CISE openEdX Installation

Menghan Wang, PhD student of the Geoplexity group set up the CISE openEdX installation (revamping security), intended for use of CISE instructors to host creative commons material collected, remixed or prepared for their courses. She also prepared a sample course as well as an instructional course (beyond standard EdX instructional courses) for setting up an online course course.

NSF-CCLI GRANT

Incorporating theory and research into undergraduate CS curriculum by means of industrial case studies

Funded Undergraduate Research Projects

  • with A. Arbree and B. Moro (NSF-REU), ``FRONTIER constraint system for capturing design intent''

  • with Dave Hammer (NSF-REU), ``Selfish Suppliers in Noncooperative network environments''

  • with Steve Hicks(USP mentee) and Matt Belcher(USP mentee ) ``Equiseparations''

  • with Luke Hannah (NSF REU ): ``Purely combinatorial switching lemmas''

  • with Dawn Hines ( NSF/CRA Mentor project ): ``Algebraic aspects of distance constraint problems''

  • with Karen Mcevoy (NSF REU ): ``A graphics tool for visualizing algebraic and geometric manipulation of bi-variate polynomials''

  • with Lynn Robitaille (NSF/CRA Mentor project ): ``Lengths of curves, relation to fractal dimension, and subdivision methods for generation'' Preprint

    Geometry-based CS education

    The Sitharam group's current NSF grant from the Division of Mathematical Sciences contains a ''Research Experiences for Teachers (RET)'' supplement. Having been exposed to the group's research, local K-12 teacher Eric Lenasbunt (MisterE the "mystery") has found robust and inexpensive ways to get higher elementary and middle grade students to make and appreciate the unusual and counterintuitive 3D linkages such as nucleation-free linkages with implied non-edges described above. Additionally, having observed its enthusiastic reception at a weekly Math-CS circle that the Sitharam group has run in a local school for the past 6 years, MisterE is now an enthusiastic proponent for teaching children to write geometry programs and geometry-based game-like apps in the Scratch programming language. This success has led to a larger RET grant proposal that would involve 13 local K-12 teachers.
    The above ideas have additionally resulted in a collaboration between the Sitharam group and two faculty members in the College of Education at UF, Albert Ritzhaupt and Pasha Antonenko, to propose to NSF a Massively Open Online Course for educating in-service K-12 teachers in Computer Science so that they can meet the CSTA standards for teaching high school Advanced Placement CS classes. A slight modification of the same idea shows promise for one or two GenEd level UF courses, both for attracting UF undergrads into CS to meet the demand for CS graduates and for ensuring that potentially all UF grads acquire the 21st century's essential skill (coding).

    Related Publications

    Geometric Network Science (research overview for public) For 2013 CISE dept. newsletter, May 2014

    UFonline proposal for the CISE department

    MOOC lexicon and Unbundling Education NEA workshop talk, 2013

    Asians and Asian Immigrants in STEM education and workforce , Humanizing UF conversation series, 2013

    CSTEM pipeline and Online Education, UF Industrial Advisory Board talk, 2013

    Flipping the Classroom for Theory of Computation Report of COT6315 Theory of Computing offering in Fall 2012

    J. Krone, D. Juedes, and M. Sitharam "Theory Meets Practice: Enriching the CS Curriculum through Industrial Case Studies, " Conference on Software Engineering Education and Training (CSEET '02)