An Effective Interdisciplinary Freshman Experience Program
Group project-based learning is perhaps the most effective way to acquire material and information across to students of all backgrounds, keep those students motivated in their field, and prepare them for their professional lives. The ability to work in an interdisciplinary group setting is one of the most important skills a college student can learn. Professionals in almost every field are required to work in groups of people from varying backgrounds to achieve a common goal, and many have a difficult time adapting to this setting. This study proposes a unique approach by which higher education courses can enrich students, introduce them to real-world problems, and encourage them to apply their theoretical knowledge to solve problems in interdisciplinary groups. The instructional concept focuses on placing students in an interdisciplinary group setting, taking them out of their comfort zones, exposing them to real problems, and ensuring that they work together toward a common goal. Vital skills necessary for achieving a high level of success, are introduced early in their scholastic career. Findings from this research indicate that students desired and benefited from such an interdisciplinary educational experience.
Innovative Techniques for Securing Big Data Using Mobile Agents
In this research, we investigate Big Data and Cloud Computing trends, current cyber and physical methodologies of securing it, and consider the challenges in the context of mobile agents in order to apply unique security methodologies from mobile agents to contemporary problems. Then we use a combination of techniques to introduce several alternatives that we believe are innovative, for securing this massively and exponentially emerging data.
Big Data Visualization and Analytics
Big Data Visualization and Analytics are becoming a norm in business today. Managing by data and creating a culture of data driven business intelligence decision-making is changing the landscape of business operation. Data visualization and analytics allows the organization to interact with data to identify trends and insights. As IoT and more internet network traffic creates more data, understanding and presenting data in a meaningful way is becoming a skill set in much demand. This presentation will provide a hands-on experience of developing data visualization dashboards using tools such as PowerBI and Tableau for better understanding and decision-making.
CyberMary: St. Mary’s University at the Cyber-Map of San Antonio
Cyber threats are emerging more than ever in today’s digital world, and organizations are faced with constantly staying a step ahead to avoid falling prey to cybercriminal attacks. In response, the Department of Computer Science at St. Mary’s University offers a master’s program that will provide students with knowledge, skills and best practices on how to monitor, secure and safeguard an organization’s cyber assets. A uniquely St. Mary's program, the Master of Science in Cybersecurity combines technical rigor with sound ethics and implications to the law. To serve the needs of individuals who would like to increase their knowledge and skill levels in the field of cybersecurity in a short time frame, St. Mary’s University offers a graduate Certificate in Cybersecurity.  The certificate program focuses on presenting students with the fundamental principles and hands-on experience in protecting networks, computers, programs and institutional data from attack, damage or unauthorized access. At the undergraduate level, we propose to offer concentrations in cybersecurity and information assurance. Moreover, the Computer Science department offers summer camps for middle and high school students to raise students' awareness of the cybersecurity field, and increase interest in cybersecurity careers and diversity in the cybersecurity workforce of the nation. This talk covers the different cybersecurity programs at St. Mary’s University. Some details about course descriptions and some hands-on attacks will be shown.

Interactive web application development

The prolific use of Internet in our everyday life has enabled the continued growth of web applications. The very basic script used for building web pages is still HTML. Since the first web page created in 1990, HTML has undergone several revisions and in doing so web development has simplified and improved the user experience. Web pages today can change its appearance in response to a user’s browser size. The original web pages which were static are now not only static but also dynamic. There are various technologies available to enable dynamic web paging. This work is to give a gentle introduction to interactive webpage development using JavaScript on the client side. We will introduce jQuery using JavaScript, and look at functional programming in the context of callback functions to created interactive webpages. The hands-on work will include web application development using JavaScript and jQuery where the script resides either in the webpage file or in an external file. To run JavaScript, the work will use a web browser.  

Social Engineering Awareness Training

Social engineering assaults are far-flung and considered as a huge risk to different associations. Social engineering can cost targets thousands if not, a significant number of dollars yearly as it assaults individuals with getting to or learning an association's touchy data. Today, most assailants use different strategies and long range informal communication conspires with a specific end goal to get proficient and individual data of their objectives. The general population who are most defenseless to social engineering assailants are the new workers, trailed by contractual workers, HR, official collaborators, IT staff, and business pioneers. Sadly, a few associations don't have a mindfulness and anticipation program to counter social engineering. Additionally, some associations don't have security strategies or worker preparing that avoid strategies of social engineering. In this application, we will introduce social engineering techniques and how to prevent social engineering attacks to the users. The application will be divided into four different categories that are classes, tests, dashboard, and simulations. The classes will be divided into five classes. Each class will contain three lessons or more to help the user understands each class.

