Grant program: Teaching and Learning Development Grant (TLDG)

Grant recipient: Eric Yang, School of Interactive Arts and Technology (SIAT)

Project team: Liaqat Ali and Leo Ma, research assistants

Timeframe: August 2014 to May 2015

Funding: $5,000

Course addressed: IAT 265 – Multimedia Programming

Final Report: View Eric Yang's final project report (PDF) 

Description: IAT 265 Multimedia Programming is a fundamental course that lays the technical foundation of IAT program. Previously, it has used Processing as the dominant library in the Java environment to teach graphics and media processing. However, a newly introduced prerequisite for IAT 265 uses Processing as its teaching language. As a result, students are less engaged due to repetition of the language environment (although in a different context) between these two courses.

This project is an exploration of ways to adopt the Java System Library as a replacement tool for Processing in IAT 265. The major challenge though is how to tackle the library’s non-programmer friendly nature so as to increase students’ interest and engagement to achieve better learning outcomes.

Questions addressed:

• Can IAT 265 be designed to engage students with introduction of Java System library, recognizing its non-programmer friendly nature?
• Given the new course design, will students report being more interested in the course and more engaged with the content as compared to students in the previous offering of IAT 265?
• Given the new course design, will students achieve the same or better learning outcomes in terms of programming skills with introduction of Java System Library as compared to students in the previous offering of IAT 265?
• Given the new course design, will students achieve the same or better learning outcomes in terms of concept understanding as compared to students in the previous offering of IAT 265?

Knowledge sharing: This report will be disseminated by email amongst SIAT faculty for review and commentary.