Rick Adrion

• Professor Emeritus at University of Massachusetts Amherst

Computer science education has been making dramatic increases in recent years. Across the US, different states are advancing computer science education through different policies. However, as a state makes choices to advance computer science education, it is critical to consider how these policies will broaden participation in computing (BPC). Many...

Incorporating equity and inclusion in the effort toward access for everyone.

Efforts to improve and promote CS education characterized by greater participation of underrepresented groups have taken off sharply in the six years since the Expanding Computing Education Pathways (ECEP) NSF alliance was first funded. Though many of these initiatives are occurring at the student and teacher level, ECEP and other national-level or...

In the June issue of ACM Inroads [1], we explored the phenomenal growth of computer science (CS) in CS undergraduate degree programs and CS courses at both doctoral-granting and non-doctoral-granting units1. In the September issue of ACM Inroads [2], we investigated the impact of this enrollment surge on diversity. This article examines (1) the imp...

In the June issue of ACM Inroads [1], we consider the phenomenal growth of computer science (CS) in both CS undergraduate degree programs and CS courses at doctoral-granting and non-doctoral-granting units.1 This article examines the impact of the undergraduate enrollment surge on diversity (i.e., women and underrepresented minorities) using two ex...

The purpose of this study was to investigate student learning of physics principles related to the phenomena of global heat transport through the use of a virtual interactive textbook (VIT) that featured multiple representations including video, animations and a virtual experiment. We sought, through the design and development of a primarily visual...

Across North America, universities and colleges are facing a significant increase in enrollment in both undergraduate computer science (CS) courses and programs. The current enrollment surge has exceeded previous CS booms, and there is a general sense that the current growth in enrollment is substantially different from that of the mid-1980s and la...

As the role of computer science becomes increasingly central to our way of life, ensuring the successful education of future computer scientists is imperative.

In January 2016, US President Barack Obama started an initiative to provide CS for All -- with the goal that all school students should have access to computing education. Computing departments in higher education have a particularly important role to play in this initiative. It's in our best interest to get involved, since the effort can potential...

Influencing computer science education at the state level.

In this paper, we present our work-in-progress related to a new research method we term Microgenetic Learning Analytics. The goal of our work is the development of a theoretically based, computational method for performing microgenetic analysis of, co-present, collaborative problem-solving group conversations in a robotics-learning environment. Our...

We are all excited to see an increasing number of national efforts to reform computing education. Persistent and sustainable change in a state, its higher education institutions, and its K12 districts requires the active participation of individuals and local organizations to engage policy makers, higher education, school districts and communities....

While it is exciting to see an increasing number of national efforts to reform computing education, such as those led by CSTA, Computing in the Core, ACM, NCWIT, code.org and many others, real change at the state, district and school level requires the active participation of individuals and local organizations to engage policy makers, superintende...

We have long-term experience with developing and employing multimedia materials for on-campus and distance education. We also are assessing the efficacy of cooperative learning where groups of learners explore, with guidance from an instructor, the learning environment and construct models of meaning based on their shared learning experiences. Our...

This paper evaluates the benefits and drawbacks of lecture recording, which aspects of lectures and lecture capture systems are most used, and what additional features and functions would make the experience more effective. We evaluated 4 computer science courses recorded during spring 2011 using our comprehensive lecture capture system PAOL and pr...

The University of Massachusetts Amherst RIPPLES group has developed and deployed classroom content creation/capture and delivery systems in the Multimedia Asynchronous Networked Individualized Courseware (MANIC) family for over a decade. The latest of these content delivery systems, iMANIC, is an application for the iPhone/iTouch. The iMANIC mobile...

Our research into automatic recording of the complete classroom experience has led to the development of many software systems, one of which captures an image stream of all content presented on a computer. We have just completed a first deployment of this computer capture system in which 3 separate courses were recorded for an entire semester with...

The Commonwealth Alliance for Information Technology Education (CAITE) is one of 11 National Science Foundation Broadening Participation in Computing (BPC) alliances aimed at increasing the participation and success of underrepresented groups in information technology (IT). From the beginning, CAITE partners worked to integrate a detailed and compr...

This paper describes our experiences with the first partial deployment of Presentations Automatically Organized from Lectures (PAOL), a lecture recording system developed and tested at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. PAOL automatically records all information presented during lectures using any combination of computer, whiteboard, and over...

This paper describes our experiences with the first partial deployment of Presentations Automatically Organized from Lectures (PAOL), a lecture recording system developed and tested at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. PAOL automatically records all information presented during lectures using any combination of computer, whiteboard, and over...

The Commonwealth Alliance for Information Technology Education (CAITE) is an alliance of 15 Massachusetts public campuses that focuses on community colleges because of their role as a gateway to careers and further higher education for underserved populations. CAITE outreach extends into four regions that have high percentages of students who are u...

We describe whiteboard content capture system from Presentations Automatically Organized from Lectures (PAOL) that captures content within the setting of a class- room environment. The system acquires a sequence of im- ages from high-resolution, fixed view cameras and extracts a series of content-rich key frames. The key frames are de- rived by ana...

For more than a decade, the RIPPLES group at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has developed and deployed content delivery systems to support on-campus and distance education. This has been an effective but expensive approach because of its dependence on content captured by human operators and substantial production effort. Presentations Auto...

