On Jan 24^th, Ruth Anderson and Kelvin met in Ruth’s office (CSE360) at about 11am. The following are records from our discussion.

Kelvin briefed Ruth on the background of the project.

Terminologies:
1. Assignment Objectives (AO): This is the “student learning outcome/objective” for an assignment. The AO will relate the assignment to the ACM curriculum (ACM). Mike and Kelvin need to flush out one for each of the assignments. AO’s should list out:

i. Learning objective of the assignment (e.g., competency on working with 2D array)

ii. Pre-Knowledge: e.g., nested loop,

iii. “Typical Schedule” (with respect to ACM sample syllabus): time-frame in a “typical” curriculum where this knowledge should be introduced.

Assignment Specification (AS): This is the technical competency the assignment is designed for students to practice. This document should concentrate on describing “what” without details of “how”. The AS should include:

i. Technical specification of what students must accomplish (e.g., traverse a 2D array horizontally/vertically, ability to make decision while traversing an array in deciding if continual traversal is necessary).

Assignment Design (AD): There will be two of this for each AO/AS set: one for games theme assignment (ADG), one for non-games but API-based (ADA).
Assignment Sample Solution (SS): again two sets one for Games-themed (SSG), and one for non-games API-based (SSA).
Assignment Assessment (AA): a pre and post quiz for each assignment. These will serve as quantitative assessment tools, Becky will administer these together with the qualitative feedback pooling during class.
Complete Assignment Package (CAP): Complete set of all documents/solutions from AO/AS/ADG/ADA/SSG/SSA.

ACM curriculum is the foundation for reference, our assignments are vehicles in delivering knowledge, we will consult the ACM curriculum when consider the following issues:
1. Schedule: with respect to a “typical” syllabus, where does each assignment fit in
2. Pre-Requisite knowledge:
3. Competency addressed.

Assessment:
1. Level 1: AO (2.a.) + AS (2.b.): these documents must be evaluated with respect to the ACM document, and AS must be address the requirements from AO.
2. Level 2: AD (2.c.) + SS (2.d.): the document and implementation must be evaluated with respect to the refined AO document.
3. Level 3: AA (2.e.): appropriateness/feedback of the quizzes.

Tutorials: for each XNA-based assignments Kelvin should design one (or a series) of tutorials to guide students/faculty into using the development environment.

The project schedule: while the project should officially begin in July 2007, due to our schedules, we will begin now, do most of the work in June/July, and August will be quiet. September will be time for writing a paper(s) to SIGCSE. The following is _NOT_ discussed during the meeting, I am just listing it out as a reference:
1. March (Spring break) 2007: Mike and Kelvin should have 1 to 2 AO’s for different assignments. Ruth can take a look at these and begin thinking about Level-1 assessment (7a)
2. 2^nd week of June 2007:

i. Ruth: 7a

ii. Mike+Kelvin: flush out all the AO’s

3^rd-4^th Week June:

i. Ruth: 7c

ii. Mike+Kelvin: flush out AS + AD (Will need to get Games people feedback here!)

2^nd and 3^rd Week July:

i. Mike+Kelvin implement and pass on results to Ruth

ii. Ruth: receive draft CAPs from Mike+Kelvin and 7d

Implementation Strategy:
1. Based on 1 or 2 AO’s Ruth will examine and decide if it is more appropriate to design the Level-1 assessment tool.
2. After 7a. Mike and Kelvin will design/implement 1 or 2 draft CAP, and Ruth will examine it and decide if designing assessment tool herself makes sense.
3. After 7a, we will have a better understanding of our Level-1 AO evaluation process, Mike and Kelvin will deliver the other AO’s to Ruth for evaluation
4. After 7b we will have better understanding of our Level-2 evaluation procedure, together with results from 7c, Mike and Kelvin will deliver the rest of the CAPs to Ruth for level-2 evaluation.
5. We need to submit the Quiz for level-3 evaluation also.
6. Teaching schedule:

i. Fall 2007:

1. CS1 (no XNA) - control group

2. CS2(XNA) – demonstrate students with no XNA background can do this

ii. Winter 2007:

1. CS1 (XNA) – begin of experiment

2. CS2 (no XNA) – this is the continuation of the control group from f.i.1

iii. Spring 2007:

1. CS1 (XNA) – opportunity to use refined assignments

2. CS2 (XNA) – experiment group from f.ii.1. should definitely poll this group for how they feel

iv. What is lacking is continuation of f.iii.1 -> CS2(no XNA), this group will tell us how students with CS1-XNA feel when they take CS2 without XNA. Opportunity for continuation funding?

Others:
1. CCSC 2007 Workshop: We should think about proposing a CCSC 2007 workshop on something related to XNA: Kelvin’s idea is to begin simple (since we won’t have any results yet). Kelvin is proposing to organize a Event-Driven Programming workshop, main “attractions”

i. we will describe API-independent theory

ii. demonstrate theory with many language/API: FLTK, MFC, WinForm, JavaSwing

iii. relate theory to MVC framework and lead to XNA Framework API, demonstrate how understanding allow easy programming with the XNA framework

iv. Need help:

1. Kelvin has worked with Java Swing (or AWT), but prefers if someone else would do this.

2. We should invite MSR people to give short talk on what is MS’s take on all this. I wonder if they would be interested.

3. Kelvin plans to start developing a proposal during Spring break 2007.

SIGCSE 2008: write a paper on our summer’s work in September 2007.
We should do pre/post-course “survey” asking students questions like:

i. Your interests in CS

ii. Did this course increase/decrease your interests in majoring in CS

iii. Etc.

JERIC: http://www.acm.org/pubs/jeric/ is a potential avenue for publishing our results.