Title: ReflectSim: an open-source software for teaching optical light reflection of nanostructured materials
Abstract Leveraging computational resources for modern physics education has become increasingly prevalent, especially catalyzed by the COVID-19 pandemic when distance learning is widely implemented. Herein, we report an open-source software for students and instructors to on-demand simulate optical reflection behaviors of one-dimensional photonic crystals (1D-PCs), a model system for understanding light–matter interactions relevant to materials science and optical physics. Specifically, our MATLAB application, ReflectSim, employs an adapted transfer matrix method simulation and can account for the effects of several critical material design parameters, including interfacial roughness and layer geometry, to determine the reflectance spectrum of user-defined 1D-PCs. By packing our codes into a graphical user interface, this software is simple to use and bypass the requirement of any coding experiences from users, which can be widely used as an education tool in high school/undergraduate classrooms and K-12 outreach activities. We believe that ReflectSim provides great potential for assisting students in understanding optical phenomenon in nanostructured layered materials and relevant scientific concepts through enabling more engaging learning experiences. more »« less
Giboney, Justin Scott; McDonald, Jason K.; Balzotti, Jonathan; Hansen, Derek L.; Winters, Desiree M.; Bonsignore, Elizabeth(
, TechTrends)
null
(Ed.)
In this paper we introduce an approach to cybersecurity education and helping students develop professional understanding in the form of a Playable Case Study (PCS), a form of educational simulation that draws on affordances of the broader educational simulation genre, case study instruction, and educational Alternate Reality Games (or ARGs). A PCS is an interactive simulation that allows students to “play” through an authentic scenario (case study) as a member of a professional team. We report our findings over a multi-year study of a PCS called Cybermatics, with data from 111 students from two different U.S. universities who interacted with the PCS. Cybermatics increased student understanding about certain key aspects of professional cybersecurity work, improved their confidence in being able to successfully apply certain skills associated with cybersecurity, and increased about half of the students’ interest in pursuing a cybersecurity career. Students also reported a number of reasons why their perceptions changed in these areas (both positive and negative). We also discuss design tensions we experienced in our process that might be encountered by others when creating simulations like a PCS, as they attempt to balance the authenticity of designed learning experiences while also sufficiently scaffolding them for newcomers who have little background in a discipline.
Park, Younghee; Hu, Hongxin; Yuan, Xiaohong; Li, Hongda(
, Proceedings of the 49th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE'18))
Software-Defined Networking (SDN) represents a major shift from ossified hardware-based networks to programmable software-based networks. It introduces significant granularity, visibility, and flexibility into networking, but at the same time brings new security challenges. Although the research community is making progress in addressing both the opportunities in SDN and the accompanying security challenges, very few educational materials have been designed to incorporate the latest research results and engage students in learning about SDN security. In this paper, we presents our newly designed SDN security education materials, which can be used to meet the ever-increasing demand for high quality cybersecurity professionals with expertise in SDN security. The designed security education materials incorporate the latest research results in SDN security and are integrated into CloudLab, an open cloud platform, for effective hands-on learning. Through a user study, we demonstrate that students have a better understanding of SDN security after participating in these well-designed CloudLab-based security labs, and they also acquired strong research interests in SDN security.
A solid understanding of electromagnetic (E&M) theory is key to the education of electrical engineering students. However, these concepts are notoriously challenging for students to learn, due to the difficulty in grasping abstract concepts such as the electric force as an invisible force that is acting at a distance, or how electromagnetic radiation is permeating and propagating in space. Building physical intuition to manipulate these abstractions requires means to visualize them in a three-dimensional space. This project involves the development of 3D visualizations of abstract E&M concepts in Virtual Reality (VR), in an immersive, exploratory, and engaging environment.
VR provides the means of exploration, to construct visuals and manipulable objects to represent knowledge. This leads to a constructivist way of learning, in the sense that students are allowed to build their own knowledge from meaningful experiences. In addition, the VR labs replace the cost of hands-on labs, by recreating the experiments and experiences on Virtual Reality platforms.
