Assessment Report for COT4810 Section 1
COT 4810: Topics in Computer Science (Spring 2013)
Designation: Required for BSCS program.
Catalog Description:
A range of topics from the field of computer science. Applications of oral and written communication skills. Social, ethical and moral issues of computing. The societal implication of advances in computer and information sciences and technologies,.
Pre-requisite and/or Co-requisite Course(s):
COP 3402, COP 3503, and COT 3960 (Foundation Exam)
References: (the links to the papers were provided on the class Web site)
Required reading: How to give a talk
Turing awards -
Classical papers
Computational models: Turing, Turing-correction
Early computers: UNIVAC-report, vonNeuman- Probabilistic Logic
Programming languages: Hoare, Backus,
Distributed systems: “Distributed snapshots: determining the global states of distributed systems” by K. Mani Chandy and Leslie Lamport
Survey papers
Algorithms: Local Ratio Approximation Algorithms, Approximate String Matching,
Designing Programs that Check their Work, External Memory Algorithms
Architecture: Processor with Explicit Multi-threading, Networks on a Chip, Power Reduction of Microprocessors,
Reconfigurable Computing, Cellular Automata
Collaboration networks: Newman
Compiling: Just in Time (JIT) Compilation
Distributed systems: Group Communication, Publish-subscribe Paradigm, Access Control in Collaborative Systems, Roll Back Recovery Protocols
Future challenges: Gordon Bell’s talk
Models: Modeling Time in Computing
Networking and Ad-hoc Networks: Packet Classification Techniques, Anonymity Communication,
Peer-to-peer Contents Distribution, Overlay Networks,
Topology Control in Ad-hoc Networks
Novel paradigms: Introduction to Quantum Computing, Quantum Cryptography
Novel applications: Computer Systems for Music, Face Recognition, Bioinformatics
Programming languages: Data Flow Programming Languages,
Security: Key Management for Secure Communication, Denial of Service Attacks
Sensor: Sensor Networks Survey, OS for Sensor Networks, Sensor Networks Security,
Information Fusion in Sensor Networks,
Utility computing, grids, and clouds: Berkeley Report, Data Grids
Web: Web Metrics,Replication for Web Hosting,Web Page Classification, Web Cache Replacement Strategies
“Algorithms design and analysis techniques” by E.M. Reingold, in Algorithm and Theory of Computation Handbook, Edited by M.K. Atallah, CRC Press, 1999, ISBN 0-8493-2649-4.
“Consistent global states of distributed systems; fundamental concepts and mechanisms” by O. Babaoaglu and K. Marzullo. In Distributed Systems, Edited by Sape Mullender, pp. 55-94, Addison-Wesley, 1993, ISBN 0-2-1-62427-3.
“Authentication in distributed systems” by Butler Lampson. In Distributed Systems, Edited by Sape Mullender, pp. 543-579, Addison-Wesley, 1993, ISBN 0-2-1-62427-3
Course Outcomes and Measures
Course Outcome & Measures / Mapping toProgram Outcomes / Performance
Criteria
Outcome 1: To enhance professional oral and written communication skills of every student in the class. Each student gives two, 25 minutes, presentations and answers questions related to the papers presented.
Measuresthe oral skills in
- Two presentation
- The answers to questions related to each the presentation
- Two papers, each expanding on the ideas discussed in the presentation. Each paper was structures as a paper submitted to a publication to a journal.
Outcome 2: To test the ability to grasp major ideas in a presentation and to critically evaluate presentations of their peers. The students are asked to:
a. Provide a review of the paper(s) including ethics and technological changes issues;
b.Analyze the depth of the technical discussion;
c.Evaluate the clarity of the presentation;
d.Evaluate the interaction with the audience and the answers to the questions;
e.Provide additional comments and suggestions for improvements.
Measures the writing skills exhibited in the:
- 33 reviews of the papers presented by other students.
Outcome 3: To understand the process of technological changes in the society and the role of computer science. The students are required to read the relevant papers related to each presentation, comment on the process of technological changes in the society and the role of computer science, and write a final paper. Measures the quality of the:
1.Paper on social impact of information science and technology. / #6,#7 / Two thirds of the class should receive 80% or better on the final paper covering the process of technological changes in the society and the role of computer science.
Outcome 4: To understand the basic ethical and professional issues inherent in the discipline of computing. To enhance student ability to objectively evaluate a presentation. The students are required to read the relevant papers related to each presentation, comment on the ethical and professional issues inherent in the discipline of computing, and write a final paper. Measures the quality of the:
1.Paper on ethical implications of computer and information / #5,#6 / Two thirds of the class should receive 80% or better on the paper on ethics.
