The basic website is up!

We finished up the first draft of the website!  Check it out at: http://digital.cs.usu.edu/~bugs

We have one Camtasia Video that auto-plays, an interactive Flash video, and statistics about the bugs.  We are over the majority of the learning curve now and will be able to improve the website dramatically next semester since we will be able to go into more detail!  We will add to the statistics to share examples of each category of bug and the median time spent on each type of bug.   We will add more Camtasia and Flash videos.  We will also continue to gather and analyze bugs from the tutor lab, hold peer review sessions for the freshman and sophomore female students, make posters for the tutor lab, present our research poster at the Utah Conference on Undergrad Research (UCUR), submit a poster to the Grace Hopper conference, and submit a paper on our work to FIE.   In addition, our faculty advisor is going to teach us about usability testing and we will organize usability testing sessions in the lab to further improve the design of our website.    Yes, we have quite a list of New Year's Resolutions for our project come January!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Catching up after final exams week!

The semester is over, but we are catching up on our hours and work since we took last week off to study and take our final exams.  Our submission to the Utah Conference on Undergraduate Research (UCUR) was accepted!  We are registered and made our travel registrations.  We will present the poster in February, so we will be able to include the December bug data on our poster and present results for a complete semester! 

Now that the tutor lab is closed for the semester, we are caught up on the classifications of the tutor log forms for December.  We are back-tracking though because we want to go back to identify the min, max, and avg amount of time students spent on each class of bugs.  We think that not only the frequency of bugs are important to learn, but we also want to know the types of bugs that consumed the most time.

We are also working on the website.  It is in limbo right now because we are redesigning it.  We have two types of movies to post: (1) a step-by-step movie that shows how to find a bug (we made it with Camtasia Studio) and (2) a Flash video that is an interactive approach to teaching students about bugs.  Our first step-by-step movie is down, but we are still trying to finish our Flash movie.  We all watched the video and have been pair programming together, but we still need to solve our problem of making a link on a button in it. We are close to getting over the learning curve and once we do, we should be able to make the Flash movies quicker.

Finally, we are working on our mid-year surveys and will complete them this week.

Camtasia...and Turkey

With last week being Thanksgiving we can't say that we got a ton accomplished.  We did make it to the renovation phase with our Camtasia video.  All that is left on it is to do some spelling and grammar read through on it and for everyone to give it a final once over.  Then on to the big task...posting it!

The Flash Fun Continues

Our Camtasia video should be up by the end of the week. We have made it through the learning curve and will be able to create the videos more efficiently in the future. Our Flash video is still in the building stages though.  We know exactly what we want it to do and are working together as pair programmers to implement the movies. We created the movie plot and example code together on paper and have gone through Flash tutorials. Since this planning is done, we are just working on the technical implementation.

Flash Video

Well it turns out this Flash programming is harder than we expected, surprise surprise!  We have drawn up our play by play to see how our Flash game will work.  But now we have to solve the problem of implementation.  We are doing pair programming with Flash this week and will have a demo Flash game up by the end of the week!

Bugs, Bugs, and More Bugs

This past week we have started in on the October bugs.  They have all been downloaded and organized, next up classification.  With only 109 bugs we didn't quite beat last month's record highs (of 144 bugs), but there are still plenty to do.  Our first poster is printed!  I can't quite get the picture of it to post so you'll just have to use your imaginations.  This week along with classifications we'll be finishing up our first Camtasia and Flash videos and getting the website ready to post them.

The Bugs Start Flying in....

The last week was a busy one.  The three of us went to University of Utah to participate in the ACM Programming Competition on Friday night and competed on Saturday.  Much of the week was spent looking at sample problems, fixing the website, making final edits on our first poster. The poster is headed to the printers and well soon be decorating the wall by the tutor labs! We also have learned how to program a little in Flash.  We aren't quite pros but we can all create a moving shape and tell it where to go.  Everything is learned one step at a time though, right?
This week we start on classifying Octobers bugs.  We'll see if we can beat last months record classifications!

Camtasia!!

The webpage works!! The flying bugs and everything are back! The links aren't quite up and running but It looks the way it should.  Over the last week we have all become Camtasia pros, well we can at least create videos.  Hopefully by the end of the week we will have a video ready to post.  Also our first poster has been created and is in the process of being looked over by everyone before we send it to the printers.  Pictures of it will follow as soon as it's ready!

The Webpage

Well the biggest accomplishment of the last week is that our webpage is up.  You can view it at http://digital.cs.usu.edu/~bugs/ .  Our newest complication though is that it didn't transfer quite correctly and has lost our pretty flying bug background and has taken on a bluish tint.  Just as it is in programming though nothing works perfectly the first time, so we are now to the try, try again part.  Hopefully by our post next week our little bugs will be back!  Learning Flash is coming, slowly but surely, and this week we are creating our first posters!

Classification to the MAX

We are all feeling pretty accomplished this week.  We classified our massive amounts of bugs for September without a hitch.  Our classification skills have also improved since we started this project because there were very few that left us perplexed this time around!  They can be seen at  https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AorDMtGHZu8IdG1PNHRsUU5nbGUxdHF4cmR2VXFUdXc&hl=en .  Now on to the task of identifying the most common ones and deciding how to solve them!

Week 6 - Our Biggest Bunch of Bugs EVER!

We have started classifying the September bugs from the tutor lab.  The grand total came out to be 143 bugs! That is more than we had all Spring Semester, so they should keep us busy for at least a few days as we get them all classified.
We all are now the proud users Camtasia Studio and Flash, actually we just sucessfully downloaded them but are learning how to use them next week.  All of us are new to Flash programming so it should be an adventurous week. 
The website should be up and running by Monday (at least the homepage that is).  We have overhaulled it many a times trying to get it to look right and we think we might finally suceeded!  Our latest road block is making everything end up in the right spots in the web browser.  All in all though it has been quite the learning experience. 

Week 5 - Classification of Bugs and Web Development

We continued to classify the bugs from the tutor lab for the month of September.  This has been a busy month as we have gathered over 40 tutor logs this month! (We only had a total of 140 logs from the spring semester.)   We also sketched the design for our website and have begun to create the HTML and a "bug theater" logo.  The website is not yet ready, but it will eventually appear at: http://digital.cs.usu.edu/~bugs

We also ordered the Flash and Camtasia Studio software that we need for our movies.  It should arrive next week.  We are also looking forward to October 1st because we will be able to complete the data analysis for the month of September!

WEEK 4...

We are now experienced Auxiliary Reviewers. ;)  We read and reviewed three research papers for SIGCSE (one accepted and two rejected in our opinion).  We also cleaned up our desks and worked on our website... It's coming soon!!!

Week 3 - Classifications Round 2

We have now completed the classifications of bugs for the CS 1410 classes! Here's a link to those results:  http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AorDMtGHZu8IdFFSck5nTTB0eFRsQ2lpUnM2REhkRXc&hl=en.

Also, our Bug Theatre is forthcoming on our new website: [URL has not yet been created].

Week 2 - Moving In & Getting to Work!

We got our desks!  (Which we will post pictures of shortly.)
Last week we read and discussed other research papers regarding our own research project.  We also started classifying errors from tutor lab forms and entered them into an excel spreadsheet to see which ones were the most common.
The following is a link to a spreadsheet of the bug classifications we completed last week (the results from the CS 1400 lab forms):
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AorDMtGHZu8IdGM0WEE0S0pKdkJqS1RZeFA1endZcHc&hl=en

First Week

Ali, Nare, and Elise are working hard this week to get their blog and their new website up and running.  Wish them luck!