Computer Assisted Design of a Course Syllabus

Computer Assisted Design of a Course Syllabus (CADCS) is aimed at developing an automated tool to generate syllabi in an effort to facilitate, streamline, and improve overall syllabi quality for the courses taught at Lamar University (LU). Generating an automated tool for syllabi creation is motivated by Lamar University Instructors, according to the Undergraduate University Curriculum Committee. It represents an important contribution for LU Community in helping both the Students and Instructors for viewing a simplified version of the syllabus for all departments and courses. The tool is also aligned with LU branding effort mentioned in LU strategic plan.

Why Teach Microsoft PowerShell

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Why Teach PowerShell?
Microsoft describes PowerShell as “a task-based command-line shell and scripting language… built on the .NET Framework. PowerShell's capabilities allow you to simplify and automate tedious and repetitive tasks by creating scripts and combining multiple cmdlets together.
What is so great about PowerShell? Why should your students learn it?

  • It’s here to stay
  • Most Microsoft products will eventually use it
  • Microsoft server products can be managed
  • It can make your job easier
  • Many GUIs are PowerShell front ends
  • Microsoft certification exams contain PowerShell questions
  • Microsoft considers it important
  • If you do not learn it, someone else will

What can your students do with PowerShell?
Here are some things that they can do easily in PowerShell:

  • Create user accounts in Active Directory
  • Navigate the Windows Registry like the file system
  • Get information about the make and model of a computer
  • Add/Remove a printer
  • Install an MSI package on a remote computer
  • Enter into a remote PowerShell session
  • Run a script on a remote computer
Setting Up a Raspberry Pi User Group

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What is AlamoARIA? AlamoARIA is Alamo Raspberry pI hAckerspace.  A hackerspace is a community-operated workspace where people with common interests, often in computers, technology, and electronics can meet, socialize and collaborate. The Alamo Raspberry pI hAckerspace supports computing for the Raspberry Pi which is a series of credit card-sized single-board computers developed in the United Kingdom by the Raspberry Pi Foundation to promote the teaching of basic computer science in schools and developing countries.

In this roundtable, we will discuss setting up of a user group to support the Raspberry Pi.
 

21st Century GIS Technician Training in UAS Technology

The Unmanned Aircraft System Technology Education Consortium (UASTEC) is a three year (2016-2019) NSF-funded project designed to build the state of Texas first comprehensive UAS academic program for two year community colleges.  The $788,000 project started in September 2016 and will run for three year through summer 2019.  The project has the following main goals:

  • Create three new UAS technology courses to train GIS technicians.
  • Develop a new statewide recognized (THECB) Occupational Skills Award degree.
  • Secure the approval of our new courses under the Workforce Education Course Manual (WECM) by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) for statewide replication.
  • Train teachers to integrate UAS into their high school and college curriculums.
  • Sustain the GIS/UAS program at Del Mar College through partnerships with employers, academic institutions, UAS and GIS industry, non-profit and professional organizations.

In this presentation we will demonstrate our curriculum materials, lab examples, and assessments.  We will demonstrate the types of field experiences in flight planning, data acquisition, data post-processing and GIS analysis the courses will cover.  We will discuss the Student Learning Outcomes with audience members to see if they agree or disagree with the skills we seek to train in our GIS technicians.  Expect a highly interactive and participative session.

Broadening Participation in Undergraduate Research

Freshman interest in majoring in computer science has grown in recent years, but almost 50% of those majoring in computing do not complete their computing degrees.  The highest attrition rates typically occur during the first two years.  It is widely accepted that engaging undergraduates in research can promote their retention, but undergraduate research typically targets juniors and seniors with high grade point averages.  If we can include freshmen and sophomores who are not necessarily the most talented, we have the potential to broaden the base of undergraduate researchers and retain more students in computing.  This is not easy because freshmen and sophomores and students who are less talented often do not have the necessary skills and confidence to do research.  The author has successfully engaged over 50 undergraduates in team research in computer science under the umbrella of three different grant supported retention programs since 2002.  While engaging undergraduates in team research is not new, this work is innovative in that (1) most of the students have been female, minority, low income, and/or first generation students; (2) many have been B and even C+ students; and (3) many have been freshmen and sophomores.  The students have presented their research in venues ranging from informal local talks to formal presentations at local, state and national professional conferences.  Several have won awards for their research presentations.  The presentation describes how research teams can be formulated and guided with a view to broadening participation in undergraduate research.

