I previously wrote about the creative ways learners in my spring 2020, fall 2020, and spring and fall 2021 Honors College courses (HONR 296) exhibited and documented their knowledge and understanding of the course's material. The course title is "Computer Science and Algorithms to Live By." The course final project, 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). In this post, I am showcasing the creativity of twelve spring 2022 learners who were willing for me to share their work.
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 about them, but rather have provided a brief description and an image or link for you to investigate further.
Kaila Brack developed an info-graphic in which she describes how computing technology and algorithms have completely changed the field of nursing. By answering the essential questions, she discuss how patient care has been improved, as well as some of the downsides to the rapid increase of technology in hospital settings.
Sammy Bredar wrote a children’s book about the advancement of technology in society. The story's introduction reads:
There are three groups of characters in this book, which include the Elders, the Computers, and the Humans. In the book, a handwritten manuscript explains to her grandchildren, who are a typed novel and a printed newspaper, how technology changed her world. The plot of most of the book is the grandmother’s personal account of the history in “The Town” which is full of residents like pencils, pens, papers, and other non-technical objects who live comfortably in their technology-free neighborhood, working each day for the benefit of the Humans.
Lillian Brown wrote a short story which is a modern adaptation of the popular book My Side of the Mountain. It is written as a series of journal entries. She writes as Sam Gribley about his adventures after he runs away to the mountains. The purpose of the adaptation is to show how technology touches every part of our lives and can be both a help and a hindrance.
Hanna Cheek created a crossword puzzle as an interactive way to showcase the relationship between real life experiences in a social work/counseling setting and the content explored throughout this course.
Chloe Fields dives into the changes computer software has made on hand drawn animation. Two animations were made; one using paper, pencil, and highlighter and one using the current industry standard for hand drawn animation, Toon Boom Harmony. By comparing these different ways of executing the same form of animation one can see the differences algorithms make on the medium.
Elysa Goldberg wrote an academic-style journal article to address the course's essential questions. In it she wrote:
Regarding how much we should let technology do for us, it is important to find that balance of communicating through technology or computer-generated resources compared to human-to-human contacts especially when dealing with something as real, vulnerable, and sensitive as our emotions thoughts and feelings. I think if it came down to only working with bots to help with psychological issues, that would really create a sense of disconnect.
Eva Kopsolias wrote an algorithm for successful improvised comedy. Her full algorithm is available, but here is the start of it.
- START with one person interacting at a time:
- Pick a topic from the following:
- An object in the room
- A childhood memory
- Something that happened or was said that day
- Create a story from said topic. Just have fun and let it flow naturally.
- Establish the setting or context and leave the response to your partner. DO NOT give context and a punchline in one monologue.
Madeleine Mills-Craig created a presentation about making a book. She stated:
Books are a version of a computer that stores data and allows humans to retrieve and then process it. To make a book, one must have the supplies and must be able to put the book together in sequential order. The process of creating a book affirms the stance that algorithms are created because of all the different techniques used to create a book. Today, the algorithm to make a book is much more complicated than in the past, when pages sewn together could be classified as a book, but today, most books have a cover, title, byline, endpaper, etc.
You can watch a brief video of her making a book.
Rosa Reinhard performed an analysis of anamae. In her presentation she stated:
Throughout this course, one major question that came up was "How much is technology influencing us?" In order to answer this question, I created a computational problem related to the question and within the anime Psycho Pass. To examine this computational problem, a case study of the anime Psycho Pass was done by 1. watching the entire anime through the lens of the five essential questions 2. note anything that was related to the problem through the anime’s setting and character choices, and 3. identify how the anime answers the problem. For a computational problem that asks more of a what if and a should type question rather than a how or what, having an anime whose setting is entirely related to the problem allows for a case study to be performed and analyzed.
Nicholas Stoll wrote a computer program using the Python programming language that provided an interactive way for elementary-aged students to combine technology into a humanities context, as the quiz questions can be easily changed.
Kathleen Welch created an info-graphic that provided a compilation of how the course questions related to her environmental management major.
So, there you have it. Twelve 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 engage with the assignment more fully. It also makes the evaluation of the assignment a lot more interesting, since the submissions are not cookie cutters of each other, and I often learn something new as well. 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.
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