With the continuous growth of cyberinfrastructure throughout modern society, the need for secure computing and communication is more important than ever before. As a result, there is also an increasing need for entry-level developers who are capable of designing and building practical solutions for systems with stringent security requirements.…

The undergraduate computer science curriculum is generally focused on skills and tools; most students are not exposed to much research in the field, and do not learn how to navigate the research literature. We describe how fiction reviews (and specifically science fiction) are used as a gateway to research reviews. Students learn a little about…

We describe our experiences teaching MapReduce in a large undergraduate lecture course using public cloud services and the standard Hadoop API. Using the standard API, students directly experienced the quality of industrial big-data tools. Using the cloud, every student could carry out scalability benchmarking assignments on realistic hardware,…

We present "Xipx," the first port of a major educational operating system to a processor in the emerging class of many-core architectures. Through extensions to the proven Embedded Xinu operating system, Xipx gives students hands-on experience with system programming in a distributed message-passing environment. We expose the software primitives…

We present an undergraduate course on concurrent programming where formal models are used in different stages of the learning process. The main practical difference with other approaches lies in the fact that the ability to develop correct concurrent software relies on a systematic transformation of formal models of inter-process interaction (so…

This article discusses the evolution of a single undergraduate computer graphics course over five semesters, driven by a primary question: if one could offer only one undergraduate course in graphics, what would it include? This constraint is relevant to many small and medium-sized colleges that lack resources, adequate expertise, and enrollment…

There have been growing criticisms in recent years among the computer and video games community on the apparent lack of graduates capable of meeting the industry's employment needs. Following the sharp rise in the number of computer and video games courses across higher education (HE) institutions in the UK and across the globe, this article…

Digital games are marketed, mass-produced, and consumed by an increasing number of people and the game industry is only expected to grow. In response, postsecondary institutions in the UK and the U.S. have started to create game degree programs. Though curriculum theorists provide insight into the process of creating a new program, no formal…

Computer Science (CS) is a relatively new disciple and how best to introduce it to new students remains an open question. Likewise, the identification of appropriate instructional strategies for the diverse topics that constitute the average curriculum remains open to debate. One approach considered by a number of practitioners in CS education…

This exploratory qualitative study examines computing professional's memories of their own formal and non-formal educational experiences, their reflections on how these have prepared them for their professional roles, and their recommendations for an "ideal" undergraduate degree program. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews of…

We present findings regarding the state of the field of Algorithm Visualization (AV) based on our analysis of a collection of over 500 AVs. We examine how AVs are distributed among topics, who created them and when, their overall quality, and how they are disseminated. There does exist a cadre of good AVs and active developers. Unfortunately, we…

This article explores the philosophy and position of the discipline of computer science within the liberal arts, based upon a discussion of the nature of computer science and a review of the characteristics of the liberal arts. A liberal arts environment provides important opportunities for undergraduate programs, but also presents important…

With the support of a grant from the Sloan Foundation, nine computer scientists from liberal arts colleges came together in October, 1984 to form the Liberal Arts Computer Science Consortium (LACS) and to create a model curriculum appropriate for liberal arts colleges. Over the years the membership has grown and changed, but the focus has remained…

Many undergraduate liberal arts institutions offer computer science majors. This article illustrates how quality computer science programs can be realized in a wide variety of liberal arts settings by describing and contrasting the actual programs at five liberal arts colleges: Williams College, Kalamazoo College, the State University of New York…

Using animated visualization tools has been an important teaching approach in computer science education. We have developed three visualization and animation tools that demonstrate various information security concepts and actively engage learners. The information security concepts illustrated include: packet sniffer and related computer network…