Education Papers

Permanent URI for this collection

https://diglib.eg.org/handle/10.2312/285

Browse

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6

The Art and Science of Digital Production Arts
(The Eurographics Association, 2011) Davis, Tim A.; House, Donald H.; S. Maddock and J. Jorge
As its name implies, digital production arts incorporates both technical and artistic aspects. The challenge of any program in this discipline is to balance these two components in such a way that each enhances the other the technical aspect provides new tools and techniques for artists to explore, while the art aspect drives digital tech-nology in new directions. Students interested in digital production arts require both generalized and specialized education in each field, with additional emphasis on synthesis of both. The Digital Production Arts program at Clemson University strives to accomplish this goal through an interdisciplinary program with major components in art and computer science. Graduates of our program seek to apply their skills in special effects and computer ani-mation in the rapidly expanding field of film, television, and gaming.
The Five Design-Sheet (FdS) approach for Sketching Information Visualization Designs
(The Eurographics Association, 2011) Roberts, Jonathan C.; S. Maddock and J. Jorge
There are many challenges for a developer when creating an information visualization tool of some data for a client. In particular students, learners and in fact any designer trying to apply the skills of information visualization often find it difficult to understand what, how and when to do various aspects of the ideation. They need to interact with clients, understand their requirements, design some solutions, implement and evaluate them. Thus, they need a process to follow. Taking inspiration from product design, we present the Five design-Sheet approach. The FdS methodology provides a clear set of stages and a simple approach to ideate information visualization design solutions and critically analyze their worth in discussion with the client.
High-Level Application Development for non-Computer Science majors using Image Processing
(The Eurographics Association, 2011) Shesh, Amit; S. Maddock and J. Jorge
In many ways it is a unique challenge to teach programming and high-level application development to noncomputer science majors like information systems. Simple visual computing can be a very helpful tool in such situations because it enables programs to produce something students can see. This paper describes a semesterlong experience of using image-processing as the theme in a course to teach programming and program design to students of information systems. Students progressively built a fairly complete image processing application from scratch in a bottom-up fashion using Java. They first concentrated on using low-level constructs like arrays and implementing several operations on them, and then supplemented their programs with features like a GUI complete with undo-redo features and capabilities to handle most standard image file formats. This allowed us to satisfy all the objectives of a typical programming course while simultaneously exposing students to developing meaningful applications from scratch with standard features. Our classroom was comprised of a mix of undergraduate and graduate students lacking sufficient programming background. With minor variations, our approach can be fit to courses for other majors where programming is considered useful but not critical.
In at the Deep End: An Activity-Led Introduction to Creative Computing with Interactive Computer Graphics
(The Eurographics Association, 2011) Anderson, Eike Falk; Peters, Christopher E.; Liarokapis, Fotis; Halloran, John; S. Maddock and J. Jorge
Misconceptions about the nature of the computing discipline(s) pose a serious problem to faculties that offer computing degrees, as students enrolling on their programmes come to realise that their expectations are not met by reality. This frequently results in the students' early disengagement from the subject of their degrees which in turn can lead to excessive 'wastage', i.e. reduced retention. In this paper we report on our academic group's attempts within creative computing degrees at a UK university to counter these problems through the introduction of a six week long project that newly enrolled students embark on at the very beginning of their studies. This group project provides a breadth-first, activity-led introduction to their chosen academic discipline, aiming to increase student engagement while providing a stimulating learning experience with the overall goal to increase retention. Having run in two iterations, we believe that this approach has been successful, with students showing increased interest in their chosen discipline and noticable improvements in retention following the first year of the students' studies.
Interdisciplinary Game Projects: Opening the Graphics (Back) Door with the Soft Skills Key
(The Eurographics Association, 2011) Bidarra, Rafael; S. Maddock and J. Jorge
Project-based Computer Science (CS) education was introduced at Delft University of Technology more than 10 years ago, and its instructive and motivating potential has steadily increased. Among the projects offered, the second year Games project has justly become the integrator course par excellence of the Computer Science BSc curriculum. Recently, a pioneer, campus-wide course Building Serious Games followed up on that success, making MSc students face the new and exciting challenges of serious game development. More importantly, these projects bring most students for the first time to work together in a realistic and interdisciplinary game development team, involving fellow students pursuing a variety of other degrees, at other faculties or even at other schools. Since we set up such collaborations, all parties have witnessed a considerable leap forward in their students' soft skills, including communication, self discipline, mutual appreciation and team management. We describe several game project features that we have developed and exploited throughout the years, often in collaboration with experts from numerous Dutch game studios. Among other goals, we seek that our students experience the contribution of the various disciplines involved in the development of a computer game, and acquire a nononsense view on the real game industry, which turns out to value more the personal soft skills of new applicants than their elaborate graphics programming abilities. Our experience is that a streamlined collaboration in interdisciplinary teams is a very powerful catalyst that significantly raises the proficiency level achieved by students of all curricula. As to our own CS students, the volume and depth of the computer graphics expertise acquired in this process is incomparably higher than we could possibly have expected.
PhD Education Through Apprenticeship
(The Eurographics Association, 2011) Patel, Daniel; Gröller, M. Eduard; Bruckner, Stefan; S. Maddock and J. Jorge
We describe and analyze the PhD education in the visualization group at the Vienna University of Technology and set the education in a larger perspective. Four central mechanisms drive the PhD education in Vienna. They are: to require an article-based PhD; to give the student freedom to choose research direction; to let students work in shared offices towards joint deadlines; and to involve students in reviewing articles. This paper describes these mechanisms in detail and illustrates their effect.

Browse

Browsing Education Papers by Title

Results Per Page

Sort Options