An introductory computer science course entitled "Engineering problem-solving with computers" uses a novel combination of in-class active learning laboratories and out-of-class Web-based learning tools to teach sophomore engineers problem-solving skills using Maple and Matlab. This novel pedagogy is designed to maximize the benefit of in-class activities and to carefully regulate student out-of-class studying. A newly introduced tool, called CourseBuilder, is an XML based content management tool that resulted in remarkable improvement in student performance (one sigma improvement in exam grades) over past experience. We describe the content and pedagogy of this course and how it differs from past practice. We describe the further assessment that is required to better quantify the improved student performance. We propose additional novel teaching practices to further improve student performance and reduce teaching costs.

A course entitled effective teaching with technology (ETT) has been taught to PhD candidates and postdoctoral students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) during the Spring semester of 2004, 2005, and 2006, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The course is supported by the NSF-sponsored Center for Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning (CIRTL). The course employs the three CIRTL pillars of teaching-as-research, learning-through-diversity, and learning communities as its basis. The ETT course introduces students to the idea that they critically evaluate technology options with the overarching goal of improved student learning. In this paper we describe: (1) development of this unique course, (2) operational experiences, and (3) student outcomes and effectiveness of the teaching-as-research approach to motivate future faculty (i.e. graduate students) to view teaching and the classroom with the same critical eye and scientific method that they use in their own research

The checkpointing mechanism described in this paper was successfully used by Condor for several years. By eliminating assembly language in favor of “standard” Unix facilities such as core dumps and setjmp/longjmp, it greatly eased the difficulty of porting Condor to new platforms. However, the mechanism was found wanting for a variety of reasons some of which were anticipated in the original paper, and evolved into the algorithm described below. This note describes Version 6 of Condor, released in early 1998. A more detailed description of Condor checkpointing as of Version 5 has been published elsewhere [1].

By using innovative computer software and the Internet, we produced a web-based alternative to the traditional college astronomy lecture-a web-lecture2. Using a professor's scheduled lecture time differently than in traditional courses, we tested the approach to see if students gained similar knowledge, tools, and practice in solving problems. Along with this technology, we examined the effect on student learning of participation in an" active" or a" passive" review sections following the web-lecture. The project was implemented in a 100-level astronomy course at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The software used to create the web-lecture (eTEACH), enable simultaneous and synchronized presentation of video, audio, and slides, and offers additional technological advantages to the benefit of both the students and the professor. The project had 3 phases: I) a test taken before the web-lecture, probing understanding of 3 key concepts (pre-test), II) the web-lecture, and III) review sections where students were split between active and passive learning environments, and a post-test (same questions as pre-test) was given at the end. From student self-assessments and from our own assessment of student learning using the pre-and post-test scores, we conclude that students made significant gains in their understanding of the key concepts taught in the web-lecture and in the review section, independent of the learning environment. We also conclude that overall, students participating in the active learning environment experienced significantly higher gains in their understanding of key concepts over those in the passive review sections. Student …