Communications of the ACM (CACM for short, not the best sounding acronym around) is the ACM’s flagship magazine. Started in 1957, CACM is handy for keeping up to date on current research being carried out across all topics of computer science and realworld applications. CACM has had an illustrious past with many influential pieces of work and debates started within its pages. These include Hoare’s presentation of the Quicksort algorithm; Rivest, Shamir and Adleman’s description of the first publickey cryptosystem RSA; and Dijkstra’s famous letter against the use of GOTO. In addition to the print edition, which is released monthly, there is a fantastic website (http://cacm.acm. org/) that showcases not only the most recent edition but all previous CACM articles as well, readable online as well as downloadable as a PDF. In addition, the website lets you browse for articles by subject, a handy feature if you want to focus on a particular topic. CACM is really essential reading. Pretty much guaranteed to contain content that is interesting to anyone, it keeps tabs on the latest in computer science. It is a valuable asset for us students, who tend to delve deep into a particular area of CS and forget everything that is happening around us. — Daniel Gooch U ndergraduate research is like a box of chocolates: You never know what kind of project you will get. That being said, there are still a few things you should know to get the most out of the experience.

Communications of the ACM

A Study of Teams: How It All Began The Apollo Syndrome Teams Containing Similar Personalities Identifying further Team Roles Team Leadership The Missing Team Roles Developing an inventory Unsuccessful teams Winning teams Ideal team size Features of good members of a team Teams in Public Affairs How Belbin reports developed Case Studies in Using Belbin

Management teams: Why they succeed or fail

https://par.nsf.gov/servlets/purl/10054119

Demystifying computational thinking

It represents a universally applicable attitude and skill set everyone, not just computer scientists, would be eager to learn and use.

/pdf/computational-thinking-ji-suan-lun-de-si-kao-3qvv34ha3s.pdf

Computational Thinking 計算論的思考

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the mathematical theory of computation. Computation essentially explores how machines can be made to carry out intellectual processes. Any intellectual process that can be carried out mechanically can be performed by a general purpose digital computer. There are three established directions of mathematical research that are relevant to the science of computation—namely, numerical analysis, theory of computability, and theory of finite automata. The chapter explores what practical results can be expected from a suitable mathematical theory. Further, the chapter presents several descriptive formalisms with a few examples of their use and theories that enable to prove the equivalence of computations expressed in these formalisms. A few mathematical results about the properties of the formalisms are also presented.

A Basis for a Mathematical Theory of Computation

https://gala.gre.ac.uk/9243/1/(item_9243)_kazimoglu_2012_cms.pdf

A Serious Game for Developing Computational Thinking and Learning Introductory Computer Programming

This paper outlines an innovative game model for learning computational thinking (CT) skills through digital game-play. We have designed a game framework where students can practice and develop their skills in CT with little or no programming knowledge. We analyze how this game supports various CT concepts and how these concepts can be mapped to programming constructs to facilitate learning introductory computer programming. Moreover, we discuss the potential benefits of our approach as a support tool to foster student motivation and abilities in problem solving. As initial evaluation, we provide some analysis of feedback from a survey response group of 25 students who have played our game as a voluntary exercise. Structured empirical evaluation will follow, and the plan for that is briefly described.

Learning Programming at the Computational Thinking Level via Digital Game-Play

This paper outlines an innovative game-based approach to learning introductory programming that is grounded in the development of computational thinking at an abstract conceptual level, but also provides a direct contextual relationship between game-play and learning traditional introductory programming. The paper proposes a possible model for, and guidelines in support of, this games-based approach contextualized by an analysis of existing research into the issues of learning programming and game based learning approaches. Furthermore, the proposed game-based learning model focuses not only on procedural and applied knowledge and associated skills acquisition in computational thinking, but also provides contextualised theoretical knowledge on Computer Science concepts. By way of illustration, the authors introduce a game prototype currently being developed to combine a puzzle solving game-play that uses Computer Science concepts as the game elements.

Understanding Computational Thinking before Programming: Developing Guidelines for the Design of Games to Learn Introductory Programming through Game-Play

This paper presents an approach for the intelligent diagnosis and monitoring of business workflows based on operation data in the form of temporal log data. The representation of workflow related case knowledge in this research using graphs is explained. The workflow process is orchestrated by a software system using BPEL technologies within a service-oriented architecture. Workflow cases are represented in terms of events and their corresponding temporal relationships. The matching and CBR retrieval mechanisms used in this research are explained and the architecture of an integrated intelligent monitoring system is shown. The paper contains an evaluation of the approach based on experiments on real data from a university quality assurance exam moderation system. The experiments and the evaluation of the approach is presented and is shown that a graph matching based similarity measure is capable to diagnose problems within business workflows. Finally, further work on the system and the extension to a full intelligent monitoring and process optimisation system is presented.

A case based reasoning approach for the monitoring of business workflows

Despite the growth of advanced communication technologies, smart devices etc. the main approach to training strategic planners for crisis management (Gold Commanders) continues to be a paper-based, collective group dynamic exercise. The Pandora project has developed an advanced smart environment for the training of Gold Commanders which uses AI planning techniques to provide a crisis scenario modelled as an event network. This includes points of decision for trainees managed by automated rules from a knowledge base, behavioural modelling of the trainees, and ambient management of the environment to provide affective inputs to control and manage trainee stress. In this context, the system controls and reacts to trainee performance in relation to the events and decision points and can dynamically remodel and reconfigure the event network to respond appropriately to trainee decisions. Trainees can also be pressurised through compression of the timelines or ambient management of the multimedia information presented within the environment, causing them to make decisions under stress or with inadequate information. The environment can also represent any missing trainees within the scenario, which provides the potential to offer a completely autonomous facility for scenario design and test, and potentially a decision support facility, based on a build-up of empirical evidence from real world and training situations. In summary, the Pandora system integrates its computational intelligence, with the intelligence of the trainer and the trainees, to provide an emotionally engaging, augmented reality/virtual reality training environment for crisis managers.

Liz Bacon

Papers

A Serious Game for Developing Computational Thinking and Learning Introductory Computer Programming

Learning Programming at the Computational Thinking Level via Digital Game-Play

Understanding Computational Thinking before Programming: Developing Guidelines for the Design of Games to Learn Introductory Programming through Game-Play

A case based reasoning approach for the monitoring of business workflows

Developing a smart environment for crisis management training