Reviewerly/exHarmony huggingface dataset:
Development Of An Ad Hoc Curriculum Advising Tool To Improve Student Progress Using Cpm And Pert Analysis

The paper demonstrates the application of two project management tools designed to help the students complete their curriculum sooner.The first tool provides a visualization map of course sequences, customized for each student, making advising adjustments that will optimize the time to obtain the degree under a constrained set of resources.The second tool collects information from multiple students through several semesters and can be used to identify bottlenecks in the curriculum using probability distributions for the time to finish the program.Students that attend commuter campuses many times suffer delays in the completion of their courses due to an inadequate selection of classes each semester.In addition those students can't take the ideal workload because of other external factors.Therefore the use of their time and resources has to be optimized to decrease the time needed to obtain their degree.The advising process could be enhanced by modeling academic programs as complex projects that require constant management to be completed on time.The methodology is inspired by the use of project management (PM) tools from operations research.A complex project requires two phases, planning and execution.The planning phase establishes a series of major tasks and continues breaking them into smaller parts.The next step identifies dependencies among the tasks creating the critical path where the two major constraints are time and resources required.The Critical Path Method (CPM) is used to identify the vital chain of events to finish a project.The Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) were developed to expand CPM capabilities.The innovation included a probabilistic model using best, worst, and expected times to complete each task.Therefore, PERT produces an estimated completion time of the project, within a probability distribution.The execution phase of project management monitors the progress of each task and the use of resources.The art of project management consists of the reassignment of resources when the events deviate from the original plan.Historical data collected in this process is used in future cycles to generate better plans.The critical path and time required to finish the program curriculum can be estimated using the CPM and PERT methods.Students will be advised better to allocate limited resources and finish the program in the shortest time possible.The application of operations research techniques to student achievement records will provide information that becomes a series of longitudinal descriptors that permit the evaluation of the program curriculum and help its improvement.
Impact Of The Digital Divide On Low Income And Minority Students

Computer applications in processing information have established computing as a necessary tool for industry as well as the home.In recent times, information has become a commodity that all people require in their professional lives, for entertainment as well as personal use.More and more educational institutions and libraries are employing computers to facilitate their activities in educational scholarship.Factors such as these establish the functionality of the computer as an essential requirement in the lives of all people who need to use information. The context of digital divide focuses on the separation between those who have easy access to computer facilities and those who do not. It is established by the NationalTelecommunications and Information Administration that minorities, low-income persons, the less educated and children of single-parent household are some of those who are most affected by the lack of access to information resources particularly when they reside in rural areas or central cities.It can be argued that these are some of the very parties who need such facilities for personal development.The digital divide is thus a gulf that must be bridged if there is to be some form of equity in the aspirations of all people in the society.With many academic institutions now requiring that their students each own a computer as a basic tool for use during their college education, this paper will attempt to examine the impact of such requirements on minority students, students from low-income families, and those who are attempting to work and pay their own way through college. I.
Computer Security Summer Camp For High School Students

Iowa State University's Information Assurance Center and the Iowa Chapter of InfraGard are collaborating to give juniors and seniors in High School an opportunity to visit ISU for a three day summer camp to gain knowledge in computer security.The camp has been offered twice and is conducted by Iowa State University professors in the security field, community experts, and graduate students that are in the security program at ISU.The camp provides an overview of computer security, educates students on computer networking security concepts, uses of different types of cryptography, and general understanding of how information warfare is conducted.This is a "hands on" lab-oriented camp that provides students an opportunity to work with state of the art equipment and to learn from industrial and academic leaders.Students will work with current technology like firewalls, Virtual Private Networks, and intrusion detection systems.Students setup security systems, analyze attacks, and see equipment in use.The last day of camp the students defend their networks against a red team "hackers" consisting of security professionals.One afternoon the students travel to Des Moines to tour different companies that are related to computer security.We expect students to gain interest in the area, broaden their knowledge on computer security, have fun, and meet faculty and experts that are able to answer questions about their occupations, and give them insight as to what the future could hold for them in computer security field.The camp will also perk their interest in coming to ISU or other universities after high school.This paper will outline the camp objectives, the planning process, and the recruitment process.The importance of a partnership between academia, government, and the private sector will be discussed.The changes from the first year to the second year based on feedback will also be presented in addition to plans for the third year.
Using Social Networking Web Sites To Increase Success Of Underrepresented Minorities In Science And Engineering Programs

