A number of published studies indicate that many students who receive passing grades in CS1 may struggle in CS2. This can lead to higher attrition and failure rates in CS2, and perhaps also in subsequent courses in the curriculum. Many researchers have studied factors that lead to student success and common misconceptions that may arise in introductory courses. However, relatively little attention has been focused on the transition between CS1 and CS2. In this paper, we report on a study of a variety of types of CS1 exam questions, with the goal of finding questions that can predict a student's success (or lack of success) in CS2. Results indicate that code explanation and code completion questions can be especially good predictors, along with some code tracing questions. We discuss some of the factors that may make certain questions better predictors than others, in the process confirming some observations that have been reported by other researchers. The results from this experiment seem promising, and point to several possibilities for further research.

Many approaches to active learning rely on a set of tasks that help students engage cognitively with the material. Studies have shown that this approach can significantly improve student learning. However, for best results it is not enough simply to have students solve problems: the activities must be carefully designed to produce the desired learning outcomes. In many cases, it is helpful to define a sequence of activities that lead students though a developmental progression toward a desired learning goal. This kind of approach is sometimes described in educational research as a "learning trajectory." In this workshop, we will help you get started on the path to developing your own active learning classroom activities. We'll begin by looking at examples that have been used successfully in a variety of different courses, and discussing some of the principles involved. Participants will be encouraged to bring examples of topics they have found challenging to teach. We'll work together with you to help develop possible approaches and get started on the design of active learning activities to address those topics.

This session will demonstrate best practices for integrating a variety of student engagement pedagogies into the classroom. Presenters play the role of instructors on the first day of class. Audience members play the role of students as they collaborate on a variety of sample activities. By providing models of active learning in computing contexts, we seek to motivate instructors to adopt these pedagogies in their classrooms. Attendees will be invited to join a growing community of faculty who share resources and best practices. Sufficient time will be reserved for questions and discussion.

An experiment was conducted to study the effectiveness of the cooperative learning approach to teaching CS1. The cooperative learning exercises, which used specific roles to focus students' attention on key concepts, were designed so they could be used in a variety of educational settings. Experimental results show that the benefits of cooperative learning clearly outweighed any possible losses due to reduced lecture time. These benefits were enjoyed by both male and female students, and by students from a variety of majors. Majority and minority students performed at approximately the same overall level when using the cooperative learning approach. There are indications that the educational benefits continue when students who had a cooperative learning experience in CS1 go on to CS2.

A set of cooperative learning exercises were designed for use in a Java-based CS1 course. The exercises used specific roles to focus students' attention on key concepts of the Java language, and on key mental processes of programming and problem solving. A controlled experiment was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of this approach. The results show that the cooperative learning experience had a significant positive effect on student performance, and may have been of special benefit to women and minority students.

Smallest-last vertex ordering and prlonty search are utdlzed to show for any graph G = (IT, E) that the set of all connected subgraphs maxunal with respect to their minimum degree can be determined in O(I EI + I VI) time and 21El + O(I VI) space It is further noted that the smallest-last graph coloring algonthrn can be unplemented in O(I E I + I V[) tune, and particularly effective aspects of the resulting coloring are discussed.

The results of a survey of software development practice are reported and analyzed. The problems encountered in various phases of the software life cycle are measured and correlated with characteristics of the responding installations. The use and acceptance of the term "software engineer" is investigated, and the functions and background of persons identified as software engineers are reported. The usage of a wide variety of software engineerilng tools and methods is measured; conclusions are drawn concerning the usefulness of these techniques.

The design of a two-semester course sequence in software engineering is described. These courses, offered at the undergraduate level, are centered around student projects developed in conjunction with local industry; the projects are used as a focal point to motivate and teach software engineering concepts and tools. The goal of the courses is to provide the student with an overview of the entire software development process, experience as a member of a project team, and exposure to a real-world software environment. This paper describes the course organization and topics, and techniques for project selection and monitoring. Results and experience gained to date with this approach are also discussed.

The problem of user inference in statistical databases is discussed and illustrated with several examples. It is assumed that the database allows “total,” “average,” “count,” and “percentile” queries; a query may refer to any arbitrary subset of the database. Methods for protecting the security of such a database are considered; it is shown that any scheme which gives “statistically correct” answers is vulnerable to penetration. A precise definition of compromisability (in a statistical sense) is given. A general model of user inference is proposed; two special cases of this model appear to contain all previously published strategies for compromising a statistical database. A method for protecting the security of such a statistical database against these types of user inference is presented and discussed. It is shown that the number of queries required to compromise the database can be made arbitrarily large by accepting moderate increases in the variance of responses to queries. A numerical example is presented to illustrate the application of the techniques discussed.

A set of primitive operations on tuples is derived; it is shown that these operations are necessary and sufficient for the implementation tion of any language equivalent in power to the relational algebra. The translation of queries from a variety of relational languages into these tuple operations is discussed and illustrated with several examples. A method is given for the conversion of such a translated query into a network of processes and files. An optimization algorithm which operates on this network is described and demonstrated. Using this method, many different relational languages can be implemented using the same data management software; furthermore, the underlying software can be changed without requiring any changes at the user interface. This approach should yield great benefits in reduced cost and increased flexibility of implementation.

A set of primitive operations on tuples is described; these operations are necessary and sufficient for the implementation of any language equivalent in power to the relational algebra. The translation of queries from a variety of relational languages into these tuple operations is discussed and illustrated with several examples. A method is given for the conversion of such a translated query into a network of processes and files. An optimization algorithm which operates on this network is described. Using this method, many different relational languages can be implemented using the same data management software; furthermore, the underlying software can be changed without requiring any changes at the user interface. This approach should yield great benefits in reduced cost and increased flexibility of implementation.