-lab usage, was used by 171 high-school students of four classes. In contrast to the students in the control group who operated SimCPU individually, students in the experimental group formed threesome teams to learn the CPU-related concepts by operating SimCPU cooperatively. The results showed that collaboration did enhance learning and that blending cooperative learning with closed-lab instruction in computer science was viable.

Visualizing programming in recursion and linked lists

Taipei, Taiwan 106 Ieeg, mjlin]@ice.ntnu. edu.tw

A Constrained and Guided Approach for Managing Software Engineering Course Projects

This paper documents several years of experimentation with a new approach to organizing and managing projects in a software engineering course. The initial failure and subsequent refinements that the new approach has been through since 2004 are described herein. The “constrained and guided” approach, as it is called, has helped to reduce project failure rates, increase specification fulfillment rates, and improve the design quality of student projects. It has also enabled the instructor to evaluate student projects more objectively. The questionnaire survey conducted in this study also shows that students greatly appreciated the new approach because it enabled them to manage projects more effectively.

A knowledge management system for Chinese language arts teachers

The article discusses a knowledge management system which has been developed for Chinese language arts teachers. Details about the system and the subject of Chinese language arts are provided. The complexity of Chinese language arts textbooks are examined and the management program is presented as a way to effectively organize class material. A diagram illustrating the schema of the database program is presented and several images illustrating the usefulness and functionality of the program are also provided.

Suggestions for content selection and presentation in high school computer textbooks

Based on the findings from reviewing 32 textbooks in the past four years for Taiwans Ministry of Education, we have identified common problems in the reviewed textbooks and analyzed their inadequacies. Typical problems include the Wintel bias, too much coverage of software application tools and too little of computer science concepts, too many technical terms, meaningless analogies and examples, lack of supplementary materials, and inadequate treatment of programming-related content. The discussion about each problem is substantiated with examples, and suggestions are made on possible improvement. This analysis should help textbook writers avoid undesirable elements in their books and help high school computer teachers select higher quality books for their students.

Issues on deterministic transformation of logic-based program specification

Issues of logic-based program transformation are discussed, and a method for transforming a source program expressed as a set of extended Horn clauses into a target program in an Algol-like procedural language is presented. The potential applications of this transformation method include (1) automatic synthesis of programs from design specifications which are either written in or translatable into extended Horn logic clauses, (2) adaptation of existing logic programs to a procedural execution environment in order to improve execution efficiency or facilitate reusability of the software, and (3) support of a hybrid-programming environment.<<ETX>>

Awk-Linux: A Lightweight Operating Systems Courseware

Most well-known instructional operating systems are complex, particularly if their companion software is taken into account. It takes considerable time and effort to craft these systems, and their complexity may introduce maintenance and evolution problems. In this paper, a courseware called Awk-Linux is proposed. Awk-Linux can be crafted relatively more easily and it does not depend on any hardware simulator or platform. The basic hardware functions provided by Awk-Linux include timer interrupt and page-fault interrupt, which are simulated through program instrumentation over user programs. Course projects based on Awk-Linux provide source code extracted and simplified from a Linux kernel. Results of this study indicate that the projects helped students better to understand inner workings of operating systems.