Stephen W. Turner

Implementing IT0/CS0 with scratch, app inventor forandroid, and lego mindstorms

The trend of declining enrollment and interest in computing fields, combined with increased demand from the industry, challenges instructors to come up with new, fresh and appealing methodologies to attract and retain students. Further, with the diffusion of information and computing technologies into almost all fields of study, introductory computing courses for non-majors need approaches that motivate students to feel comfortable with the life-long learning of computing concepts and tools. The goal of this paper is to summarize our teaching experience blending the aforementioned two needs into one course that may be considered as a type of CS0/IT0 course. With the pedagogical underpinnings stemming from constructionist learning and contextualized computing education, we present our motivation and the details of a course that uses the Scratch programming language, App Inventor for Android, and Lego Minstorm robotics.

Teaching computing and programming fundamentals via App Inventor for Android

In this age of growing importance for interdisciplinary studies, the field of computing, and its indispensable component, programming, have become increasingly important not only for STEM areas but also for many other fields. Computational chemistry, bio-informatics, computational linguistics, computational toxicology, etc. are just a few examples of the crossover disciplines that benefit significantly from the developments in the computing and Information Technology (IT). Instructors are facing more challenges today than ever in trying to come up with new, fresh and appealing methodologies to attract and retain students in delivering computing and IT related topics to a much broader audience. Computing courses and topics both for majors and non-majors need new approaches that motivate students to feel comfortable with the lifelong learning of computing concepts and tools. The goal of this paper is to summarize our teaching experience in and the great potential of App Inventor for Android (AIA) in broadening the appeal and diffusion of fundamental computing and programming concepts. With a pedagogical foundation stemming from constructionist learning and contextualized computing education, we present our motivation and the details of courses that can greatly benefit from AIA.

An energy-efficient TCP quick timeout scheme for wireless LANs

Energy efficiency is critical to wireless network terminal devices, since they are powered by battery in many cases. Our approach to improving energy efficiency is to reduce the idle energy consumption by increasing the amount of information data transmitted by the wireless network interface card for a given amount of energy. We propose a simple TCP quick timeout mechanism (TCP-QT) for the improvement of energy efficiency. Using feedback from the MAC layer, the TCP layer can be made aware of the transmission history of a packet in the MAC layer If a packet has been dropped by the MAC layer, a quick timeout in the TCP layer is triggered, resulting in a fast retransmission of the packet. Thus, the average energy efficiency observed in the application layer is improved, while the current TCP semantics are largely unchanged. Simulation results show that the TCP-QT mechanism can improve the energy efficiency by up to 5 times.

Virtualized lab infrastructure on a budget for various computing and engineering courses

Educators in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields, especially in computing and engineering, must be flexible, up-to-date, and able to offer their students practical experience with continually changing information technologies. The importance of practical work in science and engineering, supported by lab exercises, is widely known. While it is desirable to create physical laboratories for teaching these technologies, it is not always possible nor feasible. Cost, availability, and environmental effects of physical space represent constraints on building physical infrastructure. Additionally, cost effectiveness is becoming increasingly more important, and purchasing a specific technology offers no guarantees that it will not soon become obsolete. In this paper, we present our response to these challenges in the form of an affordable, virtualized laboratory environment that can be used in a variety of computing and engineering courses, as well as in other fields, in lieu of physical computing labs. This environment allows instructors and students to build more complex settings than are typically available in physical laboratories. To date, the environment has been used at our institution for courses in computer networking, operating systems, database, programming and security, with plans in place for use in additional advanced computer science and information systems courses.

Intelligent transportation as the key enabler of smart cities

Smart Cities include the concept of large, intelligent systems coming together cooperatively to enable better living conditions in future urban areas. Reduction in fuel/electricity usage, crime, improved economies, less waste, and overall better living conditions are primary goals. A key enabling technology is the Intelligent Transportation System (ITS), in which various transportation mechanisms cooperate to improve quality of life by reducing fuel/electricity usage, decreasing congestion, and decreasing travel time. Studies have shown that enormous resources are wasted by congestion alone in transportation systems. In this position paper, we present the ITS as a major factor in facilitating the smart city of the future.

