SIGCSE 2008
March 12-15, 2008
Portland, Oregon, USA
Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education
SIGSCE 2008
March 12-15, 2008 • Portland, Oregon, USA
March 12-15, 2008 • Portland, Oregon, USA
Return to SIGCSE 2008 General Information Page
| Anonymous Reviewer Code | Overall Score |
|---|---|
| A | 4 |
| B | 4 |
| C | 3 |
| D | 5 |
| E | 6 |
| F | 3 |
| Avg. of 6 Revs. | 4.2 |
Leader-Recommended Subjects: Networks/Data Communications, Programming Languages/Paradigms, Distributed/Parallel Computing
| Reviewer-Recommended Subjects: |
CS1/2 | |
| Overall Score: | 4 | Comments: There is a lot here that CS1/2 instructors may like. Students would definitely like seeing game networking applications discussed in late CS1 or CS2. My only concern: there is no indication that the authors have actually done this in late CS1 or CS2. I am not sure how many instructors do RMI in CS1 or CS2; but it may not be that hard to do. They say they have done this in other classes for non-majors at the 200/300 levels, so it looks promising. The authors are promising complete materials to help the audience to adopt this in their classes. |
| Oral Presentation Comments: Convince the audience that all this is doable in late CS1 and CS2 with very little addition to the CS1 syllabus. | ||
| Reviewer-Recommended Subjects: |
CS1/2 Networks/Data Communications | |
| Overall Score: | 4 | Comments: Networked game playing sounds interesting for software development projects. However, I'm troubled by 2 things: (a) doing it in CS1 / CS2 sounds like too much (we have had bad experiences trying to teach Python too early) and (b) the system sound VERY complicated to set up. Perhaps these questions are just the questions to be answered in a workshop. I think they would work against a successful workshop, however. |
| Oral Presentation Comments: Take my questions head on in a workshop. State why CS1/CS2 students would not have problems. And state why this complicated setup is not a hindrance. | ||
| Reviewer-Recommended Subjects: |
CS1/2 Networks/Data Communications Pedagogy Wider Access | |
| Overall Score: | 3 | Comments: I very much like the idea of enticing students with "cool" programming problems to take the sting out of the usual CS1/2 topics. Great imagination. I'm a little skeptical that it's a good idea pedagogically to introduce asynchronous distributed system issues that arise in multi-player network games when the learning programmer is still dealing with essentials. If the proposal claimed some measured outcome improvement based on this technique, I could be more positive. Alas, it doesn't. |
| Oral Presentation Comments: Present the kinds of exercises you use to control the complexity that students need to deal with in an asynchronous multi-node network environment. | ||
| Reviewer-Recommended Subjects: |
Algorithms Artificial Intelligence Graphics/Visualization Multimedia Object-Oriented Issues Software Engineering Human-Computer Interface Web-based Techniques and Web Services Wider Access | |
| Overall Score: | 5 | Comments: Very good proposal. |
| Oral Presentation Comments: If accepted bring some examples, tutorials etc. | ||
| Reviewer-Recommended Subjects: |
Networks/Data Communications Graphics/Visualization Multimedia Software Engineering Pedagogy | |
| Overall Score: | 6 | Comments: It is not immediately clear that the authors' approach will bring this topic within reach of a CS1 audience, but it would certainly be fascinating to see them try to achieve this! As I see it, the proposed workshop addresses a genuine issue -- that of making network programming more accessible and interesting, and increasing students' motivation -- and the approach used is a reasonably novel one. I particularly like the idea of presenting both a traditional, Java-based solution and a higher-level, Python-based alternative. The proposal is cogent and well-written. Careful thought has clearly been given to the workshop, and it seems likely that participants would have an awful lot of fun doing it. |
| Oral Presentation Comments: Consider using Twisted for the networking part of the Python solution? It would be interesting to see whether this simplified or complicated matters relative to using plain old Python sockets. Have you looked at pygsear or other frameworks as alternatives to using livewires? | ||
| Reviewer-Recommended Subjects: |
CS1/2 Networks/Data Communications | |
| Overall Score: | 3 | Comments: The use of games is always an extra motivation for the students. We have use it in CS2, but only as an environment where the students could test their approaches to the problem. The aim of the problem was to develop a good algorithm for a task performed by a game character. What we have here is a little different. Is to use the game development to teach the concepts of CS1/CS2. In my opinion, the approach fails to provide some essential fundamentals that must be though on CS1/CS2, and is to bounded to language dependent details instead of concepts. The purpose of CS1/CS2 courses is to teach algorithms, programming concepts and structure. For instance, I cannot understand the relevance of introducing the details of Java-RMI (such as its interfaces) at this point. |
| Oral Presentation Comments: Focus in the concepts instead of the language-dependent details. | ||