Quality Goal: 50% of all students who receive 70% or above shall meet or exceed the assessment threshold for each Course Assessment Outcome.
Relationship of the course to the Degree Program Outcomes:
- BSCS Degree Program, Outcome 5:Demonstrate an understanding of professional, ethical, legal, security, and social issues and responsibilities.CAC(e) (maps to course outcome #4 )
- BSCS Degree Program, Outcome 6:Communicate effectively with a range of audiences; in particular, graduating majors shall demonstrate effective oral and written communication skills while disseminating technical information about computing technology and its applications.CAC(f) (maps to course outcomes #1 and #2 )
- BSCS Degree Program, Outcome 7:Analyze the local and global impact of computing on individuals, organizations and society. CAC(g) (maps to course outcomes #3 )
Relationship of the course to CAC Outcomes:
Course Outcomes / CAC Outcomesa / b / c / d / e / f / g / h / i / j / k
1 / x
2 / x
3 / x
4 / x
Course Content and Assessment Plan
Assignment / Purpose / Outcome / Performance CriteriaOral presentation, answers to questions, and the ability to write a paper on the subject 40 % of the grade. / Test student ability to expose clearly the technical ideas of one or more papers. To test their intellectual curiosity and ability to select relevant papers for the presentation. / #1 / Two thirds should receive 80% or better
The ability to critically evaluate a presentation and grasp its main ideas. 20%
of the grade. / To test the ability to grasp major ideas in a presentation and to critically evaluate the presentations of their peers. / #2 / Two thirds should receive 80% or better
The paper on the social impact of computer science 20% of the grade. / To test student’s understanding of the social impact of technological changes and the role of computer science / #3 / Two thirds should receive 80% or better
The paper on ethics.
20% of the grade / To test students understanding of ethics in computer science / #4 / Two thirds should receive 80% or better
Topics Covered .
Week 1
MondayJanuary 7 / Instructor / Class organization
Wednesday
January 9 / Instructor / Ethics in computer science
Friday
January 11 / Instructor / Impact of information technology
Week 2
MondayJanuary 14 / Tony Aguilar / Wireless networks
Monday
January 14 / Brian Woods / Machine learning in automated textcharacterization
Wednesday
January 16 / Rodney Anderson / Landmark recognition
Wednesday
January 16 / Keith Williams / Introduction to threading
Friday
January 18 / Omar Garcia / Defending against denial of service attacks
Friday
January 18 / Neil Weber / Network neutrality
Week 3
WednesdayJanuary 23 / Michael Galleti / Surface detection in 3D worlds
Wednesday
January 23 / Bryan Warren / Network routing
Friday
January 25 / Hosam Bassioni / Copy protection
Friday
January 25 / Daniel Vivas-Garcia / User modeling
Week 4
MondayJanuary 28 / Steven Batten / RISC vs CISC architectures
Monday
January 28 / Bruno Sobral / Solid state drives
Wednesday
January 30 / Thomas Beaver / Wireless network security protocols and their vulnerabilities
Wednesday
January 30 / John Singleton / Playing poker with the devil; secure information flow in the Android environments
Friday
February 1 / Melanie Kaproki / Automated surveillance: how far is too far?
Week 5
MondayFebruary 4 / Nicholas Buelich / Graph drawing
Monday
February 4 / Cody Seibert / Computer systems for expressive performance of music
Wednesday
February 4 / Michael Cardenas / CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA Computer Security tools
Wednesday
February 4 / Thomas Ollweiler / Load balancing in content distribution networks
Friday
February 4 / Daniel Carpenter / The evolution of game artificial intelligence
Friday
February 4 / Adam Nutt / Unity3D and serious games
Week 6
MondayFebruary 11 / Russell Cheatham / Analysis of crypters and RATs (Remote Administrative Tools)
Monday
February 11 / Jose Murillo / Access control in collaborative systems
Wednesday
February 13 / Ian Martin / Computer and information ethics: a historical examination.
Friday
February 15 / Jordan Dubique / Computer-aided drug discovery
Friday
February 15 / Jacob Hoffmann / Google file system
Week 7
MondayFebruary 18 / Brandon Forster / The patentability of algorithms
Monday
February 18 / Jeffry Loppert / Fault tolerance
Wednesday
February 20 / Sarah Duncan / Philosophical problems in AI
Wednesday
February 20 / Kawai Lau / Designing programs that check their work
Friday
February 22 / Justin Frederick / Current state of facial recognition
Friday
February 22 / Taylor Kourim / Impact of the digital millennium copyright act
Week 8
MondayFebruary 25 / Michael Funchess / Intellectual property protection
Monday
February 25 / Rodney Anderson / Context - free grammar in computational biology
Wednesday
February 27 / Tony Aguilar / Cellular automata
Wednesday
February 27 / John Gibson / Ada versus Java.