Social networking websites provide an environment for underrepresented populations to discuss participation in science and engineering (S&E) education.These demographics are often hesitant to pursue advanced degrees due to limited awareness of the graduate process and a lack of mentors, among other factors.In this work, Facebook (www.facebook.com),the second largest social network on the web, is used as a platform for increased support and guidance in minority participation programs.The National Science Foundation (NSF) Bridge to the Doctorate Fellowship (BTD) within the Philadelphia region is used as a test case.This social network provides a non-threatening, peer-developed setting where students can openly discuss topics ranging from everyday issues such as study techniques and skills to topics that often have a limited voice, including cultural differences and their impact on graduate life.Through open format discussion boards, academic advice on fellowship opportunities, publishing papers, networking and stress-relief activities is easily exchanged.With the increased popularity of social networking websites the information presented can serve the retention and awareness efforts of the BTD program and address the uneven participation of underrepresented groups in S&E fields in general.
Maximising The Impact Of Creative And Innovative Activities Within The Constraints Of Defined Education Structures

In recent years Ireland has committed to significant educational reform in technological education.With the successful implementation of two new subjects at Senior Cycle (pre third level) that are predicated on creativity and innovation, design is now an essential facet of the second level curriculum.This new focus encourages students to become enterprising, creative and empowered during their learning experience.This paper centres on defining an innovative pedagogical framework to facilitate the fluidity, dynamics and personalisation of educational interventions within an initial technology teacher education programme.Focusing on the teacher as the primary agents for change, this study explores the effect of forming the norms and practices of pre-service teachers in effectively achieving the desired outcomes of the new curriculum at second level.
Procedural Level Generation for Augmented Reality Games

Mixed reality games are those in which virtual graphical assets are overlaid on the physical world. We explore the use of procedural content generation to enhance the gameplay experience in a prototype mixed reality game. Procedural content generation is used to design levels that make use of the affordances in the player’s physical environment. Levels are tailored to gameplay difficulty and to affect how the player moves their physical body in the real world.
Analyzing Stealth Games with Distractions

The ability to distract opponents is a key mechanic in many stealth games. Existing search-based approaches to stealth analysis, however, focus entirely on solving the non-detection problem, for which they rely on static, ahead-of-time models of guard movements that do not depend on player interaction. In this work we extend and optimize an approach based on heuristic search of stealth games to model variation in guard paths as dynamically triggered by player actions. Our design is expressive, accommodating different distraction designs, including remote activation and time delays. Using a Unity3D implementation, we show our enhanced search can solve distraction puzzles found in real games, as well as more complex, multiple-distraction level designs. Our work shows how heuristic search can be applied to dynamically determined contexts, and significantly extends the ability to model and solve stealth games.
Encouraging Use Of Entrepreneurship Information Resources: Faculty/Library Collaboration

She has worked with business professionals, engineering & management students for 8+ years educating users and performing research on various industries
A Generic Approach for Player Modeling Using Event-Trait Mapping and Feature Weighting

There are a wide variety of studies on player modeling. However, most of these studies target a specific game or genre. In some of these works, the number of in-game actions is used as a feature for modeling a player. However, using this feature leads to a complex model, and the model may miss some high-level relations among actions. In this paper, we propose a generic player modeling method that uses action-trait mapping relations which reveal correlations among actions. Mapping from the action-space to a much smaller trait-space improves interpretability of models. Additionally, to use the differences of impact of actions on player models, we apply feature weighting which uses the inverse of action frequencies. Players are clustered by Expectation Maximization. We demonstrate our method on a casual mobile game, Dusk Racer. We evaluate the feature weighting method using cluster validation with internal criteria. We conclude that using traits and feature weighting improves clustering quality and usability of the player model.
Computing Curricula: The History And Current Status Of 4 Year Computing Programs

The invention and creation of the digital computer in the mid-20th century gave rise to a host of new industries and dramatic changes in some of the programs offered at 4-year academic institutions.The first of these was the discipline of computer science, followed by the disciplines of information systems, computer-based library science, computer engineering, software engineering, and information technology.Additionally, there are newly-emerging programs in disciplines that are heavily computer-dependent, such as animation, industrial design, bioinformatics, and others.The purpose of this paper is to present the history and current status of the five core computing academic disciplines as described in the Computing Curriculum document: computer science, information systems, computer engineering, software engineering, and information technology.The information summarized includes the number of programs in existence, the development of a standardized curriculum for each, and the development and implementation of accreditation standards for each.
On Variable Dependencies and Compressed Pattern Databases

