Public Debate Format for the Development of Soft Skill Competency in Computer Science Curricula

We present a method for incorporating soft skill development into a traditional computer science curriculum through the use of a public debate format. The debate format forces participants to practice public speaking, active listening, teamwork, research and preparation, and critical thinking, as well as having the less obvious benefit of contextualizing the material taught in the classroom by introducing contemporary, real-world debate topics. This work presents an example of the incorporation of public debates in an upper-level human-computer interaction class, including a discussion of student feedback, and suggestions for adopting the debate format to other upper-level courses and its perceived benefits

PUBLIC DEBATE FORMAT FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOFT SKILL COMPETENCY IN COMPUTER SCIENCE CURRICULA

We present a method for incorporating soft skill development into a traditional computer science curriculum through the use of a public debate format. The debate format forces participants to practice public speaking, active listening, teamwork, research and preparation, and critical thinking, as well as having the less obvious benefit of contextualizing the material taught in the classroom by introducing contemporary, real-world debate topics. This work presents an example of the incorporation of public debates in an upper-level human-computer interaction class, including a discussion of student feedback, and suggestions for adopting the debate format to other upper-level courses and its perceived benefits

Incorporating Energy Related Concepts into EE and CS Laboratory Work and Coursework

During the course of this interdisciplinary effort, members of the Electrical Engineering (EE) and Computer Science (CS) departments collaborated on energy related curricular efforts. Initially work was carried out to develop and utilize an inexpensive, open-source system for measuring, storing, and displaying energy related data from across campus. Hardware and software components chosen were open source or free for educational use. A low power Linux server was utilized. The LAN-enabled Arduinos included sensors to measure energy related quantities such as power and temperature. EE and CS students were engaged in various aspects of the project – EE students focused on the hardware, CS students focused on the programming. EE junior students worked with clients to implement real world measurement and display solutions. A CS student project focused on developing a JavaScript-based web page that visualizes sensor data by leveraging CanvasJS and JQuery packages. This web page development project will continue in spring 2016 as the work is significantly incorporated into the CS department’s Software Engineering and Information Technology Systems classes. Most recently, EE junior projects (fall 2015) emphasized collaborations across a wide variety of disciplines: projects include wetland environmental factors (Biology), greenhouse environmental factors (Biology), pump energy usage (ME), weather monitoring (Physics), and classroom temperature monitoring (Facilities)

Experiential Learning Framework for Smaller Computer Science Programs

Experiential learning (EL) permeates the Computer Science discipline. This work seeks to codify EL practices for computer science pedagogy into ve key pillars. These pillars have been successfully applied at a small to mid-sized college within the heavily competitive Boston area. This paper further describes how a computer science department may eectively implement the pillars in their own curriculum

Identifying Inexpensive Off-the-Shelf Laser Pointers for Multi-User Interaction on Large Scale Displays

We present a method for identifying inexpensive, off-the-shelf laser pointers in a multiuser interaction environment on large-scale displays. We identify a laser pointer\u27s personality, a measure of its output in a particular context. Our method requires a set of inexpensive and unmodified green lasers, a large screen, a projector, and a camera with an infrared (IR) filter. The camera detects the IR spillover from the green laser beam, while ignoring color information projected onto the screen. During a calibration phase, a radial histogram of each laser\u27s IR spillover are used to represent the laser\u27s personality. Our system is able to identify the spots of a specific laser, allowing multiple users to simultaneously interact in the environment. In addition, we present a series of applications that take advantage of tracked and identified laser pointers to demonstrate large-scale, multiuser interactions

Reflection of a Horizon Image on the Surface of Water

We have created a piece of software that renders the reflection of a ”landscape” texture on a wavy fluid surface. The fluid is represented by a height field and a quad mesh. Waves are created by using wave particles, non-physical entities that determine the influence a wave has on the fluid around it. The scene is ray traced by sending a ray through each pixel, bouncing it off the water and against the texture backdrop. The color of the texture is quieried and influences the color of the water surface. Surface normals are calulated by interpolating vertex normals across each face. The ray tracing is also parallelized, and speeds up to an aymptotic point, leveling off at the number of cores of the machine being used. We produce very attractive non-photo-realistic renderings of landscapes reflecting off a liquid surface

Evaluating hydrology preservation of simplified terrain representations

We present an error metric based on the potential energy of water flow to evaluate the quality of lossy terrain simplification algorithms. Typically, terrain compression algorithms seek to minimize RMS (root mean square) and maximum error. These metrics fail to capture whether a reconstructed terrain preserves the drainage network. A quantitative measurement of how accurately a drainage network captures the hydrology is important for determining the effectiveness of a terrain simplification technique. Having a measurement for testing and comparing different models has the potential to be widely used in numerous applications (flood prevention, erosion measurement, pollutant propagation, etc). In this paper, we transfer the drainage network computed on reconstructed geometry onto the original uncompressed terrain and use our error metric to measure the level of error created by the simplification. We also present a novel terrain simplification algorithm based on the compression of hydrology features. This method and other terrain compression schemes are then compared using our new metric

Experiential Learning in the Technology Disciplines February 2020

Learning-by-doing has long been a tradition in the technology disciplines. It is the hands-on work, combined with student reflection, feedback and assessment, that reinforces theory into practice. Over the past 40 years, experiential learning (EL) in higher education has grown beyond in-class assignments to include internships, cooperative education, team-based learning, project-based learning, community engagement, service learning, international and study-away experiences, capstone projects and research opportunities. This paper provides an overview of experiential education theory and practice in the undergraduate technology disciplines, and presents examples of how experiential learning practices have evolved over time at a medium-sized institution in the Northeast USA. In addition, this paper offers instructors theoretical strategies to improve the hands-on work that is likely already present in their courses

Computer Simulation of Levee Erosion and Overtopping

Improved computer models of erosion have been developed, considering soil hydraulic conductivity. The models deal with erosion of levees, dams and embankments due to overtopping. The simulations trace the formation of rills and gullies, beginning with initial overtopping and continuing to final breaching. Physical models performed at 1-g and high g using a geotechnical centrifuge have been used to calibrate the models. Previous models did not consider soil hydraulic conductivity, and although results were quite good for the formation of rills and gullies and sediment quantities, breach times were underestimated. Essentially the water flow was treated as if passing over a solid surface, not entering the soil, and the total water flow was available for erosion. Thus, breach times were underestimated. Soil erodibility parameters had to be adjusted in order to achieve good agreement with breach times. The new models developed consider soil hydraulic conductivity, and produce good agreement with the performance of the physical modeling, including breach times and the use of proper soil erodibility parameters