This is work-in-progress on an entry-level course on computational problem-solving and programming for engineering students. It has been run since 2006 at our institution at a scale of 800 students/term, as a hybrid in-person lab and out-of-class on-line autograded exercises using Maple TA. The course is in the process of changing languages (from Maple to Matlab), with upgraded resources: a lecture period, some manually graded assignments, projects, and automatic code testing. To date the assessment of the impact of the course has been through conventional means: assigning grades and indications as to whether student grades are consistent with those obtained in other courses taken. During the transition from Maple to Matlab more detailed and individualized performance assessment plans are being developed which are intended to enable the staff and students to better judge weaknesses in program knowledge and who would benefit from additional personal contact.

T his art icle was downloaded by: [Candy, Linda]O n: 30 June 2008A ccess Det ails: [subscript ion number 794565815]P ublisher: T aylor & F rancisInf orma Lt d Regist ered in E ngland and W ales Regist ered Number: 1072954Regist ered of fice: Mort imer House, 37-41 Mort imer S treet , London W 1T 3JH, UK

Creativity support tools is a research topic with high risk but potentially very high payoff. The goal is to develop improved software and user interfaces that empower users to be not only more productive but also more innovative. Potential users include software and other engineers, diverse scientists, product and graphic designers, architects, educators, students, and many others. Enhanced interfaces could enable more effective searching of intellectual resources, improved collaboration among teams, and more rapid discovery processes. These advanced interfaces should also provide potent support in hypothesis formation, speedier evaluation of alternatives, improved understanding through visualization, and better dissemination of results. For creative endeavors that require composition of novel artifacts (e.g., computer programs, scientific papers, engineering diagrams, symphonies, artwork), enhanced interfaces could facilitate exploration of alternatives, prevent unproductive choices, and enable easy backtracking. This U.S. National Science Foundation sponsored workshop brought together 25 research leaders and graduate students to share experiences, identify opportunities, and formulate research challenges. Two key outcomes emerged: (a) encouragement to evaluate creativity support tools through multidimensional in-depth longitudinal case studies and (b) formulation of 12 principles for design of creativity support tools.

This tutorial provides a "hands-on" (actually, "minds-on") exploration of several basic processes and phenomena of human memory, and problem solving. The emphasis is on developing both intuitive and formal knowledge which can serve as background knowledge which will be useful in interpreting design guidelines and in making educated design judgments when design guidelines fail, conflict, or are nonexistent. The demonstrations used emphasize basic general phenomena with which any theory of memory or problem solving must deal. In addition, the tutorial suggests some of the implications of these phenomena for designing interactive computing systems.

We demonstrate a software system that runs on smartphones and allows two or more geographically dispersed participants to collaborate on the solution of mathematical problems. We show how participants can create and join a collaborative session, how they can use a virtual whiteboard for the exchange of geometrical drawings and of mathematical formulas, and how they can communicate using text messages. We demonstrate the turn-management mechanism provided by our system, and we show how the system facilitates cross-referencing within the session.

This tutorial provides a hands-on (actually, minds-on) exploration of several basic processes and phenomena of human memory. The emphasis is on developing both intuitive and formal knowledge that can serve as background knowledge which will be useful in interpreting design guidelines and in making educated design judgments when design guidelines fail, conflict, or are nonexistent. The demonstrations used emphasize basic general phenomena with which any theory of memory must deal. In addition, the tutorial suggests some of the implications of these phenomena for designing interactive computing systems.

Properly educating computer scientists involves teaching effective means to properly engineer a system. An important part of such engineering work is ensuring that the computing system is both useful and usable. While many systems out there today are difficult to use, performing usability engineering on a system during its development has been shown to be an effective way to make a system more usable. The problem is fitting practical experience into the curriculum. This paper discusses a case example of how a team of undergraduate students learned to take a software system during its developing stages and perform effective usability engineering following the "thinking out loud" methodology.

Article Free Access Share on Individual and/versus social creativity (panel session) Authors: Ernest Edmonds LUTCHI Research Centre, Loughborough University, Leicestershire, LE11 3TU, UK LUTCHI Research Centre, Loughborough University, Leicestershire, LE11 3TU, UKView Profile , Linda Candy Loughborough University, UK Loughborough University, UKView Profile , Geoff Cox University of Plymouth, UK University of Plymouth, UKView Profile , Jacob Eisenstein Stanford University Stanford UniversityView Profile , Gerhard Fischer University of Colorado University of ColoradoView Profile , Bob Hughes Bristol, UK Bristol, UKView Profile , Tom Hewett Drexel University Drexel UniversityView Profile Authors Info & Claims C&C '99: Proceedings of the 3rd conference on Creativity & cognitionOctober 1999Pages 36–39https://doi.org/10.1145/317561.317570Published:01 October 1999Publication History 8citation646DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations8Total Downloads646Last 12 Months24Last 6 weeks3 Get Citation AlertsNew Citation Alert added!This alert has been successfully added and will be sent to:You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.To manage your alert preferences, click on the button below.Manage my AlertsNew Citation Alert!Please log in to your account Save to BinderSave to BinderCreate a New BinderNameCancelCreateExport CitationPublisher SiteeReaderPDF

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This paper reports on the use of TechTalk, a web based chat environment designed for scientific and mathematical collaboration, in mathematics instruction. Techtalk provides internet access to shared Maple and MATLAB sessions and the ability to conduct a multiway conversation. Using this feature an instructor is able to answer questions on Maple/MATLAB outside of the classroom and outside of conventional, face-to-face office hours.

Thomas T. Hewett; Importance of failure analysis for human-computer interface design, Interacting with Computers, Volume 3, Issue 1, 1 April 1991, Pages 3–

Marilyn Mantei, Thomas Hewett, Ken Eason, Jenny Preece; Report on the INTERACT '90 Workshop on Education in HCI: transcending disciplinary and national bou

Abstract This is the first of two articles that report on the development, testing, and evaluation of the Individualized Instruction for Data Access System (IIDA). IIDA is an ex. ample of a class of computer systems which serve as intermediaries, enabling their users to perform a complex task on another computer, and which are coming to be known as expert systems. The system was designed to encourage end users of information retrieval systems to perform their own searches by (1) instructing them in how to search, using computer‐assisted instruction, and (2) assisting with the performance of the search by providing diagnostic analyses of the users' performance as well as answering their questions about how to use system commands. The system's design is described, as well as the various tests of its performance and the evaluation of test results. The conclusion is drawn that end users can become successful searchers through such an assistant, for the kinds of searches tested.

Abstract This is the second of two articles describing the development, testing, and evaluation of the Individualized Instruction for Data Access System (IIDA). The system was tested in an industrial setting and it was demonstrated that (1) end users of scientific and technical literature could learn to do their own bibliographic searches through computer‐assisted instruction as well as they learned through a comparable period of conventional instruction, and (2) end users were as satisfied with the results of their own searchings as with the result of searches performed for them, for the types of searches tested.