Pattern databases are among the strongest known heuristics for many classical search benchmarks such as sliding-tile puzzles, the 4-peg Towers of Hanoi puzzles, Rubik's Cube, and TopSpin. Min-compression is a generally applicable technique for augmenting pattern database heuristics that has led to marked experimental improvements in some settings, while being ineffective in others. We provide a theoretical explanation for these experimental phenomena by studying the interaction between the ranking function used to order abstract states in a pattern database, the compression scheme used to abstract states, and the dependencies between state variables in the problem representation.
Project-based Learning for a Class on Manufacturer-Distributor Relationships

Abstract PROJECT BASED LEARNING FOR A CLASS ON MANUFACTURER- DISTRIBUTOR RELTATIONSHIPSIn today’s age where students have grown up in the internet age, “relationships” and “beingconnected” have taken different meanings from the past. In businesses, especially in B2Bscenarios, strategic relationships are very significant. So, teaching students the value of strategicrelationships and how to go about developing them became challenging. For the past few years,the students who go through the class on strategic relationships are provided a project basedlearning experience. Perrenet et al. (2000) indicate that project-based learning is better thanproblems-based learning as it not only helps with knowledge acquisition but also with time andresource management. As a part of this project in the class, students get to see and assess theeffects of such relationships with a real industrial distributor. The students work on a semesterlong project with an industrial distributor on different topics. They are provided with enoughresources in term of research material, faculty time and time with industry. This course is a required class for the Industrial Distribution curriculum of theEngineering Technology and Industrial Distribution (ETID) department. The course isspecifically targeted towards ETID juniors with Industrial Distribution majors. This article talksabout how the project is aligned with the learning objectives and the topics covered in the class.Measures taken to assess learning while actively working on the project are also discussed.Extensive industry projects done with students have their set of challenges and those arediscussed as well. Nepal and Lawrence (2011) have shown how project-based learning has beeneffective in an online graduate course. Benefits to the students as they go through this course andhow this type of learning helps the students better equipped to enter into the industry will also bediscussed. Students who have taken the course and worked on the project are able to gain a betterunderstanding of how relationships are developed. They also get to understand that one cannotwin all the time if they intend on having a successful long-term strategic relationship.References:Perrenet, J.C., Bouhuijs, P.A.J. and Smits, J.G.M.M., 2000. The Suitability of Problem-Based Learning forEngineering Education: Theory and Practice, Teaching Higher Education, 5 (3), 345-358.Nepal, B.P. and Lawrence, F.B., 2011. Project-based residency course for online graduate program, Proceedings ofthe ASEE National Conference. Vancouver, BC.
First Impressions: The First Two Posts and their Influence on the Development of Online Question-Answer Discussion Threads

Her current interests include pedagogical discourse analysis, human-computer interaction, social network assistance, and assessment of student collaborative online activities.She leads synergistic work among machine learning experts, educational psychologists, NLP researchers, and STEM instructors.She is
Taking Off The Training Wheels: The Migration From Print Journals To Ejournals At The University Of Arizona.

When we were children, we all learned how to ride a bike and eventually most of us learned that you have to take off the training wheels.That's exactly what happened at the University of Arizona Library, hereafter referred to as the UA Library, when it implemented its "no duplication" policy on the purchase of print and electronic resources.The UA Library took off its training wheels by urging librarians to move away from the traditional print format of materials in favor of the electronic version unless the move would result in substantial increases in cost, or problems with the delivery of content.In calculating the costs of maintaining a print journal collection, not only must one include the ever-increasing subscription prices, but also the costs associated with the day-to-day maintenance activities such as processing, cataloging, shelving, and replacement of damaged, lost and stolen items in the collections.At the UA Library, not only was the cost of maintaining the print journal collection a problem, but the physical space necessary for storing the journals was decreasing.In 1999, the UA Library was at 75% capacity for the storage and shelving of the entire library collection with an average growth rate of 5% per year.With a capacity above 90%, the shifting and reshelving of materials becomes almost impossible.Not only was the UA Library facing a critical shortage of space for materials, but also for study areas, storage, and library personnel.These problems, coupled with the fact that staffing throughout the UA Library had decreased, caused difficulties in ensuring that incoming journals and materials could be processed and made available to library customers in a timely manner.
Demonstration-Based Training of Non-Player Character Tactical Behaviors

