Software Engineering/Software Quality | Computer Programming (CS2) | Computer Literacy | General

Software Engineering / Software Quality

Software project description and rubrics...

• Project consists of 2 increments of requirements-design-implement/test-demo cycle.
  
• Students choose their own project ideas and teams. 
• Rubrics are used to grade projects and to conduct peer evaluations.
  
• Rubrics are based on Software Engineering: A Practitioner's Approach, 7th ed. by Pressman.
  
• This project has only been through one semester, so there's much room for improvement. I would suggest (1) placing less emphasis on UML and more on actually useful practices like unit testing and (2) restricting the technology domain, e.g. to Drupal or Android or whatever the kids are into these days, to facilitate discussion between student groups.
  

Other resources

• Coders At Work (this is what I should have used instead of a textbook)
  
• Slides to facilitate discussion about ethics
• Articles about UML from IBM developerWorks
• Quick tutorials on...
  
• NetBeans and JUnit
• Subversion with NetBeans
• Apache Wicket (a Java Web framework) - part 1, part 2, more tutorials
• Activity to practice writing effective JUnit tests
• Discussion questions for...
• "No Silver Bullet" by Fred Brooks
• "How Reuse Influences Productivity in Object-Oriented Systems" by Basili, Briand, and Melo
• Concurrency in Java...
  
• Animations
  
• Exercises (assumes students have read Java tutorial on concurrency)
  
• Fun links on programming languages...
  
• 10 most bizarre programming languages ever created
• Obscure programming languages
• If programming languages were cars...
• The Best Software Writing I - selected and introduced by Joel Spolsky
• Essays by Mary Poppendieck
• Writings by Peter Norving
  
• The Story of Mel, A Real Programmer
• Introduction to Abject-Oriented Programming
  

Computer Programming (CS2)

Felt boards for teaching data structures

• Problem: Students need to learn conceptually how to implement classic data structures (e.g., structure of a linked list, how to insert a node).
  
• Solution: Students work in groups to manipulate data structures on felt boards in guided exercises. This is better than PowerPoint because it provides...
  
• Active learning - Students are teaching themselves.
  
• Flexibility - Students can experiment with different solutions. 
• Reuse - The same felt board pieces easily adapt to different data structures and different teaching styles.
  
• Photos
• Sample exercise (binary search trees)
• Materials used: Felt (3 colors), foam board, duct tape (to attach felt backing to foam board), craft glue, two-sided tape, marker, fuzzy yarn, paper, milk filters (to make paper stick to felt board), masking tape (to keep felt board upright while using it)
  

Labs

• Week 1: Compiling, debugging, writing documentation, tracing recursion
• Week 2: Pointers, arrays, areas of memory, memory leaks, Valgrind
• Week 9-11: Unit-testing data structures with CxxTest (adapted from labs in Brandle et al.'s lab manual)
  
• Week 12-13: Pizza tracking system - Choosing appropriate data structures, designing a program with several classes
  

Other resources

• Rubric for programs and test cases
  
• Tutorial on C++ and Xcode
• Common C++ compiler and linker errors
• Sweet Home 3D - useful for illustrating OO principles
  
• Data structures exercises (students can work in pairs during class):
  
• Strings
• Vectors
• Lists
• Stacks and queues
• Maps and any of the above data structures
  
• List detectives - activity to understand behavioral differences between arrays, vectors, and lists
  
• Pointers
• Binky Pointer Fun - claymation video
• Lecture on the birds and the bees
  
• Recursion:
  
• Install a recursive algorithm - Star Trek Voyager clip
  
• Lectures (using poems/songs and fractals for illustration) - part 1, part 2
• Activity: recursive spread of the flu
• Assignment: Jumbletron
  
• Discussion questions for "The Joys of the Craft, The Woes of the Craft" chapters of The Mythical Man-Month by Fred Brooks
• The review song
• Polymorphism is always the wrong term
• Plain English explanations of Big O
  

Computer Literacy

Resources

• Quartz Composer - visual programming (drag, drop, & connect)
• Kineme - Quartz Composer plugins, examples, forums
  
• Scratch - programming for ages 8 and up
• Alice - programming for middle school and up
• Computer Science Unplugged - activities for K-12, adaptable to college
• MATHmaniaCS - activities for K-12, adaptable to college
• Blender - 3D modeling
• Blender3D: Noob to Pro - wikibook
• 0xED - to demonstrate storage of data in binary
  

General

Computing/math-related literary fiction

• Arcadia (and other plays) - Tom Stoppard
• The Diamond Age, or A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer - Neal Stephenson
• The Baroque Cycle - Neal Stephenson
  
• Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson

Other resources

• The Turing Test: Computer Game Show - video
• The LEGO Turing Machine - video
• Project Euler - challenging programming problems
• Problets to practice and assess knowledge of programming topics such as pointers
• Nifty assignments - presented annually at SIGSCE
  
• Research & statistics and resources for/about underrepresented groups in computing, mainly women
• An Earth-Shaking Experience: The Shocking Truth About Scientists - article by Joel Achenbach
  
• PHD Comics - the shocking truth about grad school
• The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint - essay/book by Edward Tufte
• Simulation of a screen reader - to illustrate the importance of Web accessibility
• Douglas Englebart's 1968 demo - video that demos the mouse and other technology
• World For Women In Engineering - AT&T recruiting/educational video from the 1970s
• Geek Feminism - blog
• Finding a healthy work culture
• Acquia U - on-the-job training for Drupal
• Stanford's free online CS courses