Philip J. Burton’s research while affiliated with University of Arkansas at Little Rock and other places

This paper discusses how UML, with the aid of a CASE (Computer Aided Systems Engineering) tool, can help teach an Object-Oriented Systems Analysis and Design (OOSAD) course. Today's students need to be actively involved in the learning process and must be able to apply a concept while it is being taught. Most OOSAD real-world problems are to complex to deal with in the classroom, so we have chosen a simpler problem - consisting of a university setting - that all students are familiar with. By using a CASE tool to draw UML diagrams students can visualize the object-oriented concepts and see the relevance of what is being taught. UML can help simplify OOSAD problems and at the same time actively engage students in the learning process thus increasing the general interest level of the student. The author's basic approach to teaching OOSAD material is to have the students emulate the instructor when working through a problem. With enough concrete practice like this, students soon build a strong foundation in UML diagrammatics and in the process gradually abstract out the underlying OOSAD concepts. The aim is to reach a point where students can make their own interpretation, apply OOSAD concepts independently, and ultimately devise their own extensions to UML to solve a problem.

Until recently, the only way to render mathematics in a web browser was to insert a picture. Now, a dialect of XML, called MathML, exists that allows mathematics to be displayed directly in a web page. The latest version of Netscape Navigator has MathML built in to it and a plug-in is available for Internet Explorer. But, if an author wants to go beyond the simple rendering of a mathematical formula and display its graph, then more graphical processing is necessary. Another dialect of XML, namely Scalable Vector Graphics, is emerging as the de-facto industry standard for doing web graphics. We show in this paper that it is also the most appropriate format for displaying graphical mathematical information on a web page and we discuss the features that make it the ideal companion for MathML.

This paper describes how the use of computers in the classroom (using studio teaching) can help students to better understand Java programming concepts during classroom presentations. Students learn by three methods: auditory, visual, and kinetic. Studio teaching uses all three methods, but relies mostly on the kinetic method. Students actually practice the programming concepts in the classroom on the computer as the instructor presents them. The studio teaching method helps the average-to-poor scholastic achievers the most, while high-achieving students seemed to do just as well with the typical lecture-style format. The disadvantage of studio teaching is that it is expensive to equip labs with computers, and more time is needed to present the material to the students. Also, it takes time for students to practice programming concepts on the computer in class.

Data interchange bioinformatics databases will, in the future, most likely take place using extensible markup language (XML). The document structure will be described by an XML Schema rather than a document type definition (DTD). To ensure flexibility, the XML Schema must incorporate aspects of Object-Oriented Modeling. This impinges on the choice of the data model, which, in turn, is based on the organization of bioinformatics data by biologists. Thus, there is a need for the general bioinformatics community to be aware of the design issues relating to XML Schema. This paper, which is aimed at a general bioinformatics audience, uses examples to describe the differences between a DTD and an XML Schema and indicates how Unified Modeling Language diagrams may be used to incorporate Object-Oriented Modeling in the design of schema.

This paper argues in favor of teaching a course in Procedural Programming first before a course in Object Oriented Programming. The basis of the argument is that considered as a paradigm, Object Oriented Programming comes in addition to the Procedural Programming paradigm and not as a replacement for it. In addition, we discuss the mathematics prerequisites required for programming and argue that Information Science departments should insist that students receive a firm foundation in traditional mathematical skills and that the use of instructional technology should reinforce these skills and not detract from them.