Pito Salas

This "Innovative Practice" full paper discusses Reusable Learning Objects (RLOs) and to what extent they have lived up to the promise, particularly of reusability. Reusable Learning Objects have actually been discussed in the literature for the last 20 years and yet true large scale sharing of learning and teaching materials remains relatively rare and challenging. This paper argues that part of the reason is that the granularity of the learning objects that are in use today is not conducive to true reuse. Certainly whole PowerPoint slide decks and word documents are kept in individuals' folders; perhaps bits are cut and pasted and emailed around; but providence, permissions, tracking and tracing are ad-hoc and styling, formatting, templates, slide layouts need to be tended to repeatedly. It is not an ideal situation. As a result, educators, teachers, course designers, are constantly reinventing the wheel, or searching for where that one excellent assignment, explanation, definition was last seen so it can be copied forward.This paper argues that to achieve effective reuse of Learning Objects, the following are required: smaller, more granular ("micro") learning objects; means to combine them into larger presentation products; and modern revision and version control. The paper proposes applying approaches originating in the software engineering community, such as agile methodology, version control and management, markup languages, and agile publishing, which together form the "Agile Approach" of the title of the paper. With that foundation laid, the paper examines "CourseGen", an open source software platform designed for creating, sharing, reusing and publishing reusable course content. CourseGen uses a modified markdown format augmented by CourseGen specific directives, such as link to and include topic. The CourseGen compiler converts a collection of CourseGen files into the final format such as a web site or a PowerPoint. CourseGen was designed, used and refined over the last three years in several Computer Science Courses at Brandeis University.

This paper explores a novel structure for a course, which we call "Multi-Semester, Multi-Cohort". The course structure is framed around a long-term vision across multiple semesters, with different groups of students each semester. We know that the vision is ambitious and that it will take more than one semester to achieve. As a result, the students working on the project will be different every semester. While this model can be used in a variety of applied disciplines, the course in this instance is in Robotics. This model has some very interesting benefits but raises unique challenges. In this paper we will explain our motivation for using this structure, details of the curriculum and pedagogical approach to it, including admission criteria, course schedule, scaffolding, assessment and report on our experiences, including what went well and what we need to improve.

Conference Title: 2018 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE) Conference Start Date: 2018, Oct. 3 Conference End Date: 2018, Oct. 6 Conference Location: San Jose, CA, USA In our quest to create conditions for greater and more powerful learning for our students, we have experimented with giving students a chance to resubmit programming assignments. The resubmission option would come after they receive a grade and feedback on their original submission. This paper describes a quantitative study of an introductory Java programming course at Brandeis University where we offered the resubmission option. We show a particular approach to collecting and analyzing the data and reach preliminary conclusions about the impact of resubmissions on learning outcomes.

Conference Title: 2017 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE) Conference Start Date: 2017, Oct. 18 Conference End Date: 2017, Oct. 21 Conference Location: Indianapolis, IN, USA Many Computer Science departments are offering courses in Entrepreneurship. Views vary widely on the purpose, appropriateness and value of this as a topic area for students majoring in Computer Science — hence the title of this paper. We begin by exploring the meaning of the term, and review representative examples of Entrepreneurship programs in different Computer Science departments, looking at their stated goals and outcomes. We then describe our own experience designing and teaching a new, two-part, yearlong course on “Software Entrepreneurshi” at Brandeis University, we extensively explore important lessons learned from this experience. Our program includes two interlocking courses, one focused on the “discovery stage” and one focused on the “delivery stage”. We briefly describe the structure, learning objectives and overall flow of the courses. We then examine, in turn, a series of common challenges and our solutions and innovations in each: a) forming well-functioning student teams; b) choosing the appropriate size of teams; c) catalyzing innovation in the student teams; d) encouraging positive team dynamics and dealing with crises; e) defining the final deliverable; and f) deploying outside experts and g) assessments at the end of the course. To get a handle on the effectiveness of our approach we present a selection of student written reflections on their experience, how they felt it impacted them, and to what extent they see entrepreneurship in their own future. We conclude by identifying two broad areas for future work and study.