Students in our EECS 1011 "intro to programming class" will be working on growing plants throughout the semester as part of their minor project. Students will connect their Arduino-compatible Grove board to the plant to automate the watering process. Students may choose to grow something from seed or to continue to maintain an indoor potted […]
I had the privilege of participating in three interviews this summer. Podcast or Perish with Prof. Graham Cameron (epidsode link) The Montreal NewTech "Deep Dive" webcast with Simran Kanda (episode link) The Lassonde Engineering Society's inFlux podcast (episode Link) Update: here's another podcast link for April 2021: Stark Talks (Lassonde Students): Spotify link,Youtube link,Apple Podcast […]
I have a paid subscription to The Noun Project because I like the deep and broad selection of black-and-white icons that can be used in all kinds of documents. The licence model is worry-free: I pay for a subscription and can use any icon I download wherever I want, without the need for attribution (even […]
Most profs have overflowing email inboxes, making it hard to keep track of student emails. Two ways that I've heard of dealing with this effectively is to (a) create a class specific email address and (b) have students use the messaging system within the LMS. While messaging will work by default, you may wish to […]
H5P modules are fantastic ways to add interactive content to your Moodle (*ahem* I mean "eClass") page. The LTS folks at York have a page on H5P. Here's my take on it. To create H5P content on eClass is a little different than on the older version of Moodle. Here's how you do it. Start […]
When designing your content on Moodle (eClass) it's important to test out how it looks and feels from a student perspective. In the Summer of 2020, YorkU's "DemoStudent" was introduced to provide that. With few exceptions, it shows what the student sees, all without having profs ask a student to log in or to beg […]
[updated 2021 & 2022] We don't hire enough women in Engineering and Computer Science faculties. It's a peer-reviewed fact. And, yet, hiring committees continue to refuse to use the same rigour and critical thinking in finding a new colleague that they demand in their every-day research. Where's the evidence that your ad-hoc, "mmmm.... feels good" […]
UIT has rebadged Moodle as "eClass" and now made the "Playground" feature front and centre for teaching faculty to create areas for us to test ideas without immediately changing an existing course. Access it via the "Create Playground" link on the left of your welcome page: We can now more easily name the playground. This […]
With the move to online I think that it's important to have students track their completion of tasks. I'm turning on completion tracking on eClass. Some of the material I want students to receive grades for (like answering questions in an interactive video) while other material I want them to simply report that they did […]
I think that online is best done with the student (and prof) being able to track the progress of the student in the most straight-forward manner possible. After a few days between looking at the the course page, and having forgotten where the student left off, it should be really clear to the student where […]