From:                                                      Kelvin Sung [KSung@uwb.edu]

Sent:                                                        Friday, February 27, 2009 6:37 PM

To:                                                            John Nordlinger; Lee Dirks

Cc:                                                            ksung@u.washington.edu

Subject:                                                  RE: Feb 2009: Progress Report on: XNA CS1-Lab Workbook

 

 

Re: XNA CS1-Lab Workbook: February 2009 Progress Report

 

The following is the project progress report for February 2009. In summary, the month went past a little faster than we hope, but the project is moving forward at a very healthy pace. The workshop trip to Guadalajara was a wild success, and the Spring in-classroom assessment is coming together very well. Here are the details:

 

1.      Workbook progress (XGC1): With feedback from the Guadalajara workshop, we are making incremental improvements on the library, including:

a.       Velocity: we are in the process of integrating this as a standard attribute in the primitive class. This will support automatic movements of all primitives with non-zero velocity. More importantly, when the user rotates a primitive (as we have learned from the Guadalajara workshop’s meteoroid game), we can compute the “front-vector” for the users. Greatly simplifies the in-game logic.

b.      World-class: instead of providing a collection of “World-utility” functions, it makes much more sense to collect them under a container class.

c.       Background Audio: with the new updated XNA V3 audio support. This may become quite easy to support. We will examine this.

It is very important that the above improvements can be made before the Apr 11th MSR workshop. This is a realistic deadline.

 

2.      Spring classroom assessment project progress: We now have regular meeting with Robin Rider (UWB Education), Cinnamon Hillyard (UWB, Math), David Goldstein (UWB, TLC), and together with Mike Panitz, we are in the processor ironing out all the details. So far, all everything looks great, we should be able to use the materials in class in Spring, and record students using our materials (with screen capture, third-person observation, and audio) and analyze students’ experience and learning.

 

3.      Faculty reviewers: We are in correspondence with Jessica Bayliss, we are discussing the details of review schedule and how we can collaborate.

 

4.      Publications and Disseminations:

a.       CACM: Mike Zyda has re-submitted his portion of the article. With fingers crossed, maybe our article will come out later this Spring.

b.      Mexico Workshop (Feb, 2009): This has been wildly successful:

                                                               i.      Thanks to Ruben, our Mexican hosts were very hospitable, and most importantly the faculty who attended the workshop had perfect background (all are programming faculty with no graphics/games background).

                                                             ii.      In three days, the 17 faculty designed and implemented 5 games! Our materials really works!

                                                           iii.      Kelvin has been invited by University de Guadalajara to offer a similar workshop next February in Puerto Vallarta!

                                                           iv.      Kelvin has been offered a job position at Tec de Monterrey (this is not a joke!).

c.       CCSC-NW 2009: We have submitted a paper discussing our Game-Themed assignment assessment results to the CCSC-NW conference.

 

5.      Up-coming workshop/conferences:

a.       SIGCSE Conference (March 2009)

b.      MSR External Research Symposium (March 2009): we will present a poster and a presentation on the impact of our project.

c.       MSR Workshop (April 2009)

d.      FDG Cruise Conference (April 2009)

e.       Beijing Workshop (July 2009)

f.        Puerto Vallarta Workshop (Feb 2010)

g.       Others: Kelvin is in contact with Miran (MSRA) in determining if there are any interests, we will contact Lolan at MSRA as soon as we can confirm the dates for July 2009 workshop.

 

6.      Future:

a.       Building Synergies with G4LI: we are working on the proposal to be the outreach arm of the G4LI effort. We hope to submit this proposal to MSR after the March MSR ER symposium.

b.     NSF ATE and CCLI: We are working on the proposal to take the “Game-Theme 2.0: Faculty Perspective” idea to NSF, current Co-PI includes all of the UWB collaborators (Robin, Cinnamon, David), we are going to work with CC faculty from North Seattle, Bellevue, for the ATE proposal.

c.      WA state HECB (Higher Education Coordination Board): we have noticed synergy between our team, our results and the HECB Educators for the 21th Century grant (http://www.hecb.wa.gov/Grants/profdev/profdevindex.asp). With our results and the strength of our team, we can be very competitive! We are developing a proposal for this RFP.