Nick Parlante

Nifty assignments

Creating assignments is a difficult and time consuming part of teaching Computer Science. Nifty Assignments is a forum, operating at a very practical level, to promote the sharing of assignment ideas and assignment materials.Each presenter will introduce their assignment, give a quick demo, and describe its niche in the curriculum and its strengths and weaknesses. The presentations (and the descriptions below) merely introduce each assignment. For more detail, each assignment has its own web page with more detailed information and assignment materials such as handouts and data files to aid the adoption of the assignment. Information on participating in Nifty Assignments as well as all the assignment pages are available from our central page… http://cse.stanford.edu/nifty/

Nifty reflections

Nifty Assignments are nice and everything, but its natural to wonder: Where are Nifty Assignments weakest?

The revolution will be televised: perspectives on massive open online education

1. SUMMARY While online educational resources have existed for decades, the past year has seen a tremendous acceleration in the adoption and potential disruption afforded by recent online education initiatives. In the Fall of 2011 the concept of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) more broadly entered the public consciousness with a group of three Stanford CS courses collectively enrolling over 200,000 students, and gaining national press coverage from the New York Times [2] and other outlets. Since that time, a number of new platforms have emerged for online course delivery, including Udacity and Coursera (two for-profit companies started by Stanford faculty, the latter of which partners with over 30 elite universities), EdX (a not-for-profit consortium, composed of MIT, Harvard, UC Berkeley, and the University of Texas system), and the Minerva Project (a for-profit online university with

Teaching tips we wish they'd told us before we started

25 million in funding).

Teaching with object oriented libraries

• Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor in Computer Science (1992) • Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor (1997) • Computer Science Division Diane S. McEntyre Award for Excellence in Teaching (2002) • Highest course “teaching effectiveness” rating of any CS lower division instructor, ever (6.6, tied with 1 other) (2004) • Computer Science Division Information Technology Faculty Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching (2005) • UC Berkeley “Everyday Hero” Award (2005) • Highest course “teaching effectiveness” rating of any CS lower division instructor, ever (6.7, tied with 1 other) (2006)

Nifty assignments panel

This paper describes a new course centered around the use of large object-oriented libraries and the distinct skills required to use them effectively. The paper describes the needs which led to the formation of the new course, an outline of the courses goals, topics and projects, and observations and conclusions from the courses first offerings.

Astrachan's law

Introduction • The output, activity, and bugs of the program all express themselves visually. The Nifty Assignments panel is a practical forum for the sharing of assignment ideas — demonstrating good assignment features and tradeoffs, and providing concrete materials for the CSE community to use. • It is extensible in various ways. Examples: multiple implementations of the region list, one using an array, the other using a linked list; support of colored squares within regions (clicking on an uncolored area creates a square, and clicking on a colored square erases it). Each panelist will introduce the basic idea of their assignment, give a quick demo, and describe its niche in the curriculum — its strengths and weaknesses. The live presentation is merely an introduction to each assignment. Fortunately, the following web page has handouts, data files, etc. for each of the assignments... Stuart Reges Personality Test (CS1) This assignment is based on a personality/temperament test developed by Keirsey and Bates in the pop-psych book Please Understand Me. The first part of the assignment is a straightforward application of 70 multiple choice questions. Collecting answers to these questions is a fine CS1 problem which may or may not be used as part of the assignment (if not, there are tools to do it). http://cse.stanford.edu/nifty/

Practical teaching tips from around the world

inroads – The SIGCSE Bulletin 26 Volume 35, Number 4, 2003 December The more efficient algorithm to choose is Quick-Sort, as its running time, on the average is O(NlogN). While this time complexity is much better than O(N) (with which we started), it still is insufficient. We are asked to develop an O(N) algorithm. How should we proceed? Knuth mentions a result by Chase ([1], p. 198) that any permutation-parity algorithm solely based on comparisons between elements may not make less than NlogN comparisons, even though its outcome should only be one of two possibilities (odd/even). Quick-Sort is indeed based on element comparisons. In addition, it operates on any given list of elements. In our task, this list is very specific – a permutation of 1..N. Perhaps we can devise a sorting scheme that is not based on element comparisons, but rather capitalizes on the property that the sorted elements are 1..N. One fundamental property of sorting the values 1..N is that in the end of this process each value i is in location i. Thus, any element not in its final destination can be directly put there. We may do this with exactly one exchange. The latter observation yields a very concise sorting scheme.

Cheating and the internet

We will simulate an encounter of educators at dinner, in an elevator, or an impromptu gathering around the coffee machine. A number of topics will be introduced for lively discussion. Sample topics include: learning student names, defining grading criteria for projects, active learning techniques, visualizations of computing concepts and more. Additional topics will be proposed by the audience. An exchange of ideas from a wide range of participants will create a steady stream of great ideas.

Nifty assignments: tetris on the brain

A control system for controlling a double-acting cylinder includes four pilot-operated, proportional-type poppet valves for controlling fluid flow between the cylinder, a pump and a reservoir. Four solenoid-controlled pilot valves operate the poppet valves in response to error signals generated by a control circuit. The control circuit receives a cylinder position feedback signal and an operator-generated command signal. The control circuit provides for float, shutdown, variable deadband and pressure adjustment operation.