ARTY is a week-long program for middle school students to teach them programming of robots and allow them to express themselves artistically. It was started in 2013 and ran its fourth edition in 2016. We describe the ideas behind the inception of this program, its curriculum, our experiences during the 2016 workshop and challenges/future directions for the program. Our primary intent in this paper is to convey the program curriculum and its design, including the way in which robots can be viewed as vehicles for artistic expression. Some results from a brief attitudinal survey that was administered before and after the workshop are also included along with a discussion of outcomes assessment and issues.

We report on Shallow Blue (SB), an autonomous chess agent constructed by a small group of faculty and undergraduate students at Canisius College. In addition to pushing the limits of consumer grade components at low cost, SB is a focal point for interdisciplinary student projects spanning computer science, engineering, and physics. We demonstrate that undergraduate students can engage in rich, long-term robotic design and applied Artificial Intelligence (AI) from both hardware and software perspectives. Student outcomes of SB include senior theses, conference presentations, peer-reviewed publications, and admission to graduate programs. Students who participated also report substantial development in skills and knowledge applicable to their post-undergraduate education and careers.

Improvising Consciousness is an experimental work of intermedia performance: a cognitive science fiction which addresses questions of situated consciousness, pre- & post-human identity, and creativity. The core of the Improvising Consciousness project is a performative lecture on the history and future of the human mind. The lecture is typically accompanied by participatory activities, these have included: work-shopping of alter-egos; improvisation in a multiple personality melodrama; an interactive visual short story; play sessions with a mixed-reality alien intelligence; and a physical game dealing with pre-historic cognition. The creative team include researchers in interactive drama, virtual and mixed reality, visual novels, AI, robotics and performance. They are members of a group which has a track record of producing innovative syntheses of computer-based technology and live performance.

The design and implementation of a robotic chess agent is described. Shallow Blue, a competitor in the AAAI 2011 Small Scale Manipulation Challenge, is constructed with low-cost components including Lego NXT bricks and is programmed using Java and Lejos.

No abstract available.

The successful implementation of educational programs in bioinformatics presents many challenges. The interdisciplinary nature of bioinformatics requires close cooperation between computer scientists and biologists despite inescapable differences in the ways in which members of these professions think. It is clear that the development of quality curricula for bioinformatics must draw upon the expertise of both disciplines. In addition, biologists and computer scientists can benefit from opportunities to carry out interdisciplinary research with one another. This paper examines the role of computer science in undergraduate bioinformatics education from the perspectives of two bioinformatics program directors. Their respective programs exemplify two substantively different approaches to undergraduate education in bioinformatics due to the fact that they are at markedly different institutions. One institution is a large, technical university, offering both undergraduate and graduate degrees in bioinformatics while the other is a small, Jesuit liberal arts college with an undergraduate program in bioinformatics. Despite these differences there is considerable overlap with respect to the role of computer science. This paper discusses the ways in which computer science has been integrated into these two undergraduate bioinformatics programs, compares alternative approaches, and presents some of the inherent challenges.

This paper presents the results of a redesign of a large enrollment computer fluency course for non computer science majors. The goals of the redesign were to increase learning and to decrease costs using technology. The paper discusses the motivations and the components of the course redesign. The results show that costs did decrease and that learning did increase in the redesigned course.

The use of off-the-shelf on-line materials presents several challenges. In this session panelists report on their experiences in evaluating, installing and using such materials. Both positive and negative aspects of such use are discussed. The aim of the session is to provide useful information to those considering using (and those already using) on-line materials in their teaching. The session presents information in three mini-presentations, followed by a general discussion session.