A Robust Portable Environment for First-Year Computer Science Students
- Brown, Dane L, Connan, James
- Authors: Brown, Dane L , Connan, James
- Date: 2021
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/465113 , vital:76574 , xlink:href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-92858-2_6"
- Description: Computer science education in both South African universities and worldwide often aim at making students confident at problem solving by introducing various programming exercises. Standardising a computer environment where students can apply their computational thinking knowledge on a more even playing field – without worrying about software issues – can be beneficial for problem solving in classroom of diverse students. Research shows that having consistent access to this exposes students to core concepts of Computer Science. However, with the diverse student base in South Africa, not everyone has access to a personal computer or expensive software. This paper describes a new approach at first-year level that uses the power of a modified Linux distro on a flash drive to enable access to the same, fully-fledged, free and open-source environment, including the convenience of portability. This is used as a means to even the playing field in a diverse country like South Africa and address the lack of consistent access to a problem solving environment. Feedback from students and staff at the Institution are effectively heeded and attempted to be measured.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2021
- Authors: Brown, Dane L , Connan, James
- Date: 2021
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/465113 , vital:76574 , xlink:href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-92858-2_6"
- Description: Computer science education in both South African universities and worldwide often aim at making students confident at problem solving by introducing various programming exercises. Standardising a computer environment where students can apply their computational thinking knowledge on a more even playing field – without worrying about software issues – can be beneficial for problem solving in classroom of diverse students. Research shows that having consistent access to this exposes students to core concepts of Computer Science. However, with the diverse student base in South Africa, not everyone has access to a personal computer or expensive software. This paper describes a new approach at first-year level that uses the power of a modified Linux distro on a flash drive to enable access to the same, fully-fledged, free and open-source environment, including the convenience of portability. This is used as a means to even the playing field in a diverse country like South Africa and address the lack of consistent access to a problem solving environment. Feedback from students and staff at the Institution are effectively heeded and attempted to be measured.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2021
Early dehydration detection using infrared imaging
- Poole, Louise C, Brown, Dane L, Connan, James
- Authors: Poole, Louise C , Brown, Dane L , Connan, James
- Date: 2021
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/465656 , vital:76629 , xlink:href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Louise-Poole-3/publication/357578445_Early_Dehydration_Detection_Using_Infrared_Imaging/links/61d5664eb8305f7c4b231d50/Early-Dehydration-Detection-Using-Infrared-Imaging.pdf"
- Description: Crop loss and failure have devastating impacts on a country’s economy and food security. Developing effective and inexpensive systems to minimize crop loss has become essential. Recently, multispectral imaging—in particular visible and infrared imaging—have become popular for analyzing plants and show potential for early identification of plant stress. We created a directly comparable visible and infrared image dataset for dehydration in spinach leaves. We created and compared various models trained on both datasets and concluded that the models trained on the infrared dataset outperformed all of those trained on the visible dataset. In particular, the models trained to identify early signs of dehydration yielded 45% difference in accuracy, with the infrared model obtaining 70% accuracy and the visible model obtaining 25% accuracy. Infrared imaging thus shows promising potential for application in early plant stress and disease identification.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2021
- Authors: Poole, Louise C , Brown, Dane L , Connan, James
- Date: 2021
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/465656 , vital:76629 , xlink:href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Louise-Poole-3/publication/357578445_Early_Dehydration_Detection_Using_Infrared_Imaging/links/61d5664eb8305f7c4b231d50/Early-Dehydration-Detection-Using-Infrared-Imaging.pdf"
- Description: Crop loss and failure have devastating impacts on a country’s economy and food security. Developing effective and inexpensive systems to minimize crop loss has become essential. Recently, multispectral imaging—in particular visible and infrared imaging—have become popular for analyzing plants and show potential for early identification of plant stress. We created a directly comparable visible and infrared image dataset for dehydration in spinach leaves. We created and compared various models trained on both datasets and concluded that the models trained on the infrared dataset outperformed all of those trained on the visible dataset. In particular, the models trained to identify early signs of dehydration yielded 45% difference in accuracy, with the infrared model obtaining 70% accuracy and the visible model obtaining 25% accuracy. Infrared imaging thus shows promising potential for application in early plant stress and disease identification.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2021
Using Technology to Teach a New Generation
- Connan, James, Brown, Dane L, Watkins, Caroline
- Authors: Connan, James , Brown, Dane L , Watkins, Caroline
- Date: 2021
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/465223 , vital:76584 , xlink:href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-92858-2_8"
- Description: Introductory programming courses attract students from diverse backgrounds in terms of ability, motivation and experience. This paper introduces two technological tools, Thonny and Runestone Academy, that can be used to enhance introductory courses. These tools enable instructors to track the progress of individual students. This allows for the early identification of students that are not keeping up with the course and allows for early intervention in such cases. Overall this leads to a better course with higher throughput and better student retention.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2021
- Authors: Connan, James , Brown, Dane L , Watkins, Caroline
- Date: 2021
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/465223 , vital:76584 , xlink:href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-92858-2_8"
- Description: Introductory programming courses attract students from diverse backgrounds in terms of ability, motivation and experience. This paper introduces two technological tools, Thonny and Runestone Academy, that can be used to enhance introductory courses. These tools enable instructors to track the progress of individual students. This allows for the early identification of students that are not keeping up with the course and allows for early intervention in such cases. Overall this leads to a better course with higher throughput and better student retention.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2021
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