Student perceptions of cheating in online and traditional classes

With classroom instruction undergoing a massive transformation to incorporate online learning techniques at unprecedented levels, technological advances have facilitated a range of mechanisms that improve teaching and learning. At the same time, these technological advances have also facilitated different forms of cheating in classes.

Towards a flipped cyber classroom to facilitate active learning strategies

Success within the distance learning paradigm typically requires a strong intrinsic motivation on the part of the learner. This motivation needs to be matched with effective delivery of engaging course content. Developing an active engagement environment for deep learning is a nontrivial task as the instructor is not physically present. To address the concern in an online/blended delivery model, we had developed and examined our first cyber classroom, in which lectures are automatically recorded and posted to a website for subsequent online consumption. The observed limitations of this approach were twofold: (1) online student participation in onground classroom activities was unfeasible; and (2) onground student collaborative activities were severely curtailed by the classroom layout. In this work in progress we present our revised concept grounded in active learning scientific principles combined with lessons learned from our prior approach. By leveraging classroom spatial layout best practices combined with the apropos technology, we seek to address the aforementioned two concerns. Specifically we present a description of our revised cyber classroom, along with plans for future application involving integrating online learning with the flipped classroom concept.

3D Projected Imagery Freespace Control Unit (PIFCU): Design, Implementation, and Analysis

A desirable mechanism to control a computer would be to use a multifaceted, three-dimensional interactive display system that provides varying levels of control of an API via a visually bounded freespace containing projected imagery for interactions. This work presents such a system and its proof-of-concept, which includes two components: the 3D Projected Imagery Freespace Control Unit (PIFCU)-the built hardware used to create 3D imagery and function as the system’s control unit, and the Gesture-Controlled 3D Interface Freespace (GCIF)-the term used for this “sensorized” volume of space in which the 3D images and gestures will reside. This system is intended to ultimately remove the need for keyboards and similar interface hardware. The hardware of this device consists of an array of linearly adjoining slices of concave mirrored surfaces with openings at the top and bottom. This combination advances related work such that the imagery can be perceived as threedimensional images in free-space, and the computer is controlled using hand gestures recognized by sensors. The benefits to other professions include providing new methods of construction, navigation, gaming, as well as presenting a solution for certain physical limitations that traditional computing experiences currently exert on users (i.e. rigid hand angles for typing).

Work in progress-designing and building a mini supercomputer to improve parallel processing instruction

It is well documented that computer science education is improved with greater student involvement through interesting practical exercises. Many studies exemplify this through their use of hands-on programming activities with physical objects, such as robots, to illustrate important concepts. It is also known that interest in computer science has recently waned, and more specifically, interest in parallel processing has decreased greatly since its zenith in the early 1990s. Simultaneously, recent developments in computer architecture underline the future importance of parallel processing, and the popular press continually reports on the great need for more IT graduates in general. Past studies suggest that intrinsic motivation for given tasks can improve creativity. This paper presents a work-in-progress study, in which specific practical exercises were examined for their effectiveness at improving the motivation level of students, leading to greater creativity and interest in participation in a parallel processing class. The exercises involved the design and construction of a low-cost supercomputer using off-the-shelf components.

A novel scheme for improving good throughput performance in wireless local networks

With the fast-paced deployment of wireless local networks, improving good throughput performance becomes more and more important to support various multimedia services. In this paper, we develop a novel scheme for such a purpose, which comprises two parts: a TCP quick-timeout (TCP-QT) algorithm and an adaptive frame size algorithm. The TCP-QT algorithm is to reduce the TCP timeout overhead, and the adaptive frame size algorithm is to reduce the number of retransmissions in the MAC layer. Using feedback from the MAC layer, the TCP layer can be made aware of the transmission history of a packet in the MAC layer. If a packet has been dropped by the MAC layer, a quick timeout in the TCP layer is triggered, resulting in a fast retransmission of the packet. Thus, the average good throughput observed in the application layer is greatly improved, while the current TCP semantics are largely unchanged. Then, we integrated an adaptive frame size algorithm into the TCP-QT algorithm for further performance improvement. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme can improve the energy efficiency by up to 5 times.