Science and Mathematics Education Commons^™

Planning And Implementing A Successful Nsa-Nsf Gencyber Summer Cyber Academy, Bryson R. Payne, Tamirat Abegaz, Keith Antonia

Journal of Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

The GenCyber program is jointly sponsored by the National Security Agency (NSA) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) to help faculty and cybersecurity experts provide summer cybersecurity camp experiences for K-12 students and teachers. The main objective of the program is to attract, educate, and motivate a new generation of young men and women to help address the nationwide shortage of trained cybersecurity professionals. The curriculum is flexible and centers on ten cybersecurity first principles. Currently, GenCyber provides cyber camp options for three types of audiences: students, teachers, and a combination of both teachers and students. In 2016, over 120 …

Gender Bias In It Hiring Practices: An Ethical Analysis, Harmony L. Alford

Student Scholarship – Computer Science

With the current movement to increase the number of women in STEM-related careers, modified IT hiring practices may be considered debatably unethical. Studies cited in this work have asserted that female representation in STEM fields is integral not only to encouraging continued progression toward gender equality in the workplace but also to creating more inclusive products. In turn, some argue that when faced with reasonably comparable female and male candidates, a hiring manager should select the female candidate in order to increase the female representation in the company and provide a female perspective. However, it is simultaneously debatably unethical and …

College Of Engineering Senior Design Competition Fall 2016, University Of Nevada, Las Vegas

Fred and Harriet Cox Senior Design Competition Projects

Part of every UNLV engineering student’s academic experience, the senior design project stimulates engineering innovation and entrepreneurship. Each student in their senior year chooses, plans, designs, and prototypes a product in this required element of the curriculum. A capstone to the student’s educational career, the senior design project encourages the student to use everything learned in the engineering program to create a practical, real world solution to an engineering challenge. The senior design competition helps focus the senior students in increasing the quality and potential for commercial application for their design projects. Judges from local industry evaluate the projects on …

Students' Explanations In Complex Learning Of Disciplinary Programming, Camilo Vieira

Open Access Dissertations

Computational Science and Engineering (CSE) has been denominated as the third pillar of science and as a set of important skills to solve the problems of a global society. Along with the theoretical and the experimental approaches, computation offers a third alternative to solve complex problems that require processing large amounts of data, or representing complex phenomena that are not easy to experiment with. Despite the relevance of CSE, current professionals and scientists are not well prepared to take advantage of this set of tools and methods. Computation is usually taught in an isolated way from engineering disciplines, and therefore, …

Acer Research Conference Proceedings (2016), Australian Council For Educational Research (Acer)

2009 - 2019 ACER Research Conferences

The focus of ACER’s Research Conference 2016 will be on what we are learning from research about ways of improving levels of STEM learning. Australia faces significant challenges in promoting improved science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) learning in our schools. Research Conference 2016 will showcase research into what it will take to address these challenges, which include: the decline in Australian students’ mathematical and scientific ‘literacy’; the decline in STEM study in senior school; a shortage of highly qualified STEM subject teachers, and curriculum challenges. You will hear from researchers who work with teachers to engage students in studying …

Creating Art Patterns With Math And Code, Boyan Kostadinov

Publications and Research

The goal of this talk is to showcase some visualization projects that we developed for a 3-day Code in R summer program, designed to inspire the creative side of our STEM students by engaging them with computational projects that we developed with the purpose of mixing calculus level math and code to create complex geometric patterns. One of the goals of this program was to attract more minority and female students into applied math and computer science majors.

The projects are designed to be implemented using the high-level, open-source and free computational environment R, a popular software in industry for …

Definition Of A Method For The Formulation Of Problems To Be Solved With High Performance Computing, Ramya Peruri

Master of Science in Computer Science Theses

Computational power made available by current technology has been continuously increasing, however today’s problems are larger and more complex and demand even more computational power. Interest in computational problems has also been increasing and is an important research area in computer science. These complex problems are solved with computational models that use an underlying mathematical model and are solved using computer resources, simulation, and are run with High Performance Computing. For such computations, parallel computing has been employed to achieve high performance. This thesis identifies families of problems that can best be solved using modelling and implementation techniques of parallel …

Does A Taste Of Computing Increase Computer Science Enrollment?, Steven Mcgee, Randi Mcgee-Tekula, Jennifer Duck, Taylor White, Ronald I. Greenberg, Lucia Dettori, Dale F. Reed, Brenda Wilkerson, Don Yanek, Andrew Rasmussen, Gail Chapman

Computer Science: Faculty Publications and Other Works

This study investigated the impact of the Exploring Computer Science (ECS) program on the likelihood that students of all races and gender would pursue further computer science coursework in high school. ECS is designed to foster deep engagement through equitable inquiry around computer science concepts. If the course provides a meaningful and relevant experience, it will increase students' expectancies of success as well as increase their perceived value for the field of computer science. Using survey research, we sought to measure whether the relevance of students' course experiences influenced their expectancies and value and whether those attitudes predicted whether students …

Pythagorean Combinations For Lego Robot Building., Ronald I. Greenberg

Computer Science: Faculty Publications and Other Works

This paper provides tips for LEGO robot construction involving bracing or gear meshing along a diagonal using standard Botball kits.

