Conference Session

Embedded Computing

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Steven Barrett, University of Wyoming; Daniel Pack, U.S. Air Force Academy

Tagged Divisions

Computers in Education

in several senior level coursesand the overall results.OverviewIn the classic movie “The Wizard of Oz” Dorothy, the Tin Woodman, the CowardlyLion, and the Scarecrow are making their way through a dark, dangerous forest. Aroundevery turn they are worried about what they might encounter. There could be “Lions andTigers and Bears…oh my!” The proper testing and documentation of a digital basedsystem is also fraught with a variety of “dangers.” Frequently the subject of projecttesting, test plans, and documentation is often treated as a dry and boring task inacademia. A tedious and monotonous task of extracting system data from a complexdigital design such as an embedded controller has contributed to this view. However, weall know that it is one

Conference Session

Web-Based Education

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Gregory Rutkowski, University of Minnesota-Duluth

Tagged Divisions

Computers in Education

Contact Information Home Address Work Phone Number Personal Interests Fishing Mentors Thesis Advisor Personality Inventory Myers-BriggsEducation Academic Record Unofficial Transcript Registration Record Professional Development University Training Record Learning Inventories Kolb Learning Style Inventory Academic Plan

Conference Session

Issues in Computer Education

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Louis Plebani, Lehigh University

Tagged Divisions

Computers in Education

students in operations research to focus their learning on the power of dynamicprogramming, as opposed to the nuances of computer implementations.IntroductionSince the formulation of Dynamic programming (DP) by Bellman,1 it has been successfullyapplied to a variety of problems, including capacity planning, equipment replacement,production planning, production control, assembly line balancing and capital budgeting(hundreds of articles referring to the use of dynamic programming are given in Sniedovichand Cole7 ). Despite seemingly successful, dynamic programming has not been adaptednearly as readily, and thus successfully, as its mathematical programming counterpartssuch as linear and integer programming. Some of the reasons for this are the lack

Conference Session

Issues in Computer Education

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

John K. Estell, Ohio Northern University

Tagged Divisions

Computers in Education

exam possesses a major benefit over using the actualcertification exam in that, for the actual exam, only the final score is given; no information isavailable as to what questions were missed. In a classroom-administered mock exam, theinstructor has full access to all exams, and so can categorize all problems into their appropriateobjective areas. Following the grading of the exams, the individual problem scores can becollectively analyzed and the performance in each objective area evaluated; this allows fortargeted action plans to be implemented if poor performance is noted in a specific objective,thereby improving the curriculum.IV. ResultsTen quizzes containing a total of 77 questions and covering ten chapters in the Mughal andRasmussen

Conference Session

Computers in Education Poster Session

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Timothy Lindquist, Arizona State University; Harry Koehnemann, Arizona State University

Tagged Divisions

Computers in Education

typically required to pay the fee and part-time students may or may not paythe full fee or in some cases pay a reduced fee. By purchasing directly, the university can retainownership of the laptop and acquire bulk coverage for support, damage, and theft. Students areusually responsible for a deductible in the case of neglect or theft. Finally, some programs anduniversities choose to lease laptops for two, three, or four years instead of purchasing them.Leased-based programs where the university or program retains ownership adds institutionalresponsibilities, but simplifies student burden in planning the acquisition. Policies must be inplace to distribute and then retrieve laptops as students move in and out of enrollment acrosssemesters and in the

Conference Session

Embedded Computing

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Hugh Jack, Grand Valley State University; Nael Barakat, Grand Valley State University

Tagged Divisions

Computers in Education

voltageregulation, motor drivers, and protection circuitry.The paper describes the boards and how they support the course. Anecdotes and details areincluded for those planning similar implementations.The Course ContentEGR 345 - Dynamic System Modeling and Control is required for all Mechanical and ProductDesign and Manufacturing students in their junior year. Prior to this course, students have takencourses such as Differential Equations, Statics, Circuits, C Programming, Writing, CAD/CAM,and Introduction to Digital Systems. The goal for the course is to prepare students to use modernmethods to model and design electrical and mechanical control systems. Mechanical and electri-cal systems are modeled with differential equations and analyzed using techniques

Conference Session

Web-Based Education

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Eugene Ressler, U.S. Military Academy; Stephen Ressler, U.S. Military Academy; Catherine Bale, U.S. Military Academy

Tagged Divisions

Computers in Education

occur when the contest was advertised in metropolitannewspapers and other media with large audiences as planned for the Bicentennial. Some furtherback-of-the-envelope calculation indicated that a 0.03 second service time provided anacceptable performance margin. The same calculations indicated that an inexpensive0.4 megabit per second Internet uplink would serve all purposes except downloads of the clientsoftware. The client has therefore been distributed through volunteer educational institutions,including ours, through their high-bandwidth connections to the Internet.Special technical requirementsA few fascinating problems in software design are inherent in the rules of the contest. One isthe need to reject bridges that are duplicates of

