CSC News

CSC Faculty Recipients of DELTA Grants

Dr. Sarah Heckman, teaching associate professor, Drs. Chris Parnin, and Kathryn Stolee, assistant professors, have received an NC State DELTA Grant for Critical Path Course Redesign.  The grant supports their proposal titled, “CSC326 Course Redesign – Creating an Agile Course to Support Software Engineering Process”, and is valued at $36,400.

Abstract:  CSC 326: Software Engineering is a required course for CSC majors typically taken in their Junior year and is a prerequisite for CSC 492: Senior Design.  Students find CSC 326 challenging due to the new technologies, required collaborations, and using software engineering practices to complete programming assignments on a large, legacy system.  We have added a credit hour to CSC 326 starting in Fall 2017, which will increase the lecture meeting time from 50-minutes to 75-minutes twice a week and better reflects the workload of students in practice. We want to redesign the course to 1) better support students in learning new technologies for completing the course project and in preparation for work in industry, 2) provide better team training to support stronger collaborative experiences, and 3) align the delivery of CSC 326 with earlier courses in the curriculum that have also been redesigned with DELTA support (CSC 116, CSC 216, and CSC 316).

Drs. Jason King and Jessica Schmidt, teaching assistant professors, have received continuing support for their Critical Path Course Redesign from last year.  The proposal is titled “Critical Path Course Redesign for CSC316:  Data Structures for Computer Scientists – Applying Theory to Practice”.

Critical Path (CP) Course Redesign Grants support the partial or entire redesign of large enrollment or critical path courses using learner-centered pedagogical principles supported by interactive, computer-based materials and activities. The CP grants focus on challenges created by high-demand and critical path courses such as increased enrollments, inconsistency in learning experiences, repeat enrollments, learning space constraints and/or high DFW rates. Using best practices in pedagogy and instructional technology to enhance teaching and learning, redesign efforts examine different methods to create more consistent learning experiences for students, motivate students to become active learners, and promote educational efficiency. These redesigns have the potential to reduce high DFW rates, to influence students’ choices in their intended discipline, and to keep students on a timely path toward academic progress and graduation.

Dr. Arnav Jhala, associate professor, along with Drs. Todd Berreth, assistant professor of Art and Design, and Fred Freitas, assistant professor of History, in the Visual Narrative Cluster, also received a DELTA Grant for Blended Learning.  The name of their proposal is “Visual Narrative Multi-disciplinary Project Studio”.

For a related story with a list of all DELTA Grant recipients can be found here.

~coates~