Week 10
MondayMarch 11 / Kwai Lau / Cloud computing
Monday
March 11 / Brian Woods / The ACM code of ethics
Wednesday
March 13 / John Gibson / The world is in your hands – cellular phones
Wednesday
March 13 / Keith Williams / Recursive functions
Friday
March 15 / Neil Weber / Electronic waste
Week 11
MondayMarch 18 / Michael Galletti / Three states and a plan: the AI of F.E.A.R
Monday
March 18 / Bryan Warren / File systems
Wednesday
March 20 / Hosam Bassiouni / Modern GPUs
Wednesday
March 20 / Daniel Vivas-Garcia / Google - the anatomy of a search engine
Friday
March 22 / Steven Batten / Procedural generation
Friday
March 22 / Bruno Sobral / Discrete-continuous optimization for multi-target tracking
Week 12
MondayMarch 25 / Thomas Beaver / Quantum computing and quantum cryptography
Monday
March 25 / John Singleton / Beautiful concurrency: a new approach to shared memory parallel processing
Wednesday
March 27 / Melanie Kaprocki / Haptic technology
Wednesday
March 27 / Jacob Hoffmann / History of concurrent programming
Friday
March 29 / Nicholas Buelich / Genetic algorithm
Friday
March 29 / Cody Seibert / An Overview of SIFT(Scale Invariant Feature Transform)
Week 13
MondayApril 1 / Michael Cardenas / Augmented reality
Monday
April 1 / Thomas Ollweiler / Intellectual Property and Related Ethical Concerns
Wednesday
April 3 / Daniel Carpenter / Digital rights management
Wednesday
April 3 / Adam Nutt / Using C++ within C#; a case study in Unity3D
Friday
April 5 / Russel Cheatam / Overview of the TOR network
Friday
April 5 / Jose Murillo / Before we knew it: zero-day attacks
Week 14
MondayApril 8 / Ian Martin / Ethics and the advancement of military technology
Wednesday
April 10 / Jordan Dubique / Clinical Decision Support Systems
Wednesday
April 10 / Michael Funchess / Artificial neural networks and finite-state machines
Friday
April 12 / Sarah Duncan / Artificial neural networks
Friday
April 12 / Jeffrey Loppert / Recommender systems and the Netflix Prize
Week 15
MondayApril 15 / Taylor Kourim / The evolution of Google search
Wednesday
April 17 / Justin Frederick / Feasibility of electronic voting
Wednesday
April 17 / Brandon Forster / Mechanical computing
Friday
April 19 / Faculty / Quantum information processing
Class Schedule:
Number of sessions per week: 3 sessions per week Duration of each session: 50 minutes
Contribution of course to meeting the Professional Component:
Math & Science Topics: <3> Engineering Topics: <0> General Education Topics: <0>
Assessment Data
Course Outcomes / #1 / #1 / #2 / #3 / #4 /Outcome
#1 /
Outcome #2 /
Outcome #3 /
Outcome #4
Faculty evaluative of
student’s papers / Students evaluation of the student’s presentations / Student’s reviews / Societal impact paper / Ethics
paper
student1 / 98, 95 / 94, 95 / 100 / 90 / 85 / 96 / 100 / 90 / 85
student2 / 98, 90 / 85, 85 / 69 / 90 / 90 / 90 / 69 / 90 / 90
student3 / 98, 95 / 93, 92 / 85 / 100 / 100 / 95 / 85 / 100 / 100
student4 / 95, 98 / 89, 93 / 42 / 100 / 100 / 94 / 42 / 100 / 100
student5 / 92, 85 / 92, 92 / 91 / 95 / 90 / 90 / 80 / 95 / 100
student6 / 90, 94 / 85, 90 / 87 / 90 / 95 / 90 / 87 / 90 / 95
student7 / 85, 95 / 91, 93 / 91 / 95 / 90 / 91 / 91 / 95 / 90
student8 / 92, 95 / 95, 92 / 70 / 95 / 90 / 94 / 70 / 95 / 90
student9 / 98, 95 / 91, 93 / 71 / 95 / 90 / 94 / 71 / 95 / 90
student10 / 70, 100, EC91 / 83, 93 / 88 / 100 / 98 / 100 / 88 / 100 / 98
student11 / 95, 100 / 92, 91 / 62 / 95 / 90 / 95 / 62 / 95 / 90
student12 / 90, 95 / 90, 91 / 97 / 95 / 90 / 92 / 97 / 95 / 90
student13 / 92, 95 / 95, 92 / 91 / 92 / 100 / 94 / 91 / 92 / 100
student14 / 90, 90 / 84,84 / 95 / 90 / 90 / 87 / 95 / 90 / 90
student15 / 98, 0 / 94,0 / 0 / 0 / 0 / 48 / 0 / 0 / 0
student16 / 98, 92 / 93, 93 / 11 / 95 / 92 / 94 / 11 / 95 / 92
student17 / 98, 95 / 91, 93 / 100 / 100 / 90 / 94 / 100 / 100 / 90