The development of the VR labs for E&M courses involves four distinct phases: (I) Lab Design, (II) Experience Design, (III) Software Development, and (IV) User Testing. During phase I, the learning goals and possible outcomes are clearly defined, to provide context for the VR laboratory experience, and to identify possible technical constraints pertaining to the specific laboratory exercise. During stage II, the environment (the world) the player (user) will experience is designed, along with the foundational elements, such as ways of navigation, key actions, and immersion elements. During stage III, the software is generated as part of the course projects for the Virtual Reality course taught in the Computer Science Department at the same university, or as part of independent research projects involving engineering students. This reflects the strong educational impact of this project, as it allows students to contribute to the educational experiences of their peers. During phase IV, the VR experiences are played by different types of audiences that fit the player type. The team collects feedback and if needed, implements changes.
The pilot VR Lab, introduced as an additional instructional tool for the E&M course during the Fall 2019, engaged over 100 students in the program, where in addition to the regular lectures, students attended one hour per week in the E&M VR lab. Student competencies around conceptual understanding of electromagnetism topics are measured via formative and summative assessments. To evaluate the effectiveness of VR learning, each lab is followed by a 10-minute multiple-choice test, designed to measure conceptual understanding of the various topics, rather than the ability to simply manipulate equations.
This paper discusses the implementation and the pedagogy of the Virtual Reality laboratory experiences to visualize concepts in E&M, with examples for specific labs, as well as challenges, and student feedback with the new approach. We will also discuss the integration of the 3D visualizations into lab exercises, and the design of the student assessment tools used to assess the knowledge gain when the VR technology is employed.
There is a critical need for more students with engineering and computer science majors to enter
into, persist in, and graduate from four-year postsecondary institutions. Increasing the diversity
of the workforce by inclusive practices in engineering and science is also a profound identified
need. According to national statistics, the largest groups of underrepresented minority students in
engineering and science attend U.S. public higher education institutions. Most often, a large
proportion of these students come to colleges and universities with unique challenges and needs,
and are more likely to be first in their family to attend college. In response to these needs,
engineering education researchers and practitioners have developed, implemented and assessed
interventions to provide support and help students succeed in college, particularly in their first
year. These interventions typically target relatively small cohorts of students and can be managed
by a small number of faculty and staff. In this paper, we report on “work in progress” research in
a large-scale, first-year engineering and computer science intervention program at a public,
comprehensive university using multivariate comparative statistical approaches.
Large-scale intervention programs are especially relevant to minority serving institutions that
prepare growing numbers of students who are first in their family to attend college and who are
also under-resourced, financially. These students most often encounter academic difficulties and
come to higher education with challenging experiences and backgrounds. Our studied first-year
intervention program, first piloted in 2015, is now in its 5th year of implementation. Its
intervention components include: (a) first-year block schedules, (b) project-based introductory
engineering and computer science courses, (c) an introduction to mechanics course, which
provides students with the foundation needed to succeed in a traditional physics sequence, and
(d) peer-led supplemental instruction workshops for calculus, physics and chemistry courses.
This intervention study responds to three research questions: (1) What role does the first-year
intervention’s components play in students’ persistence in engineering and computer science
majors across undergraduate program years? (2) What role do particular pedagogical and cocurricular
support structures play in students’ successes? And (3) What role do various student
socio-demographic and experiential factors play in the effectiveness of first-year interventions?
To address these research questions and therefore determine the formative impact of the firstyear
engineering and computer science program on which we are conducting research, we have
collected diverse student data including grade point averages, concept inventory scores, and data
from a multi-dimensional questionnaire that measures students’ use of support practices across
their four to five years in their degree program, and diverse background information necessary to
determine the impact of such factors on students’ persistence to degree. Background data
includes students’ experiences prior to enrolling in college, their socio-demographic
characteristics, and their college social capital throughout their higher education experience. For
this research, we compared students who were enrolled in the first-year intervention program to
those who were not enrolled in the first-year intervention. We have engaged in cross-sectional
2
data collection from students’ freshman through senior years and employed multivariate
statistical analytical techniques on the collected student data.
