Computer Science | Grinnell College

TUESDAY, September 20, 2016
4:15 p.m. in Science 3821
Refreshments at 4:00 p.m. in the Computer Science Commons (Science 3817)

Sara Marku '18, Ruth Wu '17, and Professor Henry Walker will present "Student-faculty Collaboration in Developing and Testing Infrastructure for a C-based Course using Robots."

The MyroC project provides extensive support (software infrastructure, readings, examples, labs, additional course materials) for a C-based introductory course that emphasizes imperative problem solving and data structures. Past papers have highlighted the collaborative nature of both project development and the course itself, and the model of student-faculty collaboration in course development. MyroC.3.1 expands capabilities for blocking and non-blocking functions, taking and displaying camera images, and porting of the infrastructure to both Linux and Mac OS X. This new release illustrates substantial advantages for student-faculty development and testing, with benefits to the project itself, students in the target introductory course, and students in the development team.

On Thursday, February 7, Martin Estrada 2014 and June Yolcuepa 2015 will discuss their summer 2012 research work and give their views of the future of our introductory course, CSC 151.

Refreshments will be served at 4:15 p.m. in the Computer Science Commons (Noyce 3817). The talk will follow at 4:30 p.m. in Noyce 3821. Everyone is welcome to attend!

On Thursday, September 27, Professor Sam Rebelsky will discuss the emphasis on the algorithmic construction and transformation of graphic images in our CSC 151 course:

We have transformed the introductory course in computer science to emphasize the construction and manipulation of images. Students work with a drawing application, creating images by hand and with “scripts.”

The capstone project for the course is A Procedure is Worth 1000 Pictures, in which students write a program that, given a width and height, can generate one thousand different but related images that meet particular guidelines. The project must meet both studio and computer science design criteria. We do studio critiques of both the aesthetic and computational aspects of the projects.

We are exploring ways to have students in this course collaborate with students in the introductory studio art course. One approach builds on a Modular Print project in the studio art course in which students build a square block that they then print in multiple rotations to achieve a more complex image. For the bridge activity, we expect that studio students can propose basic arrangements of the blocks, and CS students can build a program that helps the art students explore the design spaces those arrangements suggest.

Refreshments will be served at 4:15 p.m. in the Computer Science Commons (Noyce 3817). The talk, Algorithmic arts: bridging computer science and studio art, will follow at 4:30 p.m. in Noyce 3821. Everyone is welcome to attend!

On Monday, February 27, at 7:00 pm, April O'Neill, Erik Opavsky, Dilan Ustek, and Henry Walker (representing himself and David Cowden) will discuss their work from summer and fall 2012 in developing the robot-based structure and materials to support CSC 161.

Using robots in introductory computer science classes has recently become a popular method of increasing student interest in computer science. With faculty member, Henry M. Walker, we developed a new curriculum for CSC 161, Imperative Problem Solving and Data Structures, based upon Scribbler 2 robots with standard C.

We look forward to your feedback on our presentation because this will be presented at SIGCSE 2012 on Thursday!

The talk will take place in Science 3821 with cookies provided. Everyone is welcome to attend!