Introducing Deep Learning in an Introductory Artificial Intelligence Class

In the past few years, deep learning has made breakthroughs in many areas, including robotics, search engines, games, diagnostic systems, smartphones, and vision.  It is used in Google’s Android phones for speech understanding and generation, improving accuracy to over 95%.  In May of 2017, Google’s team used deep learning to defeat the human Go master.  Deep learning is also used by IBM, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, Baidu, and many other technology companies, and there is a strong job market for individuals with expertise in this area.  The author has created a module for introducing deep learning to students in an Introduction to Artificial Intelligence class.  The Intro to AI class provides a broad coverage of many AI topics, only one of which is machine learning, so an in-depth coverage is not practical.  The instructional materials have been developed so as to give students a basic understanding of deep learning and its applications and some hands-on experience.  The author will present these materials, which include PowerPoint slides, online demonstrations of deep learning used in computer vision and games; and a homework assignment.  The homework assignment gives students hands-on experience in deep reinforcement learning as applied to games.  Students read a paper describing the approach, experiment with learning parameters, and analyze the results, without having to program. 

Using App-based Reinforcement in Intro Computer Science Programming Classes

Intro programming classes garner students with a wide range of programming experience.  The intro class at Baylor is designed to provide students rigorous lecture and programming experience to help them succeed.  However, the assignments are standardized for the whole class according to a set of instructional goals.  The goal of this research is to provide a phone app-based assessment tool for the students to help them gauge their learning.  The app is designed to provide short, low risk/pressure quizzes and adapts the resources it provides based on the quiz results.  These resources include text and videos from their textbook publisher for material that the students got wrong on the quiz.  The software is intended to tap into the students’ propensity for short interactions on their phones while providing the appropriate level of additional resources based on their needs.

Computer Science Seminar:  A Career Planning Course for Computer Science Majors

Much of a Computer Science major’s curriculum centers on assuring that they acquire the technical knowledge and skills that they need in order to succeed in the workplace.  However, little is usually done formally and consistently to ensure that they succeed in acquiring that first job.  St. Mary’s University Computer Science Department has developed a one-credit hour course to address this gap in a student’s education.  Called Computer Science Seminar, the course is offered at the Sophomore, Junior, and Senior levels during the fall semester and is required of all CS majors.  Its goal is to get students involved in planning and executing their job search early in their college career.  Topics covered in the course range from developing/maintaining a quality resume and effective job interview skills to learning business etiquette and appropriate attire.  In addition, a major component of this course is the eight-10 representatives from the San Antonio area that are invited to come speak about their company and the types of jobs that they have to offer computer science majors.  St. Mary’s has included this course as part of their required computer science curriculum for four years.  Data indicate that the students are learning a lot about the job search process and become engaged much earlier, resulting in the majority of CS majors successfully landing a job well before their graduation date.  Additionally, the students have enjoyed spending time together so much that they launched a computer science club that meets every week called the Infinite Loops.

Understanding How Firewall Works through Working on iptables

The network firewall is an important topic in cybersecurity education. Many cybersecurity textbooks include the material discussing the firewall in theoretical aspect.

A hands-on project on firewall is essential for students to learn the material in the textbook. The hands-on experience of setting up the firewall reinforces the concepts and principles of firewall. In addition, designing the firewall configuration (i.e., packet-filtering rules) is a process of applying the knowledge of the Internet protocols learned in computer networking courses.

This presentation introduces iptables, a built-in firewall utility on Linux, and hands-on projects based on iptables. Inside Linux kernel 2.4 and later versions, there is a component, called netfilter, providing the firewall functionality. The iptables program is a user-space program used to set up the packet-filtering rules of the Linux kernel firewall.

The iptables program on Linux is an ideal venue for firewall projects. First, Linux is free and can be installed alongside existing Windows installation. Secondly, iptables is pre-installed in virtually all types of Linux distributions. Lastly, iptables has a command-line user interface. The command-line interface is universal across Linux distributions and easier to teach.

Currency Collector VR

The Currency Collector VR application is an educational game with a gaze-base user interface that was developed for Android smartphones with a gyroscope sensor using the game engine Unity. Using a VR head-mounted display (HMD) is recommended but not required to play this game. The game will have the user in a virtual environment walking around collecting currency from a selected country. United States of America, Canada, India, Mexico, and Saudi Arabia are countries where currency can be collected from. As currency is collected the users will become familiar with what it looks like and begin to remember their values.

The game has an auto walk feature that begins once the game is started. Users can walk in the direction they are gazing at. The auto walk feature will be temporarily disabled when the user gazes at the floor. Users can walk around the world collecting coins by simply walking through them. Collecting all the currency in each country will earn gold bars which can be used to purchase additional features in the game. Users can purchase landmark cubes for each country after collecting 8 gold bars.