Results of these analyses were interesting and diverse. Generally, in terms of backgrounds, our
research indicates that students’ parental education is positively related to their success in
engineering and computer science across program years. Likewise, longitudinally (across
program years), students’ college social capital predicted their academic success and persistence
to degree. With regard to the study’s comparative research of the first-year intervention, our
results indicate that students who were enrolled in the first-year intervention program as
freshmen continued to use more support practices to assist them in academic success across their
degree matriculation compared to students who were not in the first-year program. This suggests
that the students continued to recognize the value of such supports as a consequence of having
supports required as first-year students. In terms of students’ understanding of scientific or
engineering-focused concepts, we found significant impact resulting from student support
practices that were academically focused. We also found that enrolling in the first-year
intervention was a significant predictor of the time that students spent preparing for classes and
ultimately their grade point average, especially in STEM subjects across students’ years in
college. In summary, we found that the studied first-year intervention program has longitudinal,
positive impacts on students’ success as they navigate through their undergraduate experiences
toward engineering and computer science degrees.
Harms, S. W.(
, Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), 2023)
ZORQ is a gamification software framework designed to increase student engagement within undergraduate Computer Science (CS) education. ZORQ is an attractive learning method that (1) utilizes numerous gamification elements, (2) provides a collaborative, game-development based learning approach, (3) offers an opportunity for students to explore a complex, real-world software development implementation, and (4) provides students with a high level of engagement with the system and a high level of social engagement in its collaborative customization.
The usage of ZORQ was assessed using quantitative, qualitative and sentiment analyses in a Data Structures and Algorithms course over five years. The overwhelmingly positive results show that students were satisfied with their user experience and ZORQ was beneficial to their educational experience. By triangulating results from multiple analyses, this study adds to a deeper understanding of how gamification can improve learning and retention and provides a novel, robust, holistic methodology for evaluating user experiences.
Keene, Clayton, Robertson, Mark, Sarkar, Gautam, King, Jessica, and Qiang, Zhe. ReflectSim: an open-source software for teaching optical light reflection of nanostructured materials. Retrieved from https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10336567. European Journal of Physics 43.3 Web. doi:10.1088/1361-6404/ac56b2.
Keene, Clayton, Robertson, Mark, Sarkar, Gautam, King, Jessica, and Qiang, Zhe.
"ReflectSim: an open-source software for teaching optical light reflection of nanostructured materials". European Journal of Physics 43 (3). Country unknown/Code not available. https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-6404/ac56b2.https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10336567.
@article{osti_10336567,
place = {Country unknown/Code not available},
title = {ReflectSim: an open-source software for teaching optical light reflection of nanostructured materials},
url = {https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10336567},
DOI = {10.1088/1361-6404/ac56b2},
abstractNote = {Abstract Leveraging computational resources for modern physics education has become increasingly prevalent, especially catalyzed by the COVID-19 pandemic when distance learning is widely implemented. Herein, we report an open-source software for students and instructors to on-demand simulate optical reflection behaviors of one-dimensional photonic crystals (1D-PCs), a model system for understanding light–matter interactions relevant to materials science and optical physics. Specifically, our MATLAB application, ReflectSim, employs an adapted transfer matrix method simulation and can account for the effects of several critical material design parameters, including interfacial roughness and layer geometry, to determine the reflectance spectrum of user-defined 1D-PCs. By packing our codes into a graphical user interface, this software is simple to use and bypass the requirement of any coding experiences from users, which can be widely used as an education tool in high school/undergraduate classrooms and K-12 outreach activities. We believe that ReflectSim provides great potential for assisting students in understanding optical phenomenon in nanostructured layered materials and relevant scientific concepts through enabling more engaging learning experiences.},
journal = {European Journal of Physics},
volume = {43},
number = {3},
author = {Keene, Clayton and Robertson, Mark and Sarkar, Gautam and King, Jessica and Qiang, Zhe},
}
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