Media Computation for CS 1 Barbara Ericson Georgia

Media Computation for CS 1 Barbara Ericson Georgia Institute of Technology Promising Practices in CS 1 Barbara Ericson

Promising Practices in CS 1 What is Media Computation? • Learning computing using media projects – Teaching iteration by looping through all the pixels of a picture, all the samples in a sound, or all the frames in a movie. – Teaching conditionals using red-eye removal, chromakey and force to extremes – Teaching strings by writing programs that create HTML pages • A set of classes that make these programs easy to write – in Python or Java Barbara Ericson

Promising Practices in CS 1 An Example Program public void force. To. Extremes() { Sound. Sample[] sample. Array = this. get. Samples(); for (Sound. Sample sample : sample. Array) { /* if the value was positive or 0 set * it to the maximum * positive value */ if (sample. get. Value() >= 0) { sample. set. Value(32767); } else { sample. set. Value(-32768) } } } Barbara Ericson

Promising Practices in CS 1 History of Media Computation • Developed by Mark Guzdial of Georgia Tech • Fall 1999 – all GT students must take CS 1! – Led to 26 -35% failure rate – Women failed at a higher rate than men • up to 40% – Over 50% failure rate for some majors • Management, History, Public Policy, Architecture Barbara Ericson

Promising Practices in CS 1 Why Media Computation? • Contextualized computing education should make computing more relevant and concrete – CS 1315: Introduction to Media Computation • Using Python with a Media context • For management, history, public policy, architecture majors – CS 1371: Computing for Engineers • Using MATLAB with an Engineering context – CS 1321: CS 1 for Computer Science Majors • Using Python with a robotics context Barbara Ericson

Results? Promising Practices in CS 1 • Media Computation (CS 1315) since Fall 2003 at GT – The failure rate has dropped significantly Major Traditional CS 1 Media Comp Architecture 46. 7% 85. 7% Biology 64. 4% 90. 4% Economics 54. 5% 92. 0% History 46. 5% 67. 6% Management 48. 5% 87. 8% Public Policy 47. 9% 85. 4% – Women do better than men • about 4% better • failure rates of 7% v 11%, 10% v 14%, 17% v 22% – Some non-majors have transferred into computer science! Barbara Ericson

Promising Practices in CS 1 How is Media Comp Used? • in CS 1 – Used for non-majors at Georgia Tech, Un. Calif at Berkeley, and others – Used for CS majors at U. Ill. Chicago, Kalamazoo College, Gainesville College, and others • in CS 2 – Used at Georgia Tech, Gainesville College, Linfield College • in High School – for pre-AP, and summer camps in Georgia, Tennesee, Bermuda, and others • Other institutions report similar results Barbara Ericson

Promising Practices in CS 1 What Works? • Open ended-creative projects – students turn in their homework and then keep working on the project to see what else they can do • Allow students to share their work – I can't be beat! • Transfer from Python to Java Soup-Audio Collage – cs 1315 to cs 1316 Barbara Ericson

Promising Practices in CS 1 Future Media Computation Work • Working on a textbook for a CS 2 course with Media Computation – http: //coweb. cc. gatech. edu/c s 1316/ • Working on a textbook merging Alice and Media Computation – http: //home. cc. gatech. edu/T ea. Party • The robotics course is adding some media computation projects – www. roboteducation. org Barbara Ericson

Promising Practices in CS 1 CS 2 Media Computation • Driving question: “How did the wildebeests stampede in The Lion King? ” • Linked lists of music • Trees of sounds and images • Simulations using stacks and queues Canon Barbara Ericson

Promising Practices in CS 1 Additional Resources • Python and Java books • Course web sites – http: //coweb. cc. gatech. edu/ cs 1315/ – http: //coweb. cc. gatech. edu/ cs 1316/ • Teachers web site http: //coweb. cc. gatech. edu/m edia. Comp-teach • Mailing List https: //mailman. cc. gatech. edu /mailman/listinfo/mediacom p-teach Barbara Ericson

Promising Practices in CS 1 Funding Sources • National Science Foundation • Georgia Tech's College of Computing • Georgia’s Department of Education • GVU Center • Al West Fund • President's Undergraduate Research Award • Toyota Foundation • Atlanta Women's Foundation Barbara Ericson