PSD Summer Scholarship 2006 Pict Blog

Over the last few years we (Swinburne, and more specifically the Gang of Geeks) have been working on developing a new software development focused degree, the Bachelor of Science(Professional Software Development) or PSD for short. The first group of PSD students have now completed their first year of the degree. There have been some issues but the course has been moving along well and the students have been great.

To encourage these students to extend themselves we created the first PSD Summer Scholarship. This program has now started and the students are making progress on several game related projects. They will be maintaining a Pict Blog (picture blog) to document their progress. Feel free to check out their work and leave some comments...

I am still alive

Well it has been a while since my last post...

Exams have finished and the semester is now over, so what did I learn this year? Well basically things went to plan and I have been happy with the results this semester, where as semester 1 was a bit of a mixed bag. Semester 1 I was teaching the new Algorithmic Problem Solving and the old Enterprise .NET, while I took the new Object Oriented Programming and the old Advanced .NET in semester 2.

Algorithmic Problem Solving was really great, I used approaches from the Beyond Bullet Points to plan the subject and to develop the lectures. I feel that this helped manage the amount of material covered in each presentation. The results for APS were really good, not just from a numeric point of view but also from the learning outcomes. Enterprise .NET on the other hand was a bit of a mess, and as a result will not run next year as I develop new material for it.

Object Oriented programming took off where APS finished. This was also a great success, but probably not as much as APS. With some more planning and re-work the results should be better still next year. Advanced .NET was really great to deliver, but still needs some rework for next year. The focus on concurrency is really now starting to concentrate on the unique issues in .NET, which is much better now.

The new approaches to assessment also went well though I think I may have over done it a little. I like the idea of pass, distinction, and high distinction assessment items, though I would like to know what the students thought of it...

Since the end of exams I have been creating the new Database Programming material. So far the development is going slowly, but I have been distracted by so many things. I hope to really get into it soon.

Coming up for me is the PSD Summer Scholarship, I will be supervising six students who will work on developing some software and tutorial like material or four weeks. The guys start next week so I better get something organised for them :)