Guest Editors' Introduction: Best Of Respect, Part 2, Tiffany Barnes, Jamie Payton, George K. Thiruvathukal, Jeff Forbes, Kristy Elizabeth Boyer

Computer Science: Faculty Publications and Other Works

The guest editors introduce best papers on broadening participation in computing from the RESPECT'15 conference. The five articles presented here are part two of a two-part series representing research on broadening participation in computing. These articles study participation in intersectional ways, through the perceptions and experiences of African-American middle school girls, the sense of belonging in computing for LGBTQ students, the impact of a STEM scholarship and community development program for low-income and first-generation college students, a leadership development program, and how African-American women individually take leadership to enable their success in computing.

College Of Engineering Senior Design Competition Spring 2016, University Of Nevada, Las Vegas

Fred and Harriet Cox Senior Design Competition Projects

Part of every UNLV engineering student’s academic experience, the senior design project stimulates engineering innovation and entrepreneurship. Each student in their senior year chooses, plans, designs, and prototypes a product in this required element of the curriculum. A capstone to the student’s educational career, the senior design project encourages the student to use everything learned in the engineering program to create a practical, real world solution to an engineering challenge. The senior design competition helps focus the senior students in increasing the quality and potential for commercial application for their design projects. Judges from local industry evaluate the projects on …

Teaching Numerical Methods In The Context Of Galaxy Mergers, Maria Kourjanskaia

Physics

Methods of teaching numerical methods to solve ordinary differential equations in the context of galaxy mergers were explored. The research published in a paper by Toomre and Toomre in 1972 describing the formation of galactic tails and bridges from close tidal interactions was adapted into a project targeting undergraduate physics students. Typically undergraduate physics students only take one Computational Physics class in which various techniques and algorithms are taught. Although it is important to study computational physics techniques, it is just as important to apply this knowledge to a problem that is representative of what computational physics researchers are investigating …

Guest Editors' Introduction: Research On Equity And Sustained Participation In Engineering, Computing, And Technology, Tiffany Barnes, Jamie Payton, George K. Thiruvathukal, Kristy Elizabeth Boyer, Jeff Forbes

Computer Science: Faculty Publications and Other Works

The guest editors introduce best papers on broadening participation in computing from the RESPECT'15 conference. The five articles presented here are part one of a two-part series representing research on broadening participation in computing at all levels of education: from K-12 schools through graduate school, with a focus on diversity with regard to gender, race, and ethnicity.

The Need For Research In Broadening Participation, Tiffany Barnes, George K. Thiruvathukal

Computer Science: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Underrepresentation in computing is a global problem, marked by a disturbing lack of access to computing resources and education among people underrepresented by race, ethnicity, gender, income, disability, and sexual-orientation status. It is urgent that we address this divide between those with and without the knowledge to create computational artifacts or even basic functional literacy. Important alliances for broadening participation (BP) are catalyzing efforts to engage more people in computing, but they are not enough. We need solid research as well.

The Impact Of The Exploring Computer Science Instructional Model In Chicago Public Schools, Lucia Dettori, Ronald I. Greenberg, Steven Mcgee, Dale Reed

Computer Science: Faculty Publications and Other Works

As part of the Taste of Computing project, the Exploring Computer Science (ECS) instructional model has been expanded to many high schools in the Chicago Public Schools system. We report on initial outcomes showing that students value the ECS course experience, resulting in increased awareness of and interest in the field of computer science. We compare these results by race and gender. The data provide a good basis for exploring the impact of meaningful computer science instruction on students from groups underrepresented in computing; of several hundred students surveyed, nearly half were female, and over half were Hispanic or African-American.

Export To Arduino: A Tool To Teach Processor Design On Real Hardware, Michael Black

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Many computer organization courses teach digital design and processor architecture without a hardware lab or physical equipment. This paper introduces a module to allow students to export digital designs as C programs that run on an inexpensive Arduino Uno, thereby allowing students to test and observe their designs in actual hardware with minimal setup time and equipment. The module runs within Emumaker86, an open-source digital design tool previously developed by the author for teaching microprocessor architecture, and can handle designs ranging from simple combinational circuits to a complete processor. Students were given this module in an undergraduate "Systems Computing" course, …

A Usability And Learnability Case Study Of Glass Flight Deck Interfaces And Pilot Interactions Through Scenario-Based Training, Thomas James De Cino

CCE Theses and Dissertations

In the aviation industry, digitally produced and presented flight, navigation, and aircraft information is commonly referred to as glass flight decks. Glass flight decks are driven by computer-based subsystems and have long been a part of military and commercial aviation sectors. Over the past 15 years, the General Aviation (GA) sector of the aviation industry has become a recent beneficiary of the rapid advancement of computer-based glass flight deck (GFD) systems.

While providing the GA pilot considerable enhancements in the quality of information about the status and operations of the aircraft, training pilots on the use of glass flight decks …

Computing Language And Thinking: Analysis, Design, And Assessment Of Introductory Computer Science Workshops In The Liberal Arts Experience, Kathleen Teresa Burke

Senior Projects Spring 2016

This project seeks to assess and improve upon a new required introductory computer science workshop for first year students at Bard College. It addresses the design and implementation of the course itself, along with the improvements needed in order to continue the program. Many students are not offered computer science courses prior to college; this program has been designed to remedy that by requiring all students to learn key concepts in computer science as a part of their orientation. The program consists of a 90 minute lesson taught by professors with expertise in fields outside of computer science, in addition …