Do Students Like the Flipped Classroom? An Investigation of Student Reaction to a Flipped Undergraduate IT Course

The flipped classroom pedagogy has achieved significant mention in academic circles in recent years. "Flipping" involves the reinvention of a traditional course so that students engage with learning materials via recorded lectures and interactive exercises prior to attending class and then use class time for more interactive activities. Proper implementation of a flipped classroom is difficult to gauge, but combines successful techniques for distance education with constructivist learning theory in the classroom. While flipped classrooms are not a novel concept, technological advances and increased comfort with distance learning have made the tools to produce and consume course materials more pervasive. Flipped classroom experiments have had both positive and less-positive results and are generally measured by a significant improvement in learning outcomes. This study, however, analyzes the opinions of students in a flipped sophomore-level information technology course by using a combination of surveys and reflective statements. The author demonstrates that at the outset students are new - and somewhat receptive - to the concept of the flipped classroom. By the conclusion of the course satisfaction with the pedagogy is significant. Finally, student feedback is provided in an effort to inform instructors in the development of their own flipped classrooms

Database-Driven Website Development for Non-Profit Agencies

poster abstractThe Near Eastside Legacy Initiative grant program was created to give non-profit agencies the funds to further their missions to serve neighborhoods in Indianapolis. Two non-profit organizations were selected to receive grant funds in Spring 2013 and chose to apply those proceeds to the development of new websites to significantly increase their presence and community engagement opportunities. Students from the Computer Information and Graphics Technology department at IUPUI were asked to develop the websites as part of the grant project. Twelve students volunteered for the project and were split into three teams, each of which completed the entire website development process independently over the course of eight weeks. The teams conducted client interviews, researched existing software, created and edited visual elements, and produced websites backed by the Wordpress content management system. After further consultation with the clients, updates were made and the student teams produced training materials with specific task-based instructions so that the websites could be maintained by the agencies. The organizations expect to launch their new database-driven websites in spring 2013. The students gained valuable experience working directly with clients, responding to a variety of business needs, a deeper understanding of creating software for non-technical individuals, and solid exposure to a typical scenario that developers of all types face every day

Integrating DevOps Into the Web Development Curriculum with AWS

poster abstractCurrently within IUPUI’s Computer and Information Technology curriculum, students are responsible for hosting content on three main servers throughout the course of the degree program. Not only have these three main servers been preconfigured for the students but also they are typically reset at the conclusion of each semester resulting in lost files if the student has not saved their work locally. The overall goal of this research project is to study the benefits and feasibility of implementing a unified hosting service through the Amazon Web Services Educate program within the CIT curriculum. By implementing a unified hosting service, students will be provided with an experiential learning opportunity to manage their own AWS account from the 100 level courses throughout their entire undergraduate program. Ultimately, AWS has the ability to enable students on high-performance computing, prepare students for careers in cloud computing, and integrate a consistent platform into a variety of courses. Mentor: Rob Elliott, Department of Computer Information and Graphics Technology, Purdue School of Engineering and Technology, IUPU

Interview with Elliott Johnston

Don Dunstan Oral History Project interview transcripts. Conditions of use: No conditions are imposed on the reuse of this transcript by the interviewee. However, further publication in full by others is not permitted without permission from the State Library of South Australia, and any partial use or quoting in research publications requires proper acknowledgement of the State Library of South Australia.Interview with Elliott Johnston (AO QC) by Rob Linn on 12th November 2004

USABILITY TESTING AND THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN COMPUTER LITERACY AND EFFECTIVE USE OF A CHEMICAL KNOWLEDGE BASE BY FIRST-SEMESTER ORGANIC CHEMISTRY STUDENTS

poster abstractUsability testing is a technique that allows for the examination of a spe-cific user’s effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in achieving goals (Law, Hvannberg, 2002). This user-focused design process has been found to be particularly important in early site development. In this study, multiple inter-faces of the knowledge base will be examined comparatively, changing only the aesthetics. Using a think-aloud process, users will be walked through seven scenarios in the IUPUI Chemistry Knowledge Base, and asked to vo-calize their thoughts as they attempt each situation. Completion of user questionnaires and a post-test System Usability Scale (SUS) will provide recommendations from which improvements may be made to the design, layout and management of the Knowledge Base (Brooke, 1996)

The demographics of student device ownership: An examination of the personal computing ecosystems of students in higher education

Higher education has become dependent on the use of digital materials, which may include texts, audiovisual content, and software applications. Because students in higher education are largely responsible for providing the computing devices they are required to use to interact with their digital course materials, instructors and instructional designers are often unaware of the personal computing ecosystems in use by their students. This study describes a large-scale survey of student ownership and use of computing devices at a large public university in the midwestern United States. The results demonstrate that students generally have access to devices that allow them to engage with their digital course materials, but age and demographic factors correlated with socioeconomic status appear to impact the type and quality of devices owned. The study also shows that students have access to a variety of device types and that most students perform their computing tasks on a single screen. Understanding the personal computing ecosystems of students will allow instructors and instructional designers to develop course materials that are accessible to students on the devices in use and can inform the decision-making process when an institution considers adoption of new learning technologies. This data can also be used as a foundation for future studies that examine the influence of a student’s technology access and ownership on their academic outcomes

History's Future in the North End

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/110960/1/history_s_future_in_the_north_endred.pd

Pension Confusion, Uncertainty and Trust in Scotland: An Empirical Analysis

In the context of the new automatic enrolment requirements for all eligible employees to make pension provision for their employees, and the importance of trust in pension provision, this article utilises data from the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey, which, in its 2005 wave, asked correspondents specific questions regarding pension provision. We integrate two different empirical approaches in order to achieve a more robust understanding of pension confusion in Scotland. We find that pension confusion is dominated by pension uncertainty and myopia, but these may be reduced for those working in the financial sector. We consider the implications of these findings for the relationship of trust between employers and their employees, as well as for trust in government pension policy more generally

The regional economic impact of wildfires::evidence from Southern Europe

This is the final version. Available from Elsevier via the DOI in this record. We estimate the impact of wildfires on the growth rate of gross domestic product (GDP) and employment of regional economies in Southern Europe from 2011 to 2018. To this end we match Eurostat economic data with geospatial burned area perimeters based on satellite imagery for 233 Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS) 3 level regions in Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Greece. Our panel fixed effects instrumental variable estimation results suggest an average contemporary decrease in a region's annual GDP growth rate of 0.11–0.18% conditional on having experienced at least one wildfire. For an average wildfire season this leads to a yearly production loss of 13–21 billion euros for Southern Europe. The impact on the employment growth rate is heterogeneous across economic activity types in that there is a decrease in the average annual employment growth rate for activities related to retail and tourism (e.g., transport, accommodation, food service activities) of 0.09–0.15%, offset by employment growth in insurance, real estate, administrative, and support service related activities of 0.13–0.22%.European Union’s Horizon 202