I want to spend my sabbatical year re-thinking my perspective on C++ and Assembler and how to teach engineering and computer science material using those two languages. To keep myself focused I'll need a target application, ideally with hardware. In fact, two applications would be ideal: Controlling chip heat Alarm system The first application would […]
I don't like Assembler programming. I was forced to use it in 1997 in EE 380 on the Motorola 68000 with Prof NelsonDurdle at the University of Alberta. Ditto, for C++. My C professor, Prof. Martin Mintchev, in EE 445 convinced me that it was bloated and terrible. So, since that time, I've been programming in C on […]
The Teaching in Focus (TiF) conference at York was held online in 2021 due to the pandemic. Here's a list of the abstracts. My "Welcome to my Classroom" talk was based on the work I did in EECS 1011, 1021 and 2021: Giving students rapid and accurate feedback is vital. We can do so with […]
Introduction It's May, 14, 2021 and the consensus is that COVID is airborne, that the characteristics of aerosols play a significant role in how it spreads and infects. This is distinct from the outdated assumption that it is spread primarily through droplets and/or surface contact (foamites). Summary: Add CO2 Sensors to our Classrooms & Offices […]
Introduction The 1st year programming courses in the Lassonde School at YorkU were revamped for the 2020/21 school year so that students could do hands-on lab activities from home. The students took two programming classes: Matlab procedural programming in Fall 2020 Java object-oriented programming in Winter 2021 In both courses the students used Arduino-compatible […]
Introduction Microchip's MPLAB X permits simulation from the command line. This is interesting from the perspective of teaching if we have automatically-graded programming assignments that take the student's program and runs it against a simulated chip in an LMS like Moodle. Background I'm interested in how we can use the MDB in MPLAB X to […]
I enabled "completion tracking" on my eClass (Moodle) class pages. It's a great way for students to see how much work they have completed and how much work still needs to be done. Instructors can also use it to see how students are doing and to send messages as appropriate. I describe the "how-to" for […]
[draft / in progress] A number of students in EECS 1021 have encountered a few problems when trying to get a simple JavaFX program working in IntelliJ. The problem appears to happen mostly on the Windows 10 machines, but does also happen on macOS. Background The setup: IntelliJ IDEA 2020 Community Edition, AdoptOpen JDK 14 […]
This is the first semester that I've taught 100% online. The Fall 2020 lockdown and the YorkU strike in 2018 gave me a taste of what it would be like and alerted me to the need for restructuring of my classes in order to make them more favourable to learning. During the pandemic, students are […]
Introduction I've been looking for ways to tie in course learning outcomes to a course on eClass (Moodle). While the Outcomes framework on eClass is an appealing candidate for this, it seems to require manual grading and interventions to work. After suggestions from Profs Mojgan Jadidi and Melanie Baljko who had previously used it, I've […]