Conference Session

Computer Education Management Tools

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Richard House, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology; Anneliese Watt, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology; Julia Williams, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

Tagged Divisions

Computers in Education

incorporating communication into technical coursesmay be mitigated by the use of peer review; by setting students up in peer review sessions, they canread and comment on the work of others as a means to improving their own communication skills.Many of us who have employed peer review have seen the benefits firsthand.1-5 The process of readingand reviewing the written documents of other students—submitting their own documents to beassessed by other students, reviewing documents that try to fulfill the same assignment they havewritten—has a measurable impact on the student’s own writing. Studies of peer reviewing strategiesconfirm what many of us have seen in our own classrooms. The process for peer review, with fewexceptions, remains the same. Students

Conference Session

Web-Based Education

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Thomas Walker, Virginia Tech

Tagged Divisions

Computers in Education

students and instructors. The results are overwhelmingly positive and themethods can be applied to all or parts of multiple courses and curricula. There is definiteapplicability to K-12 outreach programs as well as community/junior college collaborativeprograms. Issues addressed include learning styles, under-represented minority participation,student peer support and collaboration, student classroom participation, budgetary and personnelresources, computer grading, and course management systems. Methods and technologiesinvolved will be used and demonstrated during the presentation.BackgroundThe concept of “distance” or “online” courses is not only generally accepted by most engineeringschools, appropriately and properly developed courses are

Conference Session

Programming for Engineering Students

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

William Birmingham, Grove City College; David Adams, Grove City College

Tagged Divisions

Computers in Education

. Moreover, the students have also taken data structures and algorithms, and so arecomfortable with designing, analyzing, and coding high-performance algorithms and complexdata structures. In addition, they have taken computer organization and operating systems. Thus,they know about threading, memory organization, and processes. All of these things—not just Page 12.767.3programming—are needed for writing games.Finally, by their junior year, all the students have taken physics (statics, dynamics andkinematics), three courses in calculus, and linear algebra. Since students need to create all thephysics in their games (e.g., how a ball will bounce off

Conference Session

Educational Software

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Jeff Joines, North Carolina State University; Stephen Roberts, North Carolina State University; Dianne Raubenheimer, North Carolina State University

Tagged Divisions

Computers in Education

analysis, optimization, and database interfaces.Finally, the “scripting language” of Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) provides “glue” thatallows users to piece objects together from Excel and any other application on the Windowsplatform that exposes its object structure. Thus students can, through a simple programminglanguage, become knowledgeable about objects and object properties including graphics. Theycan write custom functions and create libraries (for example to queuing formulas). They canbuild graphical user interfaces of forms and windows that accept data, import files and provideconvenient navigation for the acquisition of data and the presentation of summaries, so importantto decision support systems.Because VBA is generally

Conference Session

Mobile Robotics in Education

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

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

Tagged Divisions

Computers in Education

would have helped me more if those goals were more streamlined… I think it is a good idea that should be used in the future.The post-semester survey focused on the effectiveness of the RST as a learning environment thataddresses Bandura’s three social principles. The survey presented five statements (Table 5) rated Page 12.336.7on a scale of 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest). Responses to questions 2 and 4, connected to Bandura’ssecond principle (social models), indicated that the RST provided peer models and a constructivesocial environment. Responses to questions 1 and 3 pointed to a supportive environment inwhich help from other team members

Conference Session

Web-Based Education

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Ahmed Abu-Hajar, San Francisco State University; Michael Holden, San Francisco State University

Tagged Divisions

Computers in Education

objectivist approaches. In this new approach, studentspassively learn abstract concepts on their own using computer-based lectures. This is coupledwith traditional lectures in which students interact with their instructors and peers. This teachingmethod has been employed in Circuit I, an introduction to electrical engineering course at SanFrancisco State University. Preliminary survey results show the CBVC method to be moreeffective than traditional teaching methods.The paper is organized as follows: section 2 presents the challenges and solutions of traditionalengineering classroom settings, section 3 discusses computer-based virtual classrooms, section 4presents the proposed virtual classroom environment, section 5 presents our experiment