Creativity as expressed in HONR 296 final projects (spring 2020 edition)

Back in March, I wrote about the 68 ways learners in my Honors College course shared as ways to exhibit and document knowledge and understanding. I also described the course final project, which, in summary, was to create a tangible artifact that recorded their responses to the course’s essential questions, as it related to their chosen major(s) and/or minor(s).

The learners ended up creating visual art (2), making bread, creating collages (2), writing computer programs (2), doing a demonstration, writing an essay or report (2), creating a GIS map, creating infographics (2), writing a journal article, creating music (2), recording a podcast, writing poems, creating a poster, developing a PowerPoint presentation (2), and recording videos (2). I asked all of the students if they were willing for me to share their work. Eighteen of them responded positively, and the rest of this post is devoted to showcasing what they produced.

I encourage you to read to the end of this post, and click on all the images and links to experience the full breadth of how these students understood computer science and algorithms to impact their current and future lives. In the interest of brevity, I have not provided any commentary on them, but rather have provided a very brief description and an image or link for you to investigate further. They are not listed in any particular order.

Dan Council (left) created a GIS map of the US (along with a report), showing the correlation between education level and internet access.

Julia Steele wrote and recorded an informative podcast about her experience with computer science and algorithms, which you can listen to here.

Michaela Cox (right) created an infographic providing a variety of statistics and information about how algorithms impact us daily, ending with "continue saved game?"

Ally Swank (left) created a piece of art using nails and yarn to produce an image of a manta ray. She provided a report which described how the art represented a computer system, our inter-connectedness, algorithms, and the use of computing technology in marine biology research.

Eliza Roark (right) created a series of drawings and then used a program to convert them into ASCII art. Shown here is her drawing of Katherine Johnson of NASA fame.

Kurtis Stuckey explored the differences between live and computer generated music by writing a brief piece of music, playing it himself, and then having a computer play the same music. He recorded a video demonstrating this, along with a bit of commentary.

Ben Eger (left) wrote a simple Python program to display ASCII art and respond to the course essential questions. A brief snippet of code and sample output from the program are provided.

Nick Burrell wrote a report wherein he responded to the course essential questions. He ended with the observation that computer scientists "might be facing job insecurity in a decade or two as we develop more and more algorithms that are supposed to be self-learning. These algorithms could one day potentially write code that is so similar to human code that companies could just use these new algorithms to write programs for customers and cut out the original coders in the process."

Tauri Hagemann wrote a set of poems to address the course essential questions. Here is one of them.

we praise technology for the services it provides,
easier access, easier operation, easier life.
humans are so focused on progress,
there’s no thought of the consequence.

remote learning makes professors more available,
allows things to go on as normal amidst crisis.
except for the student who’s paying through scholarships and loans,
who can’t afford his own computer or laptop
and who doesn’t have internet at home.
he doesn’t know how he’s going to do schoolwork now.
he fears for his future and how he’ll keep up.

social media helps us stay in touch over time and distance.
but we think not of the girl who stands in her room,
crying to herself while she stares daggers at the mirror,
pinching at her stomach even though she hasn’t eaten in days.
she starves herself and curses her reflection because
she doesn’t look like the girls on her Instagram feed.

self-driving cars make travel faster and easier,
except when something goes wrong.
if they crash, who is at fault?
the passenger? the car dealer? the manufacturers?
either way, an accident has killed someone.

we praise technology for the services it provides,
but we give no thought to the consequence.

Ben Smith wrote out his responses to the course essential questions, and then took those words and fed them into an algorithm he developed which converted them into music. A portion of the music score and audio resulting from his efforts is available. After you click on the link, click on the small triangle play button in the top left of the page to listen to his creation.

Lauren Andrews (left) created a poster relating various computer science concepts to the human body. You can view a portion of her report and poster, where she discusses caching, in the provided image.

Drew Thomas (right) created a PowerPoint presentation titled "Coding for non-programmers" wherein he described in simple terms what he does as a computer scientists. A sample slide is provided.

Emma Staicer (left) created a collage to visually represent how business analytics and the course essential questions relate to everyday life. The background, person with hypnosis glasses, phone, things swirling out of the person’s head, and the  hand reaching for the person all represent different aspects of this relationship.

Genevieve Risner (right) baked bread. She observed that Amish friendship bread starter could be used in a variety of recipes, and it made her think that it could be a computer. The code would be the recipe itself and the variety of ingredients added would be its data. An example of a successful algorithm is shown. There were a couple of less than successful attempts that needed further debugging.

Autumn Auxier provided responses to the course essential questions in the form of a scientific journal article. The opening paragraph of the discussion section is provided here.

I am coming out of this class better understanding more about myself, my career, and life than I ever would have expected in a computer science course. Because I took this class, I have a better understanding of my own career in biology and I can answer the four essential questions of this class in reference to my career. Because most of my career has been dedicated to learning how to write scientifically, I chose to write this paper in the format that I would a scientific article as part of relating this class to my major. Further, because I have focused much of my academic career on research, I have been able to apply what I have learned about computer science to how I will continue to use it in my career as a researcher, no matter where or what I might be researching.

Chloe Wineinger created a compilation of SpongeBob SquarePants video clips in response to the course essential questions. I didn't know cartoons could be so educational. You can watch her compilation here.

Lexy Scheele (left) created a collage in response to the course essential questions. The brains, chickens, girl, black and white graphic, buildings, watch, and car all symbolize different parts of her response.

Jonathan Le (right) created visual organizers describing how video entertainment tropes work by using algorithms to simplify many aspects of our life for maximum effectiveness and efficiency, even when it is considered to be an art form as compared to a practice that follows a rigid logic structure. His organizer for the algorithm for the progression of weapon effectiveness is provided here.

So, there you have it. Eighteen different responses to the same prompt. Leaving an assignment open (as opposed to strictly defined)  provides the learner an opportunity to explore their passions, and thus they are likely to more fully engage with the assignment. It also makes the evaluation of the assignment a lot more interesting, since they are not cookie cutters of each other. Learner-centered teaching for the win.

What interesting assignments have you had? Describe it in a comment below.

Image credits:All images were provided by their creators.