Department Video

I have been tasked with making a video that we could hand to prospective students that shows them all of the cool stuff we have going on. Last week at FIE, I kept saying, "Boy, we do it better than that!" so I'm sure we have a lot of stuff to show off. Here are the things that I've thought of to include:

• the embedded course projects


• the robotics course projects


• the ACM contest


• some classes working on labs

I would also like some clips of students saying what they think is good about our program. If you're interested in helping, please let me know.

Also, if you have other ideas for things we should showcase or how the video should look (or sound?), I'm open to suggestions. When I was in grad school studying AI, it never occurred to be that this is what I'd be doing!

Traveling, again

This week, Dr. Lee and I have been away at Frontiers in Education (FIE) in Milwaukee. I hate missing a class (though I'm sure they are working on the homework I gave them :) ) and I know that we are getting into scheduling time, so many of you are looking for me this week. From that, you can assume that I think attending this conference is very important. FIE is a conference that is solely focused on engineering education predominantly at the undergraduate level. In the sessions I have visited, I have seen innovations in how CS1 is taught, how team project courses are managed, how students are recruited, and how programs are assessed.

Much of what I have seen shows me how good our programs are. When I talk with people about what we are doing in CS1, they are impressed that our freshman can handle test-driven development. When I talk with people about our WiCS program, they are impressed with the motivation of our students and the quality of the videos and the website. As always, I'm proud of what we are doing.

In addition, I have picked up some ideas about ways to assess our project courses and new ways of looking at grading those courses. I also think that the things I saw about CS1 confirm the direction we are going.

Any way, being away gives me some time to reflect and plan, but I'm looking forward to getting back to campus. If you've been looking for me to talk about scheduling, I promise I'll be around a lot next week!

New WiCS Equipment

This summer, the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences bought a new camera and microphone for our WiCS team. As a result, the format of the podcasts has been improved and we're able to look at a whole new set of topics for the videos. Our latest one is on spell checking. Check it out at the WiCS website .

Leaving a comment or emailing the podcast to a friend requires that you create a login for the website. It's easy to do and you might win something, so don't be deterred! The WiCS team would love to hear your comments.