Expanding Education Options for Struggling Students and Disconnected Youth: Lessons from the National Youth Employment Coalition Learning Exchanges

In 2008, the National Youth Employment Coalition (NYEC) convened teams of local and state leaders representing 13 communities in 10 states for cross-site meetings focused on developing expertise and building capacity to re-engage youth who are struggling in or have dropped out of high school and to connect them to education and career opportunities. This document provides a distillation of the major themes discussed in the NYEC Learning Exchanges

Science for Global Ubiquitous Computing

This paper describes an initiative to provide theories that can underlie the development of the Global Ubiquitous Computer, the network of ubiquitous computing devices that will pervade the civilised world in the course of the next few decades. We define the goals of the initiative and the criteria for judging whether they are achieved; we then propose a strategy for the exercise. It must combine a bottom-up development of theories in directions that are currently pursued with success, together with a top-down approach in the form of collaborative projects relating these theories to engineered systems that exist or are imminent

Getting the Right Stuff with the Write Stuff: Instructional Methods to Improve Writing in a First Year Engineering Course

Engineering Problem Solving (ENGR 1300) is a first year engineering course at the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) designed to prepare students for the rigors of the engineering majors by introducing them to engineering skills such as problem solving, programming, and professional writing. This embedded writing element, taught by members of the UTA English Department, differentiates this first-year course from many others. Heeding the concern of faculty members regarding the students’ ability to write professionally, the curriculum committee for ENGR 1300 collaborated with the English Department to create an initial curriculum that tasked students with basic writing tasks such as professional emails, resumes, reports, and simple process papers. While these assignments seemed to answer some of the overall concerns of faculty, the wide range of reading and writing abilities we see among our students caused many to be frustrated because they could not complete these tasks, while others expressed resentment at having to replicate tasks they had mastered in high school. Writing instructors, too, noted their limited effectiveness when attempting to give meaningful feedback to large enrollment sections of students. To address these issues, the writing curriculum was revised to include the rhetorical précis assignments that build upon each other. These rhetorical précis assignments require students to assimilate large amounts of technical information and summarize it into a few, complex sentences. Using these assignments for our writing instruction not only allows writing faculty to give specific feedback even in large enrollment sections, but also challenges advanced writers, offers sentence level writing practice to less-prepared writers, requires critical thinking, and encourages complex synthesis of ideas. This paper will explore the effectiveness of this method for all writing levels and will attempt to identify and compare correlations between the students’ writing and overall grades in the course using these two methods.Cockrell School of Engineerin

Mapping Jewish Education: The National Picture

Based on interviews as well as a database of Jewish educational organizations, foundations, and programs, examines their accomplishments, challenges, future directions, and links within a Jewish educational system. Highlights the role of foundations

The Legal Needs of Local Media Reform Organizations: Report of a National Survey

This report summarizes a nationwide survey of media reform groups to gauge their needs for pro bono legal assistance. Conclusions are that local media democracy groups need legal help on multiple issues, ranging from municipal broadband to cable franchising to low-power radio

Framework to Enhance Teaching and Learning in System Analysis and Unified Modelling Language

Cowling, MA ORCiD: 0000-0003-1444-1563; Munoz Carpio, JC ORCiD: 0000-0003-0251-5510Systems Analysis modelling is considered foundational for Information and Communication Technology (ICT) students, with introductory and advanced units included in nearly all ICT and computer science degrees. Yet despite this, novice systems analysts (learners) find modelling and systems thinking quite difficult to learn and master. This makes the process of teaching the fundamentals frustrating and time intensive. This paper will discuss the foundational problems that learners face when learning Systems Analysis modelling. Through a systematic literature review, a framework will be proposed based on the key problems that novice learners experience. In this proposed framework, a sequence of activities has been developed to facilitate understanding of the requirements, solutions and incremental modelling. An example is provided illustrating how the framework could be used to incorporate visualization and gaming elements into a Systems Analysis classroom; therefore, improving motivation and learning. Through this work, a greater understanding of the approach to teaching modelling within the computer science classroom will be provided, as well as a framework to guide future teaching activities

"Going back to our roots": second generation biocomputing

Researchers in the field of biocomputing have, for many years, successfully "harvested and exploited" the natural world for inspiration in developing systems that are robust, adaptable and capable of generating novel and even "creative" solutions to human-defined problems. However, in this position paper we argue that the time has now come for a reassessment of how we exploit biology to generate new computational systems. Previous solutions (the "first generation" of biocomputing techniques), whilst reasonably effective, are crude analogues of actual biological systems. We believe that a new, inherently inter-disciplinary approach is needed for the development of the emerging "second generation" of bio-inspired methods. This new modus operandi will require much closer interaction between the engineering and life sciences communities, as well as a bidirectional flow of concepts, applications and expertise. We support our argument by examining, in this new light, three existing areas of biocomputing (genetic programming, artificial immune systems and evolvable hardware), as well as an emerging area (natural genetic engineering) which may provide useful pointers as to the way forward.Comment: Submitted to the International Journal of Unconventional Computin