It has been a great year!

We finished our CRA-W CREU project and we are sad that it has come to an end.  Well, it's not exactly at an end because Amy will continue this work for her honors thesis, Ali is working on an independent study, and we will all present our work at the Grace Hopper Conference next month!   

This was a great experience and gave us an understanding of what research is.  "Research" and "graduate school" used to sound intimidating, but this experience makes it easier to understand what a graduate degree is all about. 

When we initially started our research project, we had some ideas about the bugs that we thought students encountered.  We collected over 600 bugs and learned that we were correct that many students encounter bugs, but the distribution of bugs was surprising.   Check out our data at: http://digital.cs.usu.edu/~bugs
  While you are there, watch some movies or play games and then give them a rating.  We learned Flash and Camtasia to create the games, movies, and quizzes.

Finally, we want to thank the CRA-W CREU program for funding us to explore research!  We hope that other students get the opportunity to work on a project and have a similar experience to us!

The end is in sight.

We're nearing the end of the project - just one week left. It has come so fast. We still have to finish updating our website but we're so close!  Now we are just focusing on wrapping things up and getting our final reports in. We'll be sure to post again to finish off the project.
We have now bought our place tickets for the Grace Hopper conference in Atlanta, Georgia. We are really excited! This project has proven to be a lot of fun and very educational. We look forward to sharing our findings and results with others in the industry.
Overall, being a part of this team has been enjoyable and rewarding. It's certainly bittersweet that the end is so close.

At long last

There isn't much to post about.  Our lives have become pretty much routine here at Bug Theater.  Tutorials, posters, quizzes, games, classifying, repeat...  We're getting pretty good at the routine though.  Everything will be up and running perfectly for fall semester. 
We do have one bit of news though...we have all received scholarships for the Grace Hopper conference this fall.  They cover our lodging, meals, and airfare so we are beyond thrilled to receive them since it means we will be able to attend the conference together. 
The minor changes in our routine will be arranging things with our scholarships, creating a new more compact poster, and a few other little details for the conference. 

Quizes

Well along with our normal schedule of posters, games, and videos we are also creating quizes for the beginning CS class (CS1400).  We are creating mini quizes to test the students on the chapters in the book.  Each quiz covers 2 chapters and will have about 5 questions, and then some different ways to solve each question.  Hopefully these quizes will help prepare the students for their tests all along the way and improve their understanding.

So Much To Do

Over the last couple of weeks we have finished some Flash games, Camtasia videos, started some practice tests, and made a few minor changes to the website.  We still have lots more to do though.  The website will be posted tomorrow and we are doing some usability testing on it this week.  If it sounds like we do the same things every week, it's because a lot of the time we do, just with different bugs.

Usability Testing

As we start adding more applications to the website this summer we figured we should have some people test it out before we add all the other stuff.  We have written up a few things we will have each tester do to see if things are easy to find, that the website looks organized, and it's user friendly.  We also have two new Camtasia videos and a Flash game to go on the website. 
Our Grace Hopper info for the conference info booklet.  Not only will there be an overview of our project but there is a little bio and photo to go along with it.  You know you've made it to the big time when your photo is published!
We are also starting a new page for our website that will have possible test questions for the CS 1400 and CS 1410 classes.  After solving the problem they will be able to see 3 or 4 correct solutions for each problem.  Right now we're in the process of finding some good problems and creating the new page for it.

Grace Hopper...Again

All of our Grace Hopper program information is due at the end of this week. We are gathering all of the needed information and praying that there isn't something we're forgetting.  Last week we started preparing this information and created some new tip posters for the tutor lab.  We've also finished some Camtasia and Flash stuff that should be posted on the website soon. 

Accepted

We have been accepted to the Grace Hopper poster session in September.  Although this is exciting it has added a few things to our to-do list.  We have to submit bios and pictures of all of us, a 700 word abstract, and the poster must be re-designed (the old one is too big). 
Last week we started on our new how-to videos and test your skill games.  Our work has been a little impeded by the ever changing weather which has gotten a few of us sick and slowed us down a little.  With everyone on the mend we should be able to catch everything up and hopefully submit all the needed info for Grace Hopper this week.

Welcome to Summer...

Over the last week we have...finished classifying the April bugs, created a schedule for the summer, updated the website, and finished our Grace Hopper scholarship applications.  This summer we will each be making one how to movie and one Flash game per week, creating practice problems, and making new posters.

End of the Semester Countdown

With only a couple of days left we are about to hit the research grant full time next week.  Today we will be meeting with some of the CS faculty to get ideas about games and how to videos we could work on this summer.  Most of the last week has been spent finishing final projects and studying for/taking finals.  We have all been working on our scholarship applications for the Grace Hopper conference this fall.  We've also been on the hunt for the bug that is stopping us from uploading Camtasia videos.  By next week the website should be fully functioning and we should have a whole pile of new ideas to fill our website with this summer.

Flash Games

We have posted the new games, one on arrays and the other on pointers.  They can be found at: http://digital.cs.usu.edu/~bugs/skills.htm . They look great, especially on our pretty new website.  This week we plan on posting a few how-to videos and finishing our scholarship applications for the Grace Hopper conference.  There are only two weeks before we take this grant on FULL TIME. 