The Commonwealth Alliance for Information Technology Education (CAITE) is designing and carrying out comprehensive programs that address under-representation in information technology (IT). CAITE focuses on women and minorities in groups that are underrepresented in most aspects of the Massachusetts innovation economy - economically, academically,...

This paper describes a system designed to automatically capture classroom events as videos and images. This content is delivered in several ways, most commonly as indexed multimedia presentations but also in real time as notes of classroom events. This content creation system identifies when significant events occur, e.g., material presented by com...

We describe an automatic classroom capture system that detects and records significant (stable) points in lectures by sampling and analyzing a sequence of screen capture frames from a PC used for presentations, application demonstrations, etc. The system uses visual inspection techniques to scan the screen capture stream to identify points to store...

We describe an automatic classroom capture system that detects and records significant (stable) points in lec- tures by sampling and analyzing a sequence of screen cap- ture frames from a PC used for presentations, application demonstrations,etc. The system uses visualinspection tech- niques to scan the screen capture stream to identify points to s...

This paper describes collaboration between the University of Cape Coast in Ghana and the University of Massachusetts Amherst to apply innovations in education and educational technology to the challenges facing Cape Coast as they attempt to meet the demands of the 21st century. Ghanaian Universities face increasing population growth and enrollment,...

The National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere (CASA) joined with the Research in Presentation Production for Learning Electronically (RIPPLES) Group at the University of Massachusetts Amherst to investigate how multimedia technologies could be adapted and applied to the research, ed...

Information technology is affecting every aspect of life and work - and incorporating IT education effectively across the curriculum is common goal in undergraduate education. The University of Massachusetts Amherst launched a new interdisciplinary, campus-wide undergraduate IT minor that has influenced information technology programs across the st...

We have long-term experience with developing and employing multimedia materials for on-campus and distance education. We also are assessing the efficacy of cooperative learning where groups of learners explore, with guidance from an instructor, the learning environment and construct models of meaning based on their shared learning experiences. Our...

The research in presentation production for learning electronically (RIPPLES) group in the Department of Computer Science at UMASS Amherst have developed a course delivery system named multimedia asynchronous networked individualized courseware (MANIC). MANIC uses the approach of "record and playback". While record and playback technologies can be...

A partnership of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, other university campuses, and state and community colleges has launched a new kind of undergraduate program in information technology (IT). Project EXCITE (enabling x-commonwealth information technology education) is creating a flexible, integrative and innovative curriculum that crosses tr...

A partnership of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, other University campuses, and state and community colleges has launched a new kind of undergraduate program in information technology (IT). Project EXCITE (Enabling X-Commonwealth Information Technology Education) is creating a flexible, integrative and innovative curriculum that crosses tr...

We describe an effort to design an adaptable framework for teaching and learning in software engineering. We are developing a repository of asynchronous, multimedia courseware that facilitates the rapid incorporation of new advances in research and technology, enables courses to be tailored to individual student needs and interests, leverages innov...

We describe an effort to design an adaptable framework for teaching and learning in software engineering. We are developing a repository of asynchronous, multimedia courseware that facilitates the rapid incorporation of new advances in research and technology, enables courses to be tailored to individual student needs and interests, leverages innov...

We describe an effort to design an adaptable framework for teaching and learning in software engineering. We are developing a repository of asynchronous, multimedia courseware that facilitates the rapid incorporation of new advances in research and technology, enables courses to be tailored to individual student needs and interests, leverages innov...

The Computer Science Department of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst has developed a strategy for research, development, industrial interactions and technology transfer called the 'Three Pronged Strategy (TPS)'. The principal components within the Three-Pronged Strategy are: continuing programs of education and fundamental research computer...

The problems associated with developing real-time software systems, including ensuring predictable real-time behavior under both normal and abnormal operating conditions, are outlined. The management of temporal complexity, structuring of dynamic real-time ...

This article describes computer science research and technology transfer programmes in place at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Three relevant areas are identified: basic research, applications driven research (often prompted by the private sector) and mechanisms for technology transfer. The history of industry–university collaboration...

Trends in software engineering education are discussed from the point of view of the changing environment for both education and research in computer science and engineering. Programs of the National Science Foundation and other federal agencies along with substantial contributions from private industries and foundations have dramatically changed t...

Scientific research has always relied on communication for gathering and providing access to data; for exchanging information; for holding discussions, meetings, and seminars; for collaborating with widely dispersed researchers; and for disseminating results. The pace and complexity of modern research, especially collaborations of researchers in di...

Current verification, validation, and testing approaches are surveyed, and their strengths, weaknesses, and life-cycle usage are discussed. In conjunction with these, the paper describes automated tools used to implement validation, verification, and testing. In the discussion of new research thrusts, emphasis is given to the continued need to deve...

Good programming demands sound testing, verification, and validation techniques throughout the life cycle–even if the development environment has limited support and resources.

Without Abstract

Summary We planned to create a problem-focused, cooperative teaching and learning setting, supported by a tablet-PC-based environment. The strategy was to revise the curricula, materials, and pedagogy for a core course in the University of Massachusetts Amherst IT Program (CMPSCI 120), to capture and distribute multimedia records of each course ses...

Conventional educators and business officials frequently engage in a lecture style interaction with their listeners when attempting to carry out an important point. The technological instruments they use consist of rather rudimentary devices and systems such as Power-point and white boards. The apparent dearth of efficient and sophisticated technol...