Stuff I'm working on or interested in learning more about:
Last updated Aug 2006

Current and Recent Student Projects:

Robert Hughes's independent study on greedy algorithms in Fall 2006.
Mike DeMetro's internship in Fall 2006.
James Tweedale's internship at CACI, Dahlgren in Summer 2004.
Kevin Buffardi's honor's project on digital music in Fall 2003, Spring 2004.
Joey Wilson's internship at PCI, Dahlgren in Summer 2003. He wrote a paper titled "Web Development and Scripting Languages" to fulfill part of the academic component of the internship.
Nada Basit's honor's project on using JSP and PHP with databases in Fall 2002, Spring 2003.
Justin Donnelly's independent study project on creating a Web interface for a hardware simulation program in Spring 2003.
Upcoming & Recent Conference Presentations:
At the Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges - Eastern Conference (UmW!! - Oct 2006) Panel presentation: "Undergraduate Research: What Works?"

At the Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges - Eastern Conference (Iona College, NY - Oct 2005)
Paper presentation: "Using Peer Review as a Vehicle for Communication Skill Development and Active Learning"

At the Frontiers in Education Conference (Indianapolis, IN - Nov 2005)
Paper presentation: "Research Methods: Teaching Students How to Learn about Learning"

At the Consortium for Computer Science in Colleges - Eastern Conference (Loyola College, MD - Oct 2004)
Workshop presentation: "Open Source, Freeware and Shareware Resources for Web Programming"

At the World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications (Switzerland - June 2004)
Demo presentation: "Net-Centric Project-Oriented Internet and Web Courses"

At the Consortium for Computer Science in Colleges - Eastern Conference (Montclair State University, NJ - Oct 2003)
Paper presenation: "Utilizing Interdisciplinary Teams in Teaching E-Commerce"
Panel presenation: "Group projects across the Curriculum"

At the Technical Symposium for Computer Science Education Conference: SigCSE 2003 (Reno, NV - Feb 2003)
Workshop presentation: "Java Servlets"
Session Chair: Data Structures
Paper Reviewer

At the Consortium for Computer Science in Colleges - Eastern Conference (Bloomsburg University, PA - Oct 2002)
Paper presentation: "Professional Practice Components in Writing: A Simple Way to Enhance an Existing Course"
Panel presentation: "E-commerce and the Undergraduate Curriculum"
Student poster judge

At the Consortium for Computer Science in Colleges - Southeastern Conference (Furman University, SC - Nov 2002)
Paper presentation: "Experiences Teaching Writing in a Computer Science Course for the First Time"

Professional Projects

Currently Ernie Ackermann and I are writing a book and creating a 300-level course in Web programming.

Web programming: Spring 2004 I offered a new CPSC elective. The course covers the basics of Web programming for server-side applications including XHTML, CSS, PHP, JSP, Perl, and SQL. Students created Web sites that showcased various aspects of server-side Web applications.

E-commerce: Summer 2002 I offered a new CPSC elective: Electronic Commerce Programming during the May/June summer session (2002). The course allowed CPSC students to explore the world of e-commerce programming including: JavaServer Pages, Java Servlets, JavaScript and HTML. Students worked in interdiciplinary teams along with BUAD majors to develop a functional website to market/sell a product. The development of this course was sponsored in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation. I worked in partnership with professors at several other colleges including George Washington University to develop the course. The MWC course webpage is here . The webpage at GWU is here . I presented some of the research that I did about JavaServer Pages at the Faculty Academy Conference in May 2002. I have a list of potential independent study projects related to e-commerce if anyone is interested.

Networks: I'm planning to add more hands on activities related to computer security to my CPSC 414 Network Principles and Applications course (formerly CPSC 470K). I'm planning to integrate new projects using the Java networks API.

Computer Science Education: I'm interested in new ideas to improve undergraduate computer science education including communication skill development (writing and speaking), active learning, group projects, challenges of teaching in a small and/or liberal arts school.... Prof Zaidman and I met with a focus group in fall 2003 and got some ideas for improving the climate and perception of the department/major. This summer I attended a workshop on writing sponsored by the Writing Center at MWC.