Don\u27t Overlook Homework Assignments - They\u27re Simple, but Powerful

Homework has been a staple of the educational world for decades. This essay outlines how homework assignments have been used effectively in two different courses in combination with a form of continuing group work I call coalitions, and how the use of homework in each course has influenced the evolution of its use in the other course

Motivating Teams: Competition and Cooperation

The purpose of this research study was to explore the potential merits, namely in regard to individual worker motivation, of an approach to leading teams utilizing both competitive and cooperative structures. A literature review was conducted to establish a foundation of pre-existing research on the definitions, benefits, and drawbacks of competition and cooperation in professional organizational settings, as well as how employee motivation relates to self-interested and prosocial orientations to group membership. This research influenced the development of a hypothesis statement: Since teamwork represents a mixed motive situation of self-interested and prosocial orientations, team leaders will observe higher levels of individual worker motivation by applying a mixed approach, fostering both competitive and cooperative forces. This hypothesis was tested with quantitative analysis of self-reported survey data, which sought to identify motivational outcomes resulting from competitive and cooperative influences. Interpersonal intrateam relations was a prevailing theme in the research, though intrapersonal, inter-team, and inter-organizational relationships are also discussed

Tracing COBOL programs- What can your students gain?

In many introductory programming courses, students are urged to trace programs in a textbook to see if they understand how the programs work. In addition, students may have to trace simple programs on a test (a typical question calls for a display of a program\u27s output). As a student confronts more and more complex language features, and as examples become more lengthy, the tracing idea seems to fall by the wayside. We expect a student to understand complex programs, but we don\u27t seem to offer any practical guidance about how this understanding may be achieved

Expanding the Role of Homework Assignments

Homework offers instructors opportunities to help student develop soft skills. With a little bit of work, we can expand on traditional uses for homework to include opportunities for students to reflect on exams or to evaluate both their own contributions as well as those of other team members on group projects

An Object-oriented natural language expert system

This paper highlights the design and implementation of a prototype object-oriented Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS). There were two main goals for the prototype. One was to create a small tutoring system which fit into the niche of current commercially available systems, while exhibiting some of the more intelligent features found in larger custom systems. The other was to experiment with an object-oriented model, design approach, and implementation for such a system. A masking technique for pattern matching is one of the key paradigms driving the intelligent diagnosis. The prototype provides a means for practicing sentence construction, by checking a student\u27s translation responses, and offering hints, if desired. It was implemented in C++