student18 / 98, 90 / 89, 88 / 100 / 100 / 90 / 91 / 100 / 100 / 90
student19 / 90,95 / 91, 93 / 83 / 90 / 100 / 92 / 83 / 90 / 100
student20 / 96, 100 / 93, 94 / 100 / 100 / 100 / 93 / 100 / 100 / 100
student21 / 85,80 / 78, 75 / 91 / 80 / 80 / 80 / 91 / 80 / 80
student22 / 92, 95 / 91, 90 / 77 / 95 / 92 / 92 / 77 / 95 / 92
student23 / 100, 100 / 90, 90 / 55 / 98 / 95 / 95 / 55 / 98 / 95
student24 / 95, 92 / 87, 92 / 91 / 98 / 80 / 92 / 91 / 98 / 80
student25 / 85, 90 / 93, 92 / 86 / 98 / 98 / 90 / 86 / 98 / 98
student26 / 90, 90 / 89, 91 / 97 / 100 / 98 / 90 / 97 / 100 / 98
student27 / 100, 90 / 88, 91 / 95 / 98 / 100 / 92 / 95 / 98 / 100
student28 / 99, 95 / 90, 93 / 91 / 100 / 100 / 94 / 91 / 100 / 100
student29 / 100, 98 / 96, 88 / 100 / 98 / 95 / 95 / 100 / 98 / 95
student30 / 98, 90 / 83, 85 / 89 / 90 / 85 / 89 / 89 / 90 / 85
student31 / 90, 90 / 89, 88 / 17 / 98 / 100 / 89 / 17 / 98 / 100
student32 / 95, 95 / 95, 95 / 69 / 90 / 88 / 95 / 94 / 100 / 100
student33 / 90, 95 / 94, 87 / 0 / 80 / 60 / 92 / 0 / 80 / 60
student34 / 95, 95 / 87, 91 / 86 / 90 / 80 / 92 / 86 / 90 / 80
Max Points / 100 / 100 / 100 / 100 / 100 / 100 / 100 / 100 / 100
Performance
Threshold % / 80% / 80% / 80% / 80% / 80% / 34/34=
100% / 25/34=
74% / 33/34 = 97% / 32/34 =
94%
Assessment Results Analysis
Quality Goal: 50% of all students who receive 70% or above shall meet or exceed the assessment threshold for each Course Assessment Outcome.
Outcome 1: To enhance professional & technical oral and written communication skills.
Outcome 2: To develop the ability to objectively evaluate a presentation of the peers and grasp the main ideas of a presentation.
Outcome 3: To understand the societal impact of the development in computer and information sciences and technology.
Outcome 4: To understand the basic ethical and professional issues in computer science and computer technology.
Recommendation based on Assessment Results
At the beginning of the class the instructor provided a list of topics and papers; this list included seminal papers, some written by Turing award winners, as well as, surveys of important areas of computer science. The students were asked to choose topics from this list or discuss with the instructor the possibility of presenting topics related to their research interests. This turned out to be a very good idea; the majority of the presentations were of a very high quality; they showed the enthusiasm of the students for their research and generated interesting discussions. The students are required to do a literature search and identify important resources for each topic they present. The majority of presentations cover multiple recent papers. Ethics questions and the impact of computer science and technology are addressed throughout the semester, as well as in several dedicated presentations.
The topics selected by the students covered a broad range of areas of computer science including: Algorithms; Computer architecture; Distributed systems; Programming languages and Systems; Computer security; Intelligent systems, The Web, Computer Vision, Gaming, and so on. This selection of topics allowed the students to follow the process of technological and theoretical changes and their impact for many areas of computer science. Virtually all presentations discussed the impact of technological changes and the ethics in computer science.
The class attendance was high and the students showed interest in the topic presented, as indicated by the fair number of questions during and after each presentation. Many CS students are involved in undergraduate research and their interest in research was stimulated. The students were encouraged to suggest improvements to the class.
Submitted by: Dr. Dan C. MarinescuDate: May 2013
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