Many computer science programs have capstone experiences or project courses that allow students to integrate knowledge from the full breadth of their major. Such capstone projects may be student-designed, instructor-designed, designed in conjunction with outside companies, or integrated with ongoing free and open source (FOSS) projects. The literature shows that the FOSS approach has attracted a great deal of interest, in particular when implemented with projects that have humanitarian goals (HFOSS). In this article, we describe five unique models from five distinct types of institutions for incorporating sustained FOSS or HFOSS (alternatively H/FOSS) project work into capstone experiences or courses. The goal is to provide instructors wishing to integrate open source experiences into their curriculum with additional perspectives and resources to help in adapting this approach to the specific needs and goals of their institution and students. All of the models presented are based on sustained engagement with H/FOSS projects that last at least one semester and often more. Each model is described in terms of its characteristics and how it fits the needs of the institution using the model. Assessment of each model is also presented. We then discuss the themes that are common across the models, such as project selection, team formation, mentoring, and student assessment. We examine the choices made by each model, as well as the challenges faced. We end with a discussion how the models have leveraged institutional initiatives and collaborations with outside organizations to address some of the challenges associated with these projects.

From 2013 to 2014, a fairly standard CS2 course was changed to a dynamic classroom using clicker questions and OpenDSA textbook (embedded animations with animated and multiple choice questions allowing instructor review of results). Through these changes, class time focused on conceptual ideas and discussion rather than the mechanics of data structures. The clicker questions were used to engage students by strategically asking questions that differentiated between correct ideas and common misconceptions. To assess these changes, surveys of central CS2013 topics were given to students in 2013 (before the changes) and in 2014 and 2015 (after the changes) where the course is offered each spring. Additionally, the drop rate and knowledge from assignments and exams were examined. The analysis showed that after the first year students showed greater learning gains and substantial decline in drop rate (57% to 27%) but found the course less valuable (class time, discussions and readings). In the second year there was a drop in learning gains, an even greater reduction in drop rate (12%) but students now found the course time more valuable than the first year. These results are attributed to regularly informing students in the third year to the reasons for the new methodologies and the fact that a greater diversity of students completed the course each year. The author hopes to engage others in a discussion of their experiences about interactive courses, and how clicker questions can be constructed to engage and educate our students.

Involving students from a wide range of backgrounds in Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) project communities gets them a hands-on, portfolio-building experience in the creation of a real-world project while simultaneously building their institution's public profile. The Teaching Open Source (http://teachingopensource.org) community is an emergent (3 year old) group working on scaffolding to bridge the cultural differences between academic and FOSS communities of practice. Join us to share questions, challenges, and triumphs of incorporating FOSS participation into existing and new curricula as well support resources for doing so. Alumni and current members of the POSSE (Professors' Open Source Summer Experience, http://communityleadershipteam.org/posse) will attend in mentorship roles. Faculty attendance at the SIGCSE 2010 BoF on Teaching Open Source (TOS) indicates that student involvement in FOSS projects is a teaching and learning approach of interest for many faculty members. The transparency of both artifacts and process make FOSS an attractive real-world experience that enhances peer learning and intrinsic motivation for a diversity of courses, from introductory, interdisciplinary, and non-major classes to software engineering core offerings and senior capstones. However, such student participation involves a significant learning curve and effort on the part of the faculty member, and support structures for faculty are still maturing. 2011-2012 marks the 3rd academic year the TOS community has explored this realm together, and the past year has seen the emergence of more best practices, support resources, and curricular material. Community members are starting to design cross-institutional research on the impact of FOSS participation on students. BoF attendees will be encouraged to ask questions, network, and take advantage of the TOS community as a support structure for their own courses and projects.

In 2005, the Beloit College Computer Science Program began a complete revision of its courses and curriculum facing usual issues: limited staff, declining enrollments, and the Computing Curricula 2001 document. We used 1/2 semester, 1/2 unit courses to address the diverse areas with limited courses allowing multiple entry points by interest and knowledge level and flexibility for non-majors; however, it did present scheduling and staffing issues. After two years of experience, we revised our ideas to recombine some 1/2 unit courses to allow larger projects, stacked courses where students at different levels took courses together, and instituted a two year capstone experience that combined material from several classes. The poster will provide details and an opportunity to exchange ideas.

This paper describes the implementation and evaluation of a program that uses active recruiting and peer-led team learning to try to increase the participation and success of women and minority students in undergraduate computer science. These strategies were applied at eight universities starting in the fall of 2004. There have been some impressive results: We succeeded in attracting under-represented students who would not otherwise have taken a CS course.Evaluation shows that participation in our program significantly improves retention rates and grades, especially for women.Students in the program, as well as the students who served as peer leaders, are uniformly enthusiastic about their experience.

In this special session, participants will learn how to use Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL) effectively in computer science courses. This technique has been successful in reducing drop rates and increasing satisfaction among students. Therefore, it holds promise as a way to boost sagging computer science enrollments in general, and to increase participation of under-represented groups in particular. The goal of the session is to give participants practical information and hands-on experience.

In this paper we report on the development of an efficient and portable implementation of Strassen's matrix multiplication algorithm for matrices of arbitrary size. Our technique for defining the criterion which stops the recursions is more detailed than those generally used, thus allowing enhanced performance for a larger set of input sizes. In addition, we deal with odd matrix dimensions using a method whose usefulness had previously been in question and had not so far been demonstrated. Our memory requirements have also been reduced, in certain cases by 40 to more than 70 percent over other similar implementations. We measure performance of our code on the IBM RS/6000, CRAY YMP C90, and CRAY T3D single processor, and offer comparisons to other codes. Finally, we demonstrate the usefulness of our implementation by using it to perform the matrix multiplications in a large application code.

Abstract Matrix multiplication is a key primitive in block matrix algorithms such as those found in LAPACK. We present results from our study of matrix multiplication algorithms on the Intel Touchstone Delta, a distributed memory message‐passing architecture with a two‐dimensional mesh topology. We analyze and compare three algorithms and obtain an implementation, BiMMeR, that uses communication primitives highly suited to the Delta and exploits the single node assembly‐coded matrix multiplication. Our algorithm is completely general, i.e. able to deal with various data layouts as well as arbitrary mesh aspect ratios and matrix dimensions, and has achieved parallel efficiency of 86 %, with overall peak performance in excess of 8 Gflops on 256 nodes for an 8800 × 8800 matrix. We describe BiMMeR's design and implementation and present performance results that demonstrate scalability and robust behavior over varying mesh topologies.