Computer Engineering Commons^™

Are We Day-Dreaming Our Way To The Future?, John O'Connor

Presentations

This paper explores the transformative impact of technology on society, drawing on Marshall McLuhan’s insights. It scrutinizes the consequences of profit-driven technological progress, particularly in VR, brain-computer interfaces, and AI hallucinations. Critiquing the dominance of industry leaders in AI safety discussions, the paper advocates a balanced, inclusive approach.

Philosophical perspectives on AI and VR prompt questions about their impact on human experience. The paper proposes an educational shift to cultivate human attributes alongside technological skills. Examining AI hallucinations and gaming glitches, it raises concerns about the potential blurring of reality and virtuality.

Connecting technological advancements with environmental challenges, the paper …

The First Annual Teaching And Research Showcase Poster Tu Dublin – The Proof Is In The Pudding – Using Perceived Stress To Measure Short-Term Impact In Initiatives To Enhance Gender Balance In Computing Education, Alina Berry, Sarah Jane Delany

Other resources

The problem of gender imbalance in computing higher education has forced academics and professionals to implement a wide range of initiatives. Many initiatives use recruitment or retention numbers as their most obvious evidence of impact. This type of evidence of impact is, however, more resource heavy to obtain, as well as often requires a longitudinal approach. There are many shorter term initiatives that use other ways to measure their success.

First, this poster presents with a review of existing evaluation measures in interventions to recruit and retain women in computing education across the board. Three main groups of evaluation come …

A Tutoring Framework To Support Computer Science Programmes In Higher Education, Emer Thornbury, Frances Sheridan, Pramod Pathak, Cristina Hava Muntean, Paul Stynes

Conference papers

Computing Support is the provision of academic supports such as individual tutoring and support classes to students studying computing at third level. Students can struggle with computing as it requires practice involving trial and error. This work proposes a research informed tutoring framework to support computer science students at third level. The tutoring framework combines three pillars; staff and training, pedagogies and activities. Support is put in place to help students develop technical and programming skills. Essential tutoring is provided for those who might otherwise drop out of college. The framework was applied to first and second-year undergraduate programmes and …

Addressing The "Leaky Pipeline": A Review And Categorisation Of Actions To Recruit And Retain Women In Computing Education, Alina Berry, Susan Mckeever, Brenda Murphy, Sarah Jane Delany

Conference papers

Gender imbalance in computing education is a well-known issue around the world. For example, in the UK and Ireland, less than 20% of the student population in computer science, ICT and related disciplines are women. Similar figures are seen in the labour force in the field across the EU. The term "leaky pipeline"; is often used to describe the lack of retention of women before they progress to senior roles. Numerous initiatives have targeted the problem of the leaky pipeline in recent decades. This paper provides a comprehensive review of initiatives related to techniques used to boost recruitment and improve …

Bespoke Mobile Application Development: Facilitating Transition Of Foundation Students To Higher Education, Nevan Bermingham, Mark Prendergast

Books/Book Chapters

Smartphone usage by students has increased rapidly over the last number of years, and it is expected that the utilisation of mobile applications in educational environments will continue to increase. This chapter focuses on a bespoke mobile application which aims to facilitate the transition of Foundation students to Higher Education in an Irish setting. Foundation students comprise of Access and International Students participating on pre-degree foundation courses. These students experience a major life change in making this transition and it is important that efforts are made to ensure a successful adjustment experience. Research suggests that mobile technologies can play a …

Measuring The Effectiveness Of Software-Based Training To Improve The Spatial Visualization Skills Of Students In Stem Disciplines In Higher Education Institutions, Peter Cole

Dissertations

This research investigates how software can be used to teach spatial skills leading to greater success in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematical (STEM) fields. Existing research indicates that spatial skills can be taught and that good spatial skills are common to people who succeed in STEM fields. In this work, a software-only testing system with a direct targeted, training intervention module was implemented to measure and teach spatial skills using mental rotations, which are believed to be one of the most significant indicators of success in STEM fields. Spatial skills were tested using a standardized and validated test that measures …

An Evaluation Of Gamification To Assess Students’ Learning On Their Understanding Of First Year Computer Science Programming Module, Daniel Gebremichael

Dissertations

This research examines the use of gamification to develop an assessment tool, to assess students’ learning of a first year computer science module. The students’ undertaking of the first semester Programming and Algorithms module in 2015 were assessed on their knowledge of the programming language Python. The incorporation of gamification when assessing students can have various potential benefits. The research aims to identify these benefits and issues. Assessments and games have almost opposite effects on opinions on people, as games are usually expected to have an entertainment value but this is not the case for assessments. The research examines if …

An Exploration Of The Effects Of Enhanced Compiler Error Messages For Computer Programming Novices, Brett A. Becker

Theses

Computer programming is an essential skill that all computing students must master and is increasingly important in many diverse disciplines. It is also difficult to learn. One of the many challenges novice programmers face from the start are notoriously cryptic compiler error messages. These report details on errors made by students and are essential as the primary source of information used to rectify those errors. However these difficult to understand messages are often a barrier to progress and a source of discouragement. A high number of student errors, and in particular a high frequency of repeated errors – when a …

Forty Years Of Movie Hacking: Considering The Potential Implications Of The Popular Media Representation Of Computer Hackers From 1968 To 2008, Damian Gordon

Articles

Increasingly movies are being produced which feature plots that incorporate elements of computer security and hacking, and cumulatively these movies are creating a public perception as to the nature of computer security. This research examines movies that feature hackers (and hacking) to identify if any common themes emerge from these movies in their representation of these issues. To achieve this, first a corpus of hacking movies is created, and then using a qualitative data analysis technique, guidelines are developed which distinguish those movies that actually have the potential to create a perception with the general public. The resultant dataset is …

Technology-Aided Participative Methods In Environmental Assessment: An International Perspective, Ainhoa Gonzalez, Alan Gilmer, Ronan Foley, John Sweeney, John Fry

Articles

Provisions for citizen involvement in the assessment of potential environmental effects of certain plans, programmes and projects are present in current legislation. An international survey revealed that public participation is common practice in European and some other countries worldwide. However, a number of issues are observed to affect public involvement in EIA/SEA processes and expert opinion differs when evaluating the effectiveness of existing participative methods. Results suggest that technology-aided methods can improve traditional participation processes. In particular, GIS has the potential to increase community knowledge and enhance involvement by communicating information more effectively. Variable accessibility to technology and data quality …

Experiences Teaching Website Engagibility To Computer Science Students., Pan Liqiang, Bryan Duggan, Ronan Fitzpatrick

Conference papers

In the second year of our degree program, DT228 students study a subject called Web Development. In this paper we describe our studio classroom based teaching approach to this subject and explain how using this approach has enabled us to expand the scope of the course to include the important concept of website engagibility. We present a summary of current theories on website engagibility and explain how we incorporated these theories into the course. We further describe an experiment which we carried out in order to encourage students to reflect on website engagibility and incorporate it into their continuous assessments.