The never-ending website

After posting the new website last week we saw some user friendly changes that we wanted to make.  This week we are adding two new flash games and the March statistics.  There will probably always be something that needs to be done!  We worked on Flash games and Camtasia videos last week too.  As soon as we figure out how to load the videos into the players they'll be out there for the world to see.  We also classified the March bugs and hung up our poster from the Undergrad Research Conference for the whole department to see.  Along with coming up with new game and movie ideas this week we are hoping to solve the mystery of the video player.  Wish us luck!

Updates

As the end of the semester is approaching fast, we have kept ourselves busy and got a lot done.

The application to the Grace Hopper conference is finished and submitted, wish us luck on that!  We finished working on the new website, it can be found at http://digital.cs.usu.edu/~bugs/index.htm.  We also created a new video on how to use loops and switch statements.  There are also two new flash games up on the new website.  They will help you test your skills on pointers and arrays.  These were the two areas where students had most problems and bugs this semester.

Currently we are working on classifying the new bugs from March. The bug descriptions will be up on the website soon, so keep an eye on that.

After a LONG break...

Over the course of spring break, applying for Grace Hopper, and fixing up the website the blog has sort of fallen by the way side and been forgotten.  Here is all the updates....  We are redoing the website, yet again.  Our professor had many of her students review our website and from their feedback we are making some major changes to make it more eye pleasing, easier to use, more organized, and more professional looking.  We also have a few more Flash and Camtasia videos to post to it.  It will be up and running by Friday so keep an eye out.  We are applying for Grace Hopper in Atlanta this fall.  Our paper will hopefully be sent in Tuesday and if we get in we plan on using our poster from UCUR.

Back to School

Along with catching up on our school work last week we're also still working on our regular website stuff.  The website has contracted some quirky bugs that we are trying our best to get rid of but it is really testing our knowledge.  we have some more statistics, movies, and Flash games on their way.

UCUR

UCUR was a blast!  Not only was it great experience in presenting our research but we learned a ton.  We spent the beginning of the week getting the website updated (the background is now an eye pleasing red), practicing our speech, re-checking the bugs, and finishing off poster details.  We presented our poster for two hours in the morning and then spent the afternoon two hours looking at others posters and listening to a few presentations.  The projects ranged from the effectiveness of mixing medicines in saline solutions to be administered to the affects of Disney princess characters and their effects on young children.  You forget how many things there are still to be discovered and researched until you go to something like this. Plus the 6 hour drive was perfect for catching up on homework.  Pictures to be posted soon!

Updates

Well a couple of weeks ago many of the students in the CS department looked over our website and then gave us feedback.  We have been updating the information, making it more pleasing to the eye, and easier to navigate.  The changes will be up before we leave for the conference this weekend.  We've also finished the poster and are taking it to the printers today to have it turned into a massive 3'x5' masterpiece.  We also made up our little speech to go along with our poster and practiced it in front of the tutors.  We're hoping the people at the conference are a less intimidating audience. 

Posters, Websites, and Presentations

The poster is finally complete! We think.  We will be presenting it to the tutors this week and will decide what needs to be changed to the poster and our mini presentation of it.  We've also been working on two new Camtasia videos that are about ready to post.  One on loops and the other on pass by reference.  Also we've had students look at our website and critique it for us so we are making changes according to their specifications!

February

We are a whole month into a new year, and February looks like it is going to be a busy month.  We just got a new set of bugs to classify, we are adding some new pages to our website, and we are headed to our first conference in a couple of weeks!  Last week we worked on our poster, finished the 'tickets' to hand out with our URL on them, started on our new web page for descriptions of our bugs, and began a Camtasia video.  As you can see we have a LOT of works in projects, it's going to be a busy month!

The POSTER

Our poster is almost completed.  The undergrad research conference isn't for a few weeks but we wanted to get it done early.  It is 40" x 60" of what we do and how we do it.  We feel that it is our duty to show all of the computer science guys that will be there how a poster can be 'pretty' as well as functional.  So far it looks pretty darn great and as soon as we finish fine tuning some statistical data it will be ready to send to the printers!  Along with our poster we are creating fake movie tickets with our web address so they can keep track of us online.  We'll post a picture of one on here as soon as they're finished.  This has been the most creative week of our research so far and I think it's safe to say we loved it!

UGRASP

Amy has recently joined our team of brains and has been so sweet to do all of our grunt work as we start to teach her Camtasia and Flash.  She is also preparing to take over the website updates for us.  She's one smart cookie and we're sure it will look great!  We have set up our tutoring sessions for this semester.  The dates are:
February 17 2:30-3:30
March 18 2:00-3:00
April 14 2:30-3:30
During these students will be able to bring in their code for us to look over and help them improve it. 
We are headed to the UGRASP (Utah Undergrad Research Conference) in a few weeks.  There we will be presenting a poster on our research and giving a short oral presentation.  We are really excited for this opportunity and are working to make our poster AMAZING.  Along with this we are working to revise our list of bug types to make it more streamlined and productive, adding some more information to our statistics, and drawing up new Camtasia and Flash videos! 

New Year, New Semester

Well we are back for the first day of spring semester today!!  Thus far for the new semester we have come up with our new schedule, have adopted a new group member Amy, and our website is up and running.  We won't have any new bugs to classify for a while so now we begin building more flash games and online tutorials for some more of the bugs that we classified last semester.  It looks like we have passed the hardest part of the learning curve for Flash, Camtasia, and HTML so this semester should be pretty smooth sailing and we will be posting videos and games like crazy.  Watch out 2010 here we come!