In this poster, we describe our experience with the creation of innovative pedagogy to teach Game Design and Development to Computer Science students. We followed a multidisciplinary approach made possible through collaboration by faculty from CS and Arts & Digital Media. The goal of this work is to promote the development of professional skills by providing students with a project-based learning environment that resembles actual work conditions. Preliminary evaluation of student outcomes are encouraging and indicative of the potential benefits of our approach.

In this poster, we describe our experience with the adoption of Open Educational Resources (OER) in a C Programming course. Our motivation was to promote diversity, equity and inclusion by addressing the high cost of textbooks, particularly its detrimental effect on students from underrepresented groups or disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds. Although adopting OER required significant effort, our preliminary results indicate that these were adequate for students to complete their coursework. Furthermore, student achievement was comparable to previous offerings of the course that used traditional textbooks.

This paper presents Criminal Investigations, a gamified, scalable web-based framework for teaching and assessing Internet-of-Things (IoT) security skills. Criminal Investigations is packaged as a series of stackable IoT security activities; the current version uses React for the front-end development and Python for the back-end, and is deployed as a web application on a university server. Criminal Investigations promotes student engagement and learning by incorporating gamification concepts such as storytelling, experience points, just-in-time learning content delivery and checkpoints into activity design. This paper presents a pilot deployment of Criminal Investigations' first, fully-deployed, prototype activity "Reverse Engineering and Analyzing IoT Firmware''. The results of the pilot deployment indicate that Criminal Investigations provides an engaging, user-friendly, accessible environment, and helps students achieve the learning objectives of the prototype activity.

This poster presents Criminal Investigations, a text-based interactive activity designed to teach and assess reverse-engineering and firmware analysis skills in upper-division undergraduate cybersecurity courses. The activity incorporates elements of game design such as storytelling, experience points (XP), and just-in-time learning content delivery to increase student engagement and learning. Criminal Investigations is implemented as an easily accessible web-based application, deployed in a cloud-based environment.

We investigated learning outcomes within an undergraduate C Programming course that is taught in multiple modalities: in-person, online and blended. Because this course has been taught by the same instructor, using the same scaffolding activities, materials and approaches, we were uniquely positioned to conduct a quasi-experimental study of learning outcomes between courses and within students. The overarching goal was to glean knowledge and implications about assessment practices for undergraduate courses that are taught in multiple modalities. The objectives of our research are primarily to discern what differential impacts, if any, are found between the in-person and the online course delivery. We aimed to discover learning outcome patterns among the students who participate in these modalities. Findings from this study provide valuable information for undergraduate Computer Science programs by identifying any differential learning outcomes that students experience between in-person and online course instruction. The research questions addressed by the study were as follows: 1) What impact does modality have on student learning outcomes? 2) What patterns are discernable across student groups? 3) What relationship is there between final course grades and assignment module learning outcomes? In earlier work, we were surprised that no significant differences were obtained between course modality. While this was an encouraging finding, we believed that further data collection and analysis were needed, before making general conclusions about the two modalities. This paper reports on our efforts to collect additional data, while considering additional variables, such as instructor, multiple modalities, and online course design approaches.

In this poster, we describe our research on the use of small units of content, termed minimal interventions, to create awareness of embedded systems security concepts in an undergraduate course, Introduction to Operating Systems and Networking. This work focuses on the incorporation of simple activities such as short readings, and the evaluation of their potential as teaching tools. To study the effectiveness of this minimal intervention approach, we collected student performance data over six (6) semesters and across multiple modalities of the course, with a total of 1,168 study participants. Students were asked to complete a short survey before and after completing the activities, to assess prior knowledge of the subject and measure knowledge gains that resulted from participation in the activity.

In this poster, we describe our experiences with improving student preparedness in a junior-level course, Introduction to Operating Systems and Networking, that is taught in multiple modalities. The course is designed around the use of Active Learning techniques and the face-to-face version uses the Flipped Classroom model. Course content, termed 'preparatory work', is delivered to students via lecture videos and online readings/tutorials. Students then engage with the course material via hands-on, application-oriented activities. One of the challenges we faced when we first 'flipped' this class is that students would not perform the necessary preparatory work before class. To address this issue, we explored the use of forcing functions, i.e., course design elements that help ensure the completion of preparatory work by students. We discuss the different forms of forcing functions that we used and present preliminary results on their effectiveness in improving preparedness.

We describe a study of learning outcomes in an undergraduate C Programming course taught in two modalities: in-person and online. Because this course has been taught by the same instructor, using the same scaffolding activities, materials and approaches, we were uniquely positioned to conduct a quasi-experimental study of learning outcomes between courses and within students. Our goal was to glean knowledge and implications about assessment practices for undergraduate courses that are taught in two modalities. The objectives of our research are to discern what differential impacts are found between in-person and online delivery modalities. We aimed to discover learning outcome patterns among the students who participate in these modalities. Findings from this study provide valuable information for undergraduate Computer Science programs by identifying any differential learning outcomes that students experience between in-person and online course instruction. The research questions addressed were: 1) What impact does modality have on student learning outcomes? 2) What patterns are discernable across student groups 3) What relationship is there between final course grades and assignment module learning outcomes? We were surprised that no significant differences were obtained between course modality. While this is an encouraging finding, we believe that further data collection and analysis are needed, before making general conclusions. We are planning future studies to account for additional variables, such as instructor, multiple modalities, and online course design approaches.

Soft skills such as collaboration, communication and time management are essential to the success of computer science students both in school and after they enter the IT profession. While employers value these skills highly, there are so many technical skills to cover in computer science programs that these soft skills are not typically primary learning objectives for CS classes. As such, it is difficult to find time and space to address them directly. In this study, we investigate whether Classcraft, a game-based classroom behavior management platform designed for K-12 students, can motivate undergraduate students to develop their soft skills in large computing classes. To this end, we utilized Classcraft with 234 students across two face-to-face sections and one online section of an undergraduate "Introduction to Operating Systems and Networking" course to determine whether gamifying the engagement component of the course would motivate students to participate in co-curricular activities, enhance student collaboration and improve communication and time management. There were no in-game activities - the students in each section of the class earned experience points in Classcraft as a reward for completing class activities ahead of time, collaborative learning and teamwork, and asking or answering questions in class or via discussion forums in our learning management system. In this poster, we report our preliminary results of the impact of such a platform on student engagement in soft skills.

We present an approach to incorporate interesting and compelling characters in planning-based narrative generation. The approach is based on a computational model that utilizes character actions to portray these as having distinct and well-defined personalities.