The World Wide Web is increasingly becoming an integrated extension of users' computing environments, with content indexed and retrieved through Web browsers. Web browsers are increasingly being used as computer science curriculum delivery mechanism, ...

This paper describes the authors' approach of introducing important concepts and algorithms of B-splines to junior computer science students with the help of a pedagogical tool DesignMentor. This approach is non-mathematical and intuitive, and has been ...

This work resulted from an investigation of the activities component of group dynamics in collaborative (or cooperative) groups for two undergraduate sections of computer architecture taught in spring 2002. A cooperative group is a special type of small ...

This paper reports on how first-year students who have programmed before see their programming interest and ability and how this self-perception relates to their performance in the introductory programming course. In particular we examine how this self-...

Pair programming is a practice in which two programmers work collaboratively at one computer, on the same design, algorithm, or code. Prior research indicates that pair programmers produce higher quality code in essentially half the time taken by solo ...

Recursion is a fundamental concept in Computer Science. A student's knowledge of recursion can be termed their mental model of recursion. A student's mental model is viable if it allows them to accurately and consistently represent the mechanics of ...

Writing skills need to be integrated into the Computer Science (CS) curriculum, and there is little empirical evidence on how best to do so. This paper first describes a technical writing class for CS undergraduates. Then it presents the results of a ...

Computer science has a reputation of being a discipline in a perpetual state of accelerated progress-a discipline in which our techniques, our hardware, our software systems, and our literature rarely exhibit a staying power of more than several years. ...

The Indiana Student Software Awards Competition (ISSAC) was created to encourage students in the state of Indiana to improve their software development skills, to potentially consider a career in information technology, and to help stem the flow of ...

During summer 2002, we ran a workshop module for a group of 28 eighth-grade girls. Our aim was ambitious: to introduce these students, ages 12 and 13, to computer science by focussing on the deep intellectual topic of self-stabilizing distributed ...

Declining female enrollment in undergraduate Computer Science programs is a serious problem. Part of the solution lies in retaining more of the female students currently enrolled; even more important, however, is increasing initial enrollment. Many ...

This paper describes Pyro, a robotics programming environment designed to allow inexperienced undergraduates to explore topics in advanced robotics. Pyro, which stands for Python Robotics, runs on a number of advanced robotics platforms. In addition, ...

In this paper we propose a novel method for teaching neural networks with back propagation in an undergraduate Artificial Intelligence course. We use an agent based approach in the course, as outlined in the textbook Artificial Intelligence A Modern ...

We report the results of a year-long experiment in the use of robots to teach computer science. Our data set compares results from over 800 students on identical tests from both robotics and non-robotics based laboratory sessions. We also examine the ...

Often in teaching an introductory computer science course for non-majors, a primary focus on building programming skills is neither practical nor effective. Many instructors choose a breadth-first approach focusing on building problem solving skills and ...

Previous Computer Science Education research incorporating Common Learning Experiences (CLEs) into freshman level breadth-first Computer Science course inspired the author to undertake similar work for a depth-first course. This paper presents a set of ...

Many CS1 and CS2 instructors have been using game-like assignments and manipulatives to increase student understanding of abstract concepts. A related approach described in this paper requires students to play a game-like version of each assignment (...

Computer science has a relatively stable collection of time-tested pedagogical programming examples. With the infusion of object-oriented concepts into the core computer science curriculum, many of these examples are being replaced with newer examples ...

A standard practice in object-oriented programming is to implement an operation, called equals in Java, for testing the equality of two objects. The equals method should be defined for every new Java class, but because of the intricacies of inheritance, ...