Stoney Jackson

Learning within a professional environment: shared ownership of an HFOSS project

Curriculum guidelines for both Computer Science and Software Engineering emphasize the need for student experience working on a sizeable, real-world project. This poster presents student experience in a Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software (HFOSS) project that is jointly maintained by the GNOME Accessibility Team and three academic institutions. In this environment, students enjoy apprenticeship learning and learn directly from professionals within an active project. Results from a survey on student self-reported software engineering learning, attitude towards computing, and career plans are presented.

Panel: mobile application development in computing curricula

Many institutions are considering offering a course on mobile application development to harness its popularity to attract new majors, retain those we have, and to motivate learning. The panelists present four experiences in teaching a mobile application development course. They share their experiences in an effort to start a discussion about mobile application development in computing curricula. In the first half of the session, each panelist presents their experience including: an overview of the course; its audience, position in the curriculum, and pre-requisites; the platform, language, and development environment used; positives about the course; and roadblocks and negatives about the course. This provides a foundation for an audience directed discussion in the second half.

Stable, flexible, peephole pretty-printing

Programmers working on large software systems are faced with an extremely complex, information-rich environment. To help navigate through this, modern development environments allow flexible, multi-window browsing and exploration of the source code. Our focus in this paper is on pretty-printing algorithms that can display source code in useful, appealing ways in a variety of styles. Our algorithm is flexible, stable, and peephole-efficient. It is flexible in that it is capable of screen-optimized layouts that support source code visualization techniques such as fisheye views. The algorithm is peephole-efficient, in that it performs work proportional to the size of the visible window and not the size of the entire file. Finally, the algorithm is stable, in that the rendered view is identical to that which would be produced by formatting the entire file. This work has 2 benefits. First, it enables rendering of source codes in multiple fonts and font sizes at interactive speeds. Second, it also allows the use of powerful (but algorithmically more complex) visualization techniques (such as fish-eye views), again, at interactive speeds. We have built a pretty-printing plug-in for Eclipse that allows the use of sophisticated formatting techniques, including such features as multiple fonts and fish-eye views. Our incremental algorithm enables this plug-in to produce readable layouts (without ugly line-wrapping) within a wide range of window sizes, at interactive speeds.

Teaching open source (software) (abstract only)

Integrating Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) into our curricula can provide students with a rich, motivating learning experience that helps them develop technical as well as soft skills. However, integrating FOSS into curricula does have its challenges. This birds-of-a-feather (BoF) seeks to bring together faculty to discuss challenges, share resources, share solutions, and make connections. So, whether you are considering integrating FOSS into a class for the first time, or you are looking for ways to improve what you are already doing, this BoF is for you. Members of the Teaching Open Source (http://teachingopensource.org) and the foss2serve (http://foss2serve.org/) communities will help guide the discussion and be on hand for questions.

Teaching with HFOSS to provide students with real world experience: an introduction (abstract only)

Have you ever wanted your students to contribute to or learn from a real-world software project that benefits society? Want some help getting started? Many students find involvement in Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software (HFOSS) projects engaging and motivating. As a first step, this workshop will introduce faculty to FOSS tools and culture. Through a virtual field trip into the world of HFOSS you will learn how to find a project, discern characteristics of a good project for student participation and understand how to use IRC, a communication tool used by FOSS developers. The use of version control to support project development will also be discussed. Along the way, you will learn how to support student learning in such projects. All topics will be covered at an introductory level. Participants will take away exercises that can be used in the classroom. Additionally, participants will have access to support in the creation of assignments or curriculum and their implementation from teachers experienced in supporting students in HFOSS participation. Additional information at: http://www.foss2serve.org/index.php/SIGCSE_2014_Workshop Laptop required.

Student Contributions to Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software (HFOSS) (Abstract Only)

Can students contribute to HFOSS projects as part of their computing curriculum? How and at what level can HFOSS be integrated? What are the success stories and challenges? This BOF will be led by a diverse group of faculty who have incorporated HFOSS into their classes. They will lead a discussion on the various approaches, successes and challenges they have encountered. Their experiences will provide a backdrop for this BOF session, which should lead to a lively discussion of how and why to use HFOSS in computing courses. Faculty who are interested in HFOSS, but who are novices, will learn about potential projects and classroom materials as well as make connections with more experienced faculty in this area.

FOSS Artifacts for Evaluating Students on Team Projects

This lightening talk discusses how various Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) artifacts can be used for student evaluation. These artifacts include wikis for tracking documentation, repositories for tracking code and commits, issue trackers for tracking project issues and enhancements, and version control for tracking contributions to the project. Each of these tools provides a way to identify concrete student accomplishments when operating as part of a team to develop a project.

Impact of programming language on success in high school programming contests (abstract only)

Programming contests have been used at the high school level to motivate students to study computing and generate excitement about computing topics. However, little investigation has been done into whether the selection of programming language impacts success in such contests. This poster presents the results of an analysis of five years of high school contest results held at Western New England University. The analysis looks at the languages used by winning teams and number of submissions. Results appear to indicate that winning teams use Java and Python for programming languages while less successful teams use BASIC, VisualBasic and C++. Interestingly, the majority of teams used BASIC as their programming language. Another interesting result was that low performing teams tend to have a disproportionately large number of submissions.

An analysis of team performance in high school programming contests

Programming contests are used by educational institutions as a way to attract high school students to computing degrees. While there has been some analysis of the artifacts and process of programming contests including complexity of algorithms and the impact of teamwork strategies on team success, there has been little work investigating the impact of programming language and team submission pattern on team performance. This paper presents the results of an analysis of five years of contest results for the Western New England University high school programming contest. The analysis looks at the frequency of submissions, types of errors that occurred, and languages used by winning teams. Results appear to indicate that Python and Java have the highest success rate and that the most frequent type of error is incorrect output.

Encouraging faculty & student involvement in humanitarian free and open source software (HFOSS)(abstract only)

Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software (HFOSS) projects provide a real-world application with an approachable and welcoming community for both faculty and students. Many faculty members are excited by the prospect of their students contributing to HFOSS. They perceive it as an opportunity to engage students, regardless of race or gender, in projects that have societal impact. However trying something new in the classroom though can be daunting, and many barriers to entry exist. Locating an appropriate project, trying to figure out how to incorporate a dynamic, real-world project into the curriculum and learning how to interact with the projects community each present their own set of challenges. This BOF provides a gathering place for faculty who are interested in student participation in FOSS or HFOSS. The discussion will include an overview of an NSF-funded project, OpenFE. The goal of OpenFE is to develop faculty expertise in working with HFOSS projects and to develop curriculum materials that support faculty members in bringing this approach into their classrooms. The members of the OpenFE team will discuss plans for this grant and welcome both novices and experienced contributors to join us and provide feedback.