Conference Session

Issues in Computer Education

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Timothy Bower, Kansas State University-Salina

Tagged Divisions

Computers in Education

Page 11.1394.2read and modify, if needed, any exported global variables and data structures. The ability toread the kernel’s global data makes them ideal for student projects that examine global datastructures to more closely observe the behavior of the operating system. These projects typicallyonly read the data, so the stability of the system is maintained.With the introduction of the bachelor degree in Computer Systems Technology, Kansas StateUniversity at Salina offered an operating systems class for the first time in the fall 2004semester. From the initial planning of the class, the laboratory programming projects were aprimary concern. It was felt that programming projects using real operating systems would beperceived as more relevant

Conference Session

Computing Tools for Engineering Education

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Asad Azemi, Pennsylvania State University; Laura L. Pauley

Tagged Divisions

Computers in Education

accommodatethe addition of robotics projects using Handy Board and to satisfy those departments that feeltheir students need to have a general understanding of one of these programming languages.Moreover, we are looking into the possibility of eliminating our linear algebra course andcovering the bulk of the topics in the Matlab-based programming course. It should be mentionedthere are few universities that either have converted their computer programming course toMatlab [20] or offer different sections of the course with Matlab and C++/Java options [21].V. Course StructureWe started with an ambitious plan to teach the fundamental programming concepts, usingMatlab, in addition to robotics-based programming projects, using Interactive C. The

Conference Session

Computers in Education Poster Session

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Will Humphries, Virginia Tech; Justin Gawrilow, Virginia Tech; Manuel Perez-Quinones, Virginia Tech; Scott Turner, Virginia Tech; Stephen Edwards, Virginia Tech

Tagged Divisions

Computers in Education

. This occurred because the grades were not entered into Moodle as quickly asthe students might want. While this is not actually a failing of the graphs per se, it is important to notethis issue, how it is perceived by students, and how it might be addressed.6. ImplementationThe grade visualizations are implemented as a patch to the standard Moodle 1.5 grade book. Written inPHP, most of the visualizations were created with standard HTML, with the star graph using PHP’s GDgraphics library to generate images. Although Moodle supports multiple languages, currently ourvisualizations only support English.Our future plans include releasing these visualizations as an extension to the Moodle grade book so otherusers of Moodle can benefit from our work.7

Conference Session

Instrumentation and Laboratory Systems

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Benjamin Anderson, Iowa State University; Thomas Daniels, Iowa State University

Tagged Divisions

Computers in Education

discuss the architecture of the Xen Worldsprototype and the assignments that were given to the students using this prototype. It will alsopresent the new architecture and interface that has been adopted, and the motivations behindthese changes. Once the architecture has been presented, we will examine how Xen Worldsaddresses the requirements and phases of the assignment life-cycle and analyze the performanceof the system. This paper will close with a discussion of the future development plans for theXen Worlds project.Xen Prototype: Architecture and AssignmentsThe potential of the Xen Worlds project was demonstrated with the implementation of aprototype server that hosted VMs for 30 students for an entire semester. The hardwarerequirement for

Conference Session

Mobile Robotics in Education

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

David Ahlgren, Trinity College; Igor Verner, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology

Tagged Divisions

Computers in Education

public school curriculum.It is not clear how students were able to correctly answer these questions (especially on the 2005test where they had to write out explicit answers). We plan to add supplemental survey questionsto each Olympiad question for the 2006 Olympiad. These survey questions will ask if thismaterial was covered in school (and in what class), through their robotics activities or learned ontheir own.International Robot Olympiad in KoreaThe 2004 and 2005 International Robot Olympiads (IRO) were held in Korea [17]. The IROcompetitions are part of the Federation of International Robot Soccer Association (FIRA)program chaired by Prof. Jong Hwan Kim of the Korean Advanced Institute of Science andTechnology (KAIST). The Olympiad offers a

Conference Session

Web-Based Education

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

William Schleter, University of Tennessee-Knoxville; Richard Bennett, University of Tennessee-Knoxville

Tagged Divisions

Computers in Education

learned about how students progress and utilize feedback by studying the detailedlogs of an online homework system.Finally, Bonham et. al. (2000)2 list several practical suggestions to keep in mind whenincorporating WATS as a research tool or as a topic of research. Among these suggestions areknowing how the students use the system, planning ahead, maintaining a good relationship withthe system administrator, limited use of advanced features, minimizing interference with on-going classes, and being realistic about user authentication.PhilosophyWorking homework problems has always been an integral part of an introductory engineeringphysics class. It is our philosophy that this process is a critical one, and that the moreopportunities students have