Lakshmi Prayaga

Strategies to Teach Game Development Across Age Groups

The process of game development can be used as a highly motivating learning experience geared to the teaching and learning of a variety of skills in students of varying ages. This article presents a description of a conceptual framework for teaching and learning based on game creation, including pedagogical foundations, a model of instruction for game development, age-related issues relative to learning tasks, and the basic aspects of game development. The authors compare the expectations for types of concepts and technologies employed with middle and high school students versus those employed with college-level students in game development. Projects that illustrate these differences are then presented, and the article closes with a summary and conclusions.

Innovative Strategies to Build IT Workforce

In a world where Information Technology (IT) permeates all aspects of life and global competition is increasing, the need for trained professionals in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) related disciplines is increasing more than ever. This paper describes some innovative strategies at the University of West Florida to encourage students to pursue STEM related disciplines and to help fill the IT workforce void. These strategies include curriculum redesign, novel University/Industry partnerships, K-12 outreach activities, and building awareness for STEM within the community. Initial feedback from the implementation of these strategies has been very positive.

Game technology as a tool to actively engage K-12 students in the act of learning

To be actively engaged in the act of learning students must be motivated and self-directed. The role of the teacher is to guide students in this act of learning and help them be motivated (1). In this paper we discuss how Information Technology through game programming can be used effectively to motivate and actively engage middle and high school students in the act of learning computer programming. The context of game technology provides the necessary excitement that students need to be motivated to learn. It also provides an inter-disciplinary platform for the student to understand the connections between concepts from different subjects. This paper describes the design and implementation of a game in Visual basic .net built by a group of at-risk students and presents some observations from this experience.

Building dynamic web applications with ASP.Net and ColdFusion MX 7.0: a comparative approach

This paper presents a web application - an online shopping cart designed with two popular web server technologies, ASP.Net and ColdFusion MX 7.0. The purpose of this presentation is to show how this application can be used as a template by instructors in Information Technology courses by providing: A comparative analysis on how different server technologies deal with essential elements of a web application leading to an increase in both breadth and depth of knowledge in students. A discussion on how active learning as discussed by VanDeGrift (1) and group participation can be encouraged in the classroom while having students complete this project. A discussion on how instructors can use this web application to implement a top-down approach teaching style which as shown by Hadjilogiou (2) is effective and can succeed if the goals of the course are explained upfront and the required materials made available. The top down approach of teaching style provides students with the much needed time and exposure to build applications that have a reference to the real world.

Clustering and Predicting Driving Violations Using Web-Enabled Big Data Techniques

When quintillion bytes of data on a multitude of topics is being generated each day creating Big data in size and in scope, the need for analyzing such voluminous data, extract meaning from it and providing a visualization is also increasing. Driving violations is one of the topics that have been recorded over multiple years. Several studies have been conducted to predict driver behavior using simulations and other tools such as built-in sensors in the vehicles. This research activity focuses on the design of an interactive Big data web application to analyze a given dataset using techniques such as cluster analysis and predict driving violations based on available demographics. The rest of the paper describes the suite of technologies for Big data analytics that facilitated this development and the implications of this study.

Visual aids to create a knowledge base with reusable objects across disciplines

This paper describes the design of reusable interactive visual aids to teach abstract concepts in Set Theory and Logic.