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COS Independent Work Seminar:
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COS IW04
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We live in interesting times, with virtual classrooms sometimes replacing physical ones. This new paradigm presents interesting new challenges but also opportunities to students and instructors. This seminar focuses on projects that try to enhance the computer science learning environment at Princeton (or perhaps anywhere else!) with an option to focus on remote, virtual, and online learning environments. People need learning environments, especially in remote learning, that enhance group dynamics, maintain motivation, include a degree of self-pacing, as well as engage with individual learning styles.
In this seminar, students will choose some computer science concept from COS 126, 217, 226 or other Princeton Computer Science courses or choose some other aspect of the learning environment that contributes to computer science pedagogy. You might pick some interesting concept that you think you can explain well to other students. Some examples might be 1) the dynamic operation of various gates and circuits in the TOY architecture or 2) understanding the mathematical notation for Finite State Machines. For their projects, students will design and build an online learning experience that is targeted at whatever concept they choose. It can include videos, graphic visualizations, quizzing mechanisms, 3D imagery, or anything else that you can think of that might help students understand a concept. The project must also include an evaluation component by which mastery of the ideas exposed to students may be assessed. A bonus would be utilizing the system to compare learning with it to other, perhaps more conventional approaches, using either qualitative or quantitative methods.
Some possible projects will be suggested early in the seminar, but students are also free to use their imagination and pick their own topic. Weekly meetings will include some initial brainstorming exercises, then we will concentrate on putting together project proposals, doing a review of relevant past work, and then finally, weekly project management presentations that will help students keep their projects on track.
Students may pair up on these projects, creating a joint idea for a learning environment, with each student concentrating on some aspect of the software with a division of labor of frontend, backend, literature review, assessment, data analysis, etc. The learning and use of open source tools, including tools such as Open EdX, Django, the D3 visualization library, and the Unity game engine etc. is encouraged in order that students may create the most effective online learning environments.
Some examples of past projects include an automated COS 226 quizzing system, visualizations of stack and heap data structures,
user interfaces to improve student progress tracking, automating lab TA assignments, a curriculum picking tool, a simplified
source code control tutorial, introducing elementary machine learning algorithms, and gamification of COS 126 assignments.
| Date | Topic |
| Sept 05 | Information meeting for all IW students Maeder Hall 12:30pm-01:30pm |
| Sept 06 | Introductions and Brainstorming |
| Sept 13 | Develop project plans and informal proposal talks |
| Sept 20 | Formal proposal talks with draft Gantt chart and weekly project plan |
| Sept 27 | Written project proposals due |
| Sept 27 | Progress report talks with Gantt chart and weekly project plan |
| Oct 04 | Progress reports (with Gantt chart), discussion and feedback |
| Oct 11 | Progress reports (with Gantt chart), discussion and feedback |
| Oct 18 | Fall Recess |
| Oct 25 | Submit Checkpoint Form |
| Oct 25 | Progress reports, discussion, and feedback |
| Nov 01 | Progress reports, discussion, and feedback |
| Nov 07 | Attend "How to Give an IW Talk," 12:30PM, Location:TBD |
| Nov 08 | Progress reports, discussion, and feedback |
| Nov 15 | Seminar will not meet as a group but will meet with TA for repository review and implementation issues |
| Nov 22 | Thanksgiving Recess |
| Nov 29 | Progress reports, discussion and feedback |
| Dec 05 | Attend "How to Write an IW Paper," 4:30PM, Location: TBD |
| Dec 06 | Practice Final Presentations |
| Dec 10 | Presentation slides and recorded-video oral presentation are due |
| Dec 13 | Reading Period - No class this week but TA and Instructor available for office hours |
| Dec 15 | (Optional) 8-page preliminary paper is due |
| Jan 11 | Written final report due |