State of the art methods for generating non-player character (NPC) tactical behaviors typically depend on hard-coding actions or minimizing a given objective function. In many games however, it is hard to foresee how the NPC should behave to appear intelligent or to accommodate human player preferences for NPC tactics. In this paper we consider an alternative approach, by training NPC tactical behavior via demonstrations. We propose a heuristic search-based planning method based on previously-developed Experience Graphs, which facilitates the use of behavior demonstration data to plan goal-oriented NPC behavior. Our method provides a principled solution to the problem which tolerates some amount of differences in between the training demonstration and the actual problem and yet still grants guarantees on the quality of the solution output.
Ranking Conjunctions for Partial Delete Relaxation Heuristics in Planning

Heuristic search is one of the most successful approaches to classical planning, finding solution paths in large state spaces. A major focus has been the development of domain-independent heuristic functions. One recent method are partial delete relaxation heuristics, improving over the standard delete relaxation heuristic through imposing a set C of conjunctions to be treated as atomic. Practical methods for selecting C are based on counter-example guided abstraction refinement, where iteratively a relaxed plan is checked for conflicts and new atomic conjunctions are introduced to address these. However, in each refinement step, the choice of possible new conjunctions is huge. The literature so far offers merely one simple strategy to make that choice. Here we fill that gap, considering a sizable space of basic ranking strategies as well as combinations thereof. We furthermore devise ranking strategies for conjunction-forgetting, where the ranking pertains to the current conjunctions and thus statistics over their usefulness can be maintained. Our experiments show that ranking strategies do make a large difference in performance, and that our new strategies can be useful.
THE EFFECT OF OSTENSIVE APPROACH ON IMPROVING STUDENTS’ VOCABULARY ACHIEVEMENT, A CASE OF SMPN 10 KENDAR

The background of conducting this research is the need to find out a method of teaching vocabulary that can be integrated into the four main skills, while focused still on students’ vocabulary. The objective of the research is to find out whether there is a significant effect of ostensive approach on students’ vocabulary at the first grade of SMP Negeri 10 Kendari. This research is focused on the effect of ostensive approach based on students’ vocabulary achievement. The design of the study was Quasi experimental design which two group in given pretest and posttest. The instrument of this study was vocabulary test that consisted of 40 numbers and multiple- choice test consists of 20 items and there are 20 items of matching test. The population of this study was all the first grade students’ of SMP Negeri 10 Kendari who were registered in academic year 2015/2016 with the total number of students is 223. The researcher chooses class VII5 as experimental class and VII6 as control class and both of class consist of 30 students. The researcher collected the data by giving pretest in two classes to know students’ prior knowledge, giving treatment which the researcher conducted teaching and learning process by using ostensive approach in experimental class and using traditional approach in control class, then giving posttest to know the differences effect of the two approach toward the improving of students’ vocabulary achievement after treatment. The data collected analyzed by using SPSS 16 for windows in form independent-sample t test and the result of the analysis shows that there were significant differences between students who taught by ostensive approach and students who taught by traditional approach. Its’ proved by the result, the hypothesis testing show the value of probability (sig. 2 tailed) 0.004 lower than alpha value (0.05). It means that Ho was rejected and H1 totally accepted. Therefore, mean score experiment class was higher than control class (79.5000 &gt; 69.4667). The mean score of experiment class was included in high criteria whereas the mean score of control class was included in moderate criteria. It can be concluded that there is a significant effect of using ostensive approach on improving students’ vocabulary achievement at the first grade of SMPN 10 Kendari. Keywords: Ostensive Approach, effect, vocabulary achievement.
Project Risk Analysis Using Simulation Of Activity Networks: Is It Valid, Practical, And Teachable?

Recently, simulation-based methods for cost/schedule risk analysis using activity networks have begun to be used by some front-running companies in manufacturing, construction, power and other industries which require internal approval and/or external bidding for multi-million dollar projects.Interest in these methods is largely due to their availability as extensions to commercial project management software and cheaper/faster hardware capable of running the simulations in a timely manner.However, there is still skepticism among engineering managers regarding their validity and practical difficulties of model construction and data gathering.This paper presents some issues regarding development, use, and application of cost/schedule risk analysis software, and discusses related pedagogical concerns.