Welcome to the 15th Western Canadian Conference on Computing Education (WCCCE 2010)!
It was very encouraging to receive a large number of high quality submissions for papers, panel discussions, and workshops from all over Canada, and the rest of the world. The Conference Committee members and the reviewers faced quite a challenge deciding what to accept/reject for presentation.
It gives me a lot of pleasure that we have been successful to invite four keynote speakers of national and international fame from Canada and the United States. I am sure that all delegates will enjoy the very informative presentations by the keynote speakers Dr. Marcia C. Linn (University of California, Berkeley), Dr. Donald Chinn (Institute of Technology at the University of Washington), Dr. David Kaufman (Simon Fraser University, Burnaby), and Don Slater (Carnegie Mellon University).
Since last year, WCCCE runs in cooperation with ACM and SIGCSE. As part of this in cooperation status, the proceedings will be included in the ACM Digital Library. This year, we succeeded in getting funding from the ACM outreach program to bring the Alice workshop to the conference.
Proceeding Downloads
Learn Java in 3D with the Env3D library
Introductory Java programming courses usually start out using text output. This is not very motivating to students as they are more used to modern graphical output. The challenge with teaching GUI programming is that the complexity of modern GUI ...
Logic programming: teaching strategies for students with no programming background
Logic Programming, due to its inferential capabilities and high level power of expression, is more human-oriented than typical computer languages, in that it allows users to think in terms of logic statements, rather than in terms of implementation ...
Steps towards a scientific approach to a database course transformation: data collection and analysis
Instructors modify offerings of their courses in response to changes in emphasis, curriculum, student preparation, resource limitations, and problems with previous offerings. Changes also involve assessment instruments such as assignments and exams, ...
Course restructuring in "CMPT 165 -- Introduction to Multimedia and the Internet"
The course "CMPT 165 -- Introduction to Multimedia and the Internet" offered at Simon Fraser University suffers from having an un-cohesive structure and an excessive amount of material. In the Summer 2009 D200 section of the course, these issues were ...
A proposal for a new communication medium in the classroom
We propose an innovative way to facilitate student's communication during in-class collaborative exercises using an embedded device as a means to enhance students' interaction in the group. We first describe how the prototype version of the system has ...
Quackback: a software for peer evaluation within teams
Team-based learning (TBL) is a teaching technique successfully used in Medicine since the late 80s, which enforces individual accountability, and emphasizes team work as a means to learn. Part of the individual accountability includes a peer evaluation ...
Circuits and logic in the lab: toward a coherent picture of computation
We describe extensive modifications made over time to a first year computer science course at the University of British Columbia covering logic and digital circuits (among other topics). Smoothly integrating the hardware-based labs with the more theory-...
Cloud computing infrastructure prototype for university education and research
In this paper we provide an overview of the cloud computing paradigm and discuss its application in the form of a prototype for collaboration between academic institutions. "Cloud computing" is increasing in popularity nowadays, but many organizations ...
Proposal for a new strategy to practice programming
Although first year computer science courses commonly have relatively large class sizes and a high level of initial attendance, they often succumb to unacceptable drop-out rates. Following a similar model to the popular game Brain Age, we propose a ...
Pedagogy that clicks: "clickers" in the CSC classroom
In this paper we describe some of the pedagogically-based activities that an instructor might use when incorporating student response systems (clickers) into a computer science classroom.
Moving K-7 education into the information age
In this paper, we examine the state of K-7 computer science (CS) education research, and propose how it might be advanced---using graph theory as an example. First, issues raised in CS education research are presented and we high-light some of the ...
Breaking the mold: why computer science needs to be a fundamental science within the BC curriculum
This paper argues for the need to see Computer Science as a necessary and fundamental science as taught within the BC K-12 curriculum. We are reaching a point where the majority of children know how to use a computer but not how it works. Additionally, ...
Yes they can!: second-year student software development: a case study
This paper describes a summer software development project undertaken with second year computer science students. Despite the students unfamiliarity with website application development, structured query languages, php and subversion, successful ...
Minding the gap: bridging computing science and business studies with an interdisciplinary innovation challenge
For today's information technology organization, working in teams across functional and even organizational boundaries has become an integral part of every project. When asked about these projects, practitioners regularly report on how grave differences ...
Collaborative problem solving: integrating theory and practice in the classroom
- Mantis Cheng,
- Erin Delisle,
- Alejandro Erickson,
- Sudhakar Ganti,
- Fieran Mason,
- Nicholas Vining,
- Sue Whitesides
This report describes our experience in teaching an experimental graduate-level course employing collaborative teaching and learning. It was co-taught by four instructors with various backgrounds in computer science, including mecha-tronics and ...
Inspiring collaborative benefits: an interaction between a virtual and a physical group learning infrastructure
The physical environments are often limited for fostering and enriching creativity and collaborative benefits, especially in the educational context. In general, students have limited opportunities to experience peer-to-peer and group collaborative ...