This paper reports a study which investigated the extent to which undergraduate mathematics students in the United Kingdom are currently taught to programme a computer as a core part of their mathematics degree programme. We undertook an online survey, with significant follow-up correspondence, to gather data on current curricula and received…

This article examines the use of the computer algebra system SAGE for undergraduate student research projects. After reading this article, the reader should understand the benefits of using SAGE as a source of research projects and how to commence working with SAGE. The author proposes a tiered working group model to allow maximum benefit to the…

Making construals is a practical approach to computing that was originally developed for and by computer science undergraduates. It is the central theme of an EU project aimed at disseminating the relevant principles to a broader audience. This involves bringing together technical experts in making construals and international experts in…

A new, interdisciplinary, team-taught course has been designed to educate students in Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) so that they can respond to global and urgent issues concerning computer control systems in nuclear power plants. This paper discusses our experience and assessment of the interdisciplinary computer and nuclear energy…

The cloud has become a widely used term in academia and the industry. Education has not remained unaware of this trend, and several educational solutions based on cloud technologies are already in place, especially for software as a service cloud. However, an evaluation of the educational potential of infrastructure and platform clouds has not…

Operating Systems (OS) is an important and mandatory discipline in many Computer Science, Information Systems and Computer Engineering curricula. Some of its topics require a careful and detailed explanation from the instructor as they often involve theoretical concepts and somewhat complex mechanisms, demanding a certain degree of abstraction…

This paper describes a one-year introductory robotics course sequence focusing on computational aspects of robotics for third- and fourth-year students. The key challenges this curriculum addresses are "scalability," i.e., how to teach a robotics class with a limited amount of hardware to a large audience, "student assessment,"…

Web 2.0 and specifically Social Networking Software have become ubiquitous tools for communication over the last five years. Across many disciplines, practitioners and researchers have been exploring these technologies with the hope of tapping into their perceived potential. Not least in this endeavor is the field of Education. Educators and…

Conventional introduction to computer science presents individual algorithmic paradigms in the context of specific, prototypical problems. To complement this algorithm-centric instruction, this study additionally advocates problem-centric instruction. I present an original problem drawn from students' life that is simply stated but provides rich…

Learning about computers continues to be regarded as a rather informal and complex landscape dominated by individual exploratory and opportunistic approaches, even for students and instructors in Computer Science Departments. During the last two decades, software animated demonstrations (SADs), also known as screencasts, have attracted particular…

The development of collaborative Web applications does not follow a software engineering methodology. This is because when university students study Web applications in general, and collaborative Web portals in particular, they are not being trained in the use of software engineering techniques to develop collaborative Web portals. This paper…

This work presents innovative cybernetics (feedback) techniques based on Bayesian statistics for drawing questions from an Item Bank towards personalized multi-student improvement. A novel software tool, namely "Module for Adaptive Assessment of Students" (or, "MAAS" for short), implements the proposed (feedback) techniques. In conclusion, a pilot…

Santa Clara University's Robotic Systems Laboratory conducts an aggressive robotic development and operations program in which interdisciplinary teams of undergraduate students build and deploy a wide range of robotic systems, ranging from underwater vehicles to spacecraft. These year-long projects expose students to the breadth of and…

A study of 89 computer programming students in two instructional groups found that those using Visual Basic (VB) mastered programming design concepts as well as those using traditional BASIC. Concludes that VB is an excellent choice for a first programming course (high school or university) emphasizing sequence, selection, iteration, variables,…

Teaching future knowledge engineers, the necessary skills for designing and implementing intelligent software solutions required by business, industry and research today, is a very tall order. These skills are not easily taught in traditional undergraduate computer science lectures; nor are the practical experiences easily reinforced in laboratory…