Learning does not have to be boring! Virtual reality is an emerging technology that will expand the way people learn. Children or anyone who would like to identify currency could benefit from playing this game and have fun.

Beyond HB 5, HB3593

The computer science for ALL movement in K-16 arena has been taking shape for the last several years. Two years ago, Texas legislature enacted HB 5 which state that all high school in Texas are required to offer a minimum of 2 computer science courses and count CS as a LOTE.  This year the new HB3593 has gone beyond to bring computer science from Tech APPs to be part of CTE and states that CS courses can now be counted as credit for one of these course, Math, Science, and LOTE in the new bill.  These changes were enacted to help encourage more students to take CS courses in high school. In this presentation, we will examine the impact of this new law in Texas and what this means to colleges and universities across the state.  Everyone in CS education should be in-the-know of what is happening and how this is going to impact CS education across the State going forward.

Bridging K-12 CS with College CS

In this round table discussion we will look at the issues what is currently happening across our state with K-12 computer science courses and College courses.  How can colleges partner with K-12 to ensure that  proper pedagogy is happening so that the students are well prepared when they come to college to reduce the current attribution in the underrepresentation populations in computer science courses .

As we embark in the computer science for ALL mantra that is all around the world today. There is a need for an open and candid dialogue between Universities/Colleges, and K-12 to ensure what is happening in the lower grades is going to make a difference to all students.  The candid conversation needs to start with what is the end game here?  Are we looking to ensure that all students can code?  What is coding and how does it impact the students who are doing this in K-12?  Is coding computer science?  Do teachers who are taking a crush course for certification using pseudocode prepared to teach computer science in high school? And what is all the rave computational thinking? These conversations will lead to research or white paper that ACET can produce with our voice in this talk of CS for ALL .

Inquiry and Equity in Teaching CS

Inquiry learning allows students to discover and come to their own “truths” about the material that they are learning. It has been shown in research that students who engage in inquiry learning tend to be successful in learning, retaining, and understanding the subject matter better than most other forms of teaching. In inquiring learning the teacher/professor is a facilitator of learning. Allowing students to discover the material with few carefully designed prompts.  Students then either bring in their background knowledge to understanding of the material to in answering the questions posed or research the material that they don’t know hence inquiring and learning without the teacher lecturing to the student and bring their own understanding to the subject matter.  In equity, the lead facilitator ensures that material and examples used in prompts are suitable for the audience before them and not examples that are found in most textbooks for computer science that don’t talk to the audience seating before the facilitator.  Audience attending these presentations will see examples of inquiry and equity based teaching that is useful and relevant to students of all ages.

Collaborative Multi-Scale Design Maps:
Supporting Creative Team Learning Experiences Online

We present a new hybrid online learning technology, collaborative multi-scale design mapping, to support creative team learning. Team project-based learning has been shown to improve retention, student satisfaction, diversity, and learning performance. Our integrated research and education project connects creativity with participation, through a creative learning platform across a range of courses at Texas A&M University.
            Multi-scale design mapping involves collecting and organizing design artifacts to support an iterative creative design processes. Collected design artifacts could include web clippings, diagrams, labels, writing, images, video, and embedded documents. These artifacts are then spatially organized in an unstructured zoom-able canvas to create a design map. Like traditional maps, design maps spatially encode knowledge relationships. The problem is that as traditional linear media such as PDFs and PowerPoints grow long, relationships become hard to see. Multi-scale design maps support students in discovering relationships among design artifacts.
            We present a novel online learning technology for supporting creative team projects, examples of how it has been integrated into different course pedagogy, preliminary data and findings from its use, and how others can incorporate the tool into their own projects or courses.

Surviving the impossible! How information technology, namely social media, has helped people in a war torn Syria to connect

With the advances in social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Skype and many other valuable tools and sites in the WWW, learning has become independent of time and geography. The situation in Syria has created enormous difficulty on college students and all types of learners to continue their learning. The study explores the options that have been available to these students to continue learning. Also, the study will discuss the difficulties and tragic events that minimized the opportunity for the learners to continue learning in that country. This study includes a survey to question students and learners at different ages, educational backgrounds, and wealth status about how technologies have helped them to continue their education. One issue will prevail in the study, that technology and human spirit can work together to overcome some of the most challenging conditions know to us in recent years.

Using MS Excel as a data analytics tool. What is new, convenient, and inexpensive?

