An Experience-Driven Pedagogy for the Instruction of Software Testing in Computer Science

In the realm of computer programming, the experience of writing a program is used to reinforce concepts and evaluate ability. This research uses three case studies to evaluate the introduction of testing through Kolb's Experiential Learning Model (ELM). We then analyze the impact of those testing experiences to determine methods for improving future courses. The first testing experience that students encounter are unit test reports in their early courses. This course demonstrates that automating and improving feedback can provide more ELM iterations. The JUnit Generation (JUG) tool also provided a positive experience for the instructor by reducing the overall workload. Later, undergraduate and graduate students have the opportunity to work together in a multi-role Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) course. The interactions use usability analysis techniques with graduate students as usability experts and undergraduate students as design engineers. Students get experience testing the user experience of their product prototypes using methods varying from heuristic analysis to user testing. From this course, we learned the importance of the instructors role in the ELM. As more roles were added to the HCI course, a desire arose to provide more complete, quality assured software. This inspired the addition of unit testing experiences to the course. However, we learned that significant preparations must be made to apply the ELM when students are resistant. The research presented through these courses was driven by the recognition of a need for testing in a Computer Science curriculum. Our understanding of the ELM suggests the need for student experience when being introduced to testing concepts. We learned that experiential learning, when appropriately implemented, can provide benefits to the Computer Science classroom. When examined together, these course-based research projects provided insight into building strong testing practices into a curriculum.

Building Up: A history of Montana Tech Library 1900 - 2006

This paper traces the history of the Library of the Montana State School of Mines from its inception in 1900 to 2006. The history includes sketches of the library directors over 106 years, and the library’s various campus locations and emerging collections and services.

Earth Science and Communities: Great Earthquakes to Wild Rice

Connections between earth science and communities are not clear to many communities. This talk explores the geologic setting, the infrastructural damage, and the impact on communities of recent large earthquakes in Taiwan, Turkey, Haiti and Japan. Decisions made about geologic hazards had a profound impact on human life and the built environment. Ridgway shares how Purdue is building connections between the scientific community and Native American communities—especially by engaging Native American students in research on tribal lands.

Building an Academic Cloud for 500,000 Users

Under the brand name “sciebo – the Campuscloud” (derived from “science box”) a consortium of more than 20 research and applied science universities started a large scale cloud service for about 500,000 students and researchers in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state. Starting with the much anticipated data privacy compliant sync & share functionality, sciebo offers the potential to become a more general cloud platform for collaboration and research data management which will be actively pursued in upcoming scientific and infrastructural projects. This project report describes the formation of the venture, its targets and the technical and the legal solution as well as the current status and the next steps.

Science for the Carpathians: Using Regional Capacity to Cope with Global Change

Emphasizing the global and regional importance of mountain ecosystem services and referring to the anticipated future environmental changes affecting the provision of these services, this chapter takes a closer look at the Carpathian Mountains. In addition to climate change and general effects of globalization, rapid socioeconomic transformations after the fall of the Iron Curtain pose an extra challenge to the sustainable development of the region. Describing the early efforts of organizing mountain science through programs such as UNESCO MAB and UNEP at the global scale, this chapter focuses on the recent history of research coordination for the European mountains, in particular on the activities of the Carpathian Convention and the European Program of the Mountain Research Initiative, which were among main driving factors for the initiation of the Science for the Carpathians (S4C) network. This regional mountain research network was established in 2008 to foster scientific collaboration and communication and to promote applied research and capacity building, which in turn would support sustainable development in the Carpathian Mountains. Forum Carpaticum, a biennial open science conference, has become a central activity of the S4C network counting more than 400 members today.

Can the green economy enhance sustainable mountain development? The potential role of awareness building

Mountain socio-ecological systems produce valuable but complex ecosystem services resulting from biomes stratified by altitude and gravity. These systems are often managed and shaped by smallholders whose marginalization is exacerbated by uncertainties and a lack of policy attention. Human–environment interfaces in mountains hence require holistic policies. We analyse the potential of the Global Mountain Green Economy Agenda (GMGEA) in building awareness and thus prompting cross-sectoral policy strategies for sustainable mountain development. Considering the critique of the green economy presented at the Rio + 20 conference, we argue that the GMGEA can nevertheless structure knowledge and inform regional institutions about the complexity of mountain socio-ecological systems, a necessary pre-condition to prompt inter-agency collaboration and cross-sectoral policy formulation. After reviewing the content of the GMGEA, we draw on two empirical cases in the Pakistani and Nepali Himalayas. First, we show that lack of awareness has led to a sequence of fragmented interventions with unanticipated, and unwanted, consequences for communities. Second, using a green economy lens, we show how fragmentation could have been avoided and cross-sectoral policies yielded more beneficial results. Project fragmentation reflects disconnected or layered policies by government agencies, which inherently keep specialized agendas and have no incentive to collaborate. Awareness makes agencies more likely to collaborate and adopt cross-sectoral approaches, allowing them to target more beneficiaries, be more visible, and raise more funds. Nevertheless, we also identify four factors that may currently still limit the effect of the GMGEA: high costs of inter-agency collaboration, lack of legitimacy of the green economy, insufficiently-secured smallholder participation, and limited understanding of the mechanisms through which global agendas influence local policy.

Building the capacity for learning and change through reflective conversation

Conversation is central to the process of organizational learning and change. Drawing on the notion of reflective conversation, we describe an action research project, "learning through listening" in Omega, a residential healthcare organization. In this project, service users, staff, members of management committees, trustees, managers, and central office staff participated in listening to each other and in working together towards building capacity for creating their own vision of how the organization could move into the future, according to its values and ethos. In doing so they developed ways of engaging in reflective conversation that enabled progress towards a strategic direction.