Most teachers of English as a Second/Foreign Language (ESL/EFL) would agree that their job is not just to teach language, but also to teach culture. While it is not a problem to accept this dual role, the complication lies in choosing what type of cultural content to include in their lessons. First, they have to decide whether a cultural component…

Carefully engineered playable games can serve as vehicles for students and practitioners to learn and explore the programming of advanced computer architectures to execute applications, such as high performance computing (HPC) and complex, inter-networked, distributed systems. The article presents families of playable games that are grounded in…

Programming is a fundamental component of modern society. Programming and its applications influence much of how people work and interact. Because of people's reliance on programming in one or many of its applications, there is a need to teach students to be programming literate. Because the purpose of the International Technology and Engineering…

Modern education technologies are destined to reflect the realities of a modern digital age. The juxtaposition of real and synthetic (computer-generated) worlds as well as a greater emphasis on visual dimension are especially important characteristics that have to be taken into account in learning and teaching. We describe the ways in which an…

Images, whether at the level of molecules, cells, organs, organisms, or environments, are at the core of many biological disciplines. Even with the contemporary emphasis on molecular analysis, biology has retained its traditional strong visual component. In courses that rely on the study of biological structure, the presentation of images for…

In this paper we offer a report on a university-level programming laboratory course that has been designed on top of a programming library. The course enforces soft skills, such as code inspection and team working, sharpens implementation skills and creates a bridge between introductory, language-specific instruction and senior-year full-blown…

The majority of current web-based learning systems are closed learning environments where courses and learning materials are fixed, and the only dynamic aspect is the organization of the material that can be adapted to allow a relatively individualized learning environment. In this paper, we propose an evolving web-based learning system which can…

Students lose interest in learning programming when the materials are not related to their lives. A challenge facing most students is that they lack the financial literacy necessary to manage their debts. An approach is developed to integrate financial literacy into an object-oriented programming (OOP) course. The approach is effective in…

Recursion is a concept that can be used to describe the phenomena and natural occurrences in many different fields. As many applications utilize computer software to model recursion, recursion is a particularly important concept in the computing discipline. However, it is a difficult concept for many undergraduate students to master. A Recursion…

Institutional characteristics of preschool centers can influence the successful implementation of professional development programming. This article provides an overview of a dynamic Head Start teacher professional development program. The program, conducted by a well-respected theatre-in-education organization, was designed to help preschool…

This paper describes the redesign and implementation of the course, "Introduction to Programming for Engineers" using microcontroller (MCU) hardware as the programming target. The objective of this effort is to improve the programming competency for engineering students by more closely relating the initial programming experience to the student's…

One of the key features that draws many people to play video games is the fact that they are interactive. Video games allow the user to be actively engaged and in control of the action (Prensky, 2006). Seventh grade students at Canonsburg Middle School are actively engaging in the creation of video games. The students are engaged at a much deeper…

In this paper "Derive" functions are provided for the computation of the Moore-Penrose inverse of a matrix, as well as for solving systems of linear equations by means of the Moore-Penrose inverse. Making it possible to compute the Moore-Penrose inverse easily with one of the most commonly used Computer Algebra Systems--and to have the blueprint…

The following paper has been conceived to deal with the contents of some lectures aimed at enhancing courses on digital electronic, microelectronic or VLSI systems. Those lectures show how to use a hardware description language (HDL), such as the VHDL, to specify, design and verify a custom microprocessor. The general goal of this work is to teach…

The importance of the interconnectedness of academic, student, and technical support processes intrinsic to the provision of on-line instruction has been frequently depicted as a "service Web," with students at the center of the infrastructure. However, as programming to support distance learning continues to develop, such service Webs have grown…