Excel, as a spreadsheet, is very robust application software. Data analytics (DA) is taking the world by storm. You hear about big data (BD) and DA almost in every information technology articles. This article examined Excel to see if there any chance for using it as a DA tool. Excel 2013 added PowerPivot and Power View. These features allow users to expand the number of the rows beyond the 1 million records available in every spreadsheet in Excel. This presentation builds on a previous paper by the presenter to further explore the use of PowerPivot along with Data Analysis Expression (DAX). DAX comes with functions very similar to the one you find in an Excel spreadsheet. It is a powerful formula language. In addition to being a strong formula language, DAX has the capability of working with a relational database to produce an aggregate calculation. This presentation will not only discuss PowerPivot as a tool in an introductory class in data analytics but also will demonstrate the use of this powerful tool.

Roundtable – The future of teaching introduction to programming. What is there? Which language is the best? How long do we need to wait to change?

It is about time to discuss the available computer languages for introductory programming in both fields: Information Systems (IS) and Computer Science (CS). Is it C? Or maybe it is Python, Java, or even Visual Basic for Application (VBA) found in Excel? This is a round table discussion that will cover the available computer languages in academia and the business world to use in an introductory programming class. The discussion should be timely, 2017, and appropriate to instructors to prepare our students for a degree in IS or CS. The discussion should focus on these two fields knowing that they are related but still different. The discussion will result in spotting out the most introductory languages for both fields.

Educating 21st Century GIS Technicians with UAS Technology

In this presentation we will demonstrate our curriculum materials, lab examples, and assessments.  We will demonstrate the types of field experiences in flight planning, data acquisition, data post-processing and GIS analysis the courses will cover.  We will discuss the Student Learning Outcomes with audience members to see if they agree or disagree with the skills we seek to train in our GIS technicians.  Expect a highly interactive and participative session.

Mentoring the Development of Friends with Different Abilities

An educational computer game was developed in GameMaker Lite 8.1 for a science fair project that had 69 subjects take a pre-test, play the game, and take a post-test about learning disabilities (ADHD, autism, Asperger’s, dyscalculia, dyslexia, physical). The game Friends with Different Abilities presented information within the twelve rooms of the game, and it is available to download at www.EducationalComputerGaming.com. The goal of the game was to complete tasks in the rooms for an orientation of a school. The project showed that a game can be made to present information about disabilities and that it was effective in learning about the disabilities. This presentation discusses the ups and downs of mentoring the development of the game and the process to test its effectiveness, as well as the awards won along the way.

Building the CS Pipeline: WeTeach_CS K-12 Teacher Professional Development

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According to the Texas Education Agency, in 2014 only 2% of Texas high school graduates have taken a Computer Science class. That same year, Texas colleges and universities only had 2,103 Computer Science graduates per Code.org. Of those graduates, only 16% were female. Today, there are over 38,000 open computing jobs in our state alone.

The WeTeach_CS program provides intensive and sustained K-12 professional development for Texas teachers with a focus on increasing the number of trained and certified Computer Science (CS) teachers along with equitable access for all students.

Face-to-face and online offerings strive to increase the number of certified Computer science teachers in Texas, increase the number of high schools that offer CS, increase the number of students that enroll in high school CS course, broaden and diversify student enrollment in CS courses to open doors for EVERY student, and expand coding, programming, computational thinking, and CS opportunities for students in K-8 to build a pipeline for a CS pathway in the STEM endorsement.

WeTeach_CS manages the Certification Incentive Program (CIP) that provides a $1000 stipend for Texas teachers who pass the CS 8-12 Test and obtain TEA CS certification. 

The WeTeach_CS Collaboratives are comprised of 29 projects across the state of Texas that include institutions of higher education, educational service centers (ESCs), local education agencies, and nonprofit entities.

Teaching Root Cause Analysis in a Security course

Even with laws and technology, corporations still have computer/information security incidents. 
Not only do corporations need to protect, but also be able to detect and respond. But, what happens after that? Understand the cause to take corrective actions. This is where Root Cause Analysis comes in. It is used in many fields. However, it is not taught in higher education information/computer security classes. There is very little literature on applying RCA when there is an information/computer security incident. This presentation shows the need to teach RCA in an information security course. The presentation goes on to the benefits. In other words, learn how to learn from mistakes.

When more computer professionals have RCA knowledge, causes can be found which lead to corrective actions in policies, processes, and procedures.

Cloud Security Issues

Many corporations are outsourcing their I.T. needs to large data-centers on the Internet. New problems arise. Who has the encryption keys? What assurance is there in segregation of different customers’ data? What are the risks? And what impact does legal jurisdictions have on client’s data at a vendor’s data-center? Does the benefits justify the risks?  This presentation covers the answers to these questions and looks at the levels of control between client and vendor. Legal and compliance topics are discussed. Finally, cloud application security and operations topics are also discussed. What will be stressed are the U.S.A. laws that were never designed for cloud computing.