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Creating questions at three different course levels

This is a short version of the more detailed post here. Your course's learning outcomes are likely tied to a "graduate attribute indicator" GAI. The learning outcome is specific to your course, but the GAI is applicable across both the program and the entire Lassonde school. When looking to assess your learning outcome, examine the […]

Bad Submarine Design

The Titan submarine was officially declared destroyed yesterday, and everyone aboard it dead, not far from the wreck of the Titanic. In the days, months and years to come, scientists, engineers and journalists will comb through documents and videos to determine what went wrong and who should be blamed for the tragedy. A number of […]

VPL in 2023: New eClass Skin

For anyone reviewing older videos or blog pages for Virtual Programming Lab on YorkU's eClass system, it's important to note that the settings "gear" has moved.

Automated student testing of Matlab code, Part 2

Here I'm going to outline an exercise in Matlab that combines the following features: A text file with four variants of the question Random selection of the variant Visual component in the form of an ASCII-art equation, like this: 2 ⋅ s + 4 ⋅ t a = ───────────── s + t The objective is […]

Learning Outcomes Example Set 5: Use Engineering Tools

Introduction This is the fifth in a series of twelve posts on recommended ways to assess learning outcomes in an engineering and computer science school whose programs follow the CEAB graduate attributes model of program characterization either directly or indirectly. These posts are intended to be used as a guide for instructors to design assessments […]

Virtual Programming Lab: Basic Examples

Heard about Virtual Programming Lab (VPL) and eClass at York and want to "kick the tires" a little? If you haven't already, VPL is a plugin for Moodle (eClass at YorkU) that allows instructors to create interactive programming activities for students. Here is some introductory material. [this may need an update after the update in […]

Automated student testing of Matlab code, Part 1

It's important to have dynamic 24/7 interactive activities for programming classes. There are plenty of solutions out there, including Matlab Grader and Möbius. The folks at Jetbrains have their Academy system, too. What I need, at this stage, is a no bells-and-whistles, auto-grader for Matlab code that can run a unit test on a student's […]

What's next for Firmata

[work in progress, Summer 2023] In the Winter of 2022 and 2023 we used Firmata and Firmata4j in the EECS 1021 class. It provides a great deal of functionality while also allowing students to focus on the development of the client on the computer rather than both the client and the Arduino server code. At […]

PEO is no place for conspiracy theories

On March 28 I read of an agenda item, entitled "Repealing the 'Entering PEO Office Protocols', in the upcoming 556th Meeting of the Council of Professional Engineers Ontario, Friday March 31, 2023. Prepared by Mr. Gregory Wowchuk and seconded by Mr. Royden Fraser, two highly placed PEO Council members, it appeared to be an attempt […]

Wear the best-fitting N95 you can

It's March, 2023. Most of the world has "moved on from COVID" and stopped wearing masks. Here at York University, the YUScreen system was dropped last month and many of the door signs about COVID have been removed. But the fact remains that there are still plenty of reasons to wear a mask* in public. […]