This morning, four police officers were shot and killed in a coffee shop near my parents’ house. Please pray:
This week the Steck family came over for Thanksgiving. We had a great time with them, and we were sad to see them go.
While they were over, Kristen and her mom undertook the task of doing a mini-remodel of our new place. This included new paint, new furniture, and new decorations. Now it looks great! We are so happy with our new home.
Of course, we took a bunch of pictures while Kristen’s family was here. The albums are over at KylanAndKristen.com:
Painting
Yay!
Our New Place – After
Our New Place – Before
Fun with Styrofoam
Thanskgiving Pie
This post is long overdue, but here is my reflection on teaching a Cougar Quest workshop this summer.
This year, during the last two weeks of July, I taught a Cougar Quest workshop at Washington State University. Cougar Quest is a college preview summer camp that lets middle school and high school students live on campus, make new friends, take part in various extracurricular activities, and attend educational workshops.
This post describes my experience with Cougar Quest, including information about my workshop, stories from the classroom, and lessons learned.
Last fall, I was asked to submit a workshop proposal related to computer science or computer engineering. I decided that human-computer interaction and interface design would be an engaging, hands-on topic. I drew up a quick outline of a curriculum and it was selected to be included as part of the camp.
The next few months were spent developing the workshop outline into a full-blown set of lessons. There were a lot of terms, ideas, and concepts to introduce, but I wanted to be sure to keep the classroom fun and active. Finally, I settled on a set of individual, pair, and group projects interspersed with short, Socratic lectures. The details of the curriculum will be explained later on. (My wife Kristen, a third grade teacher, was an invaluable resource as I developed my lessons. She was able to give me great feedback, advice, and ideas throughout the whole process.)
The first week of Cougar Quest was for middle school students. These kids did not have very much computer experience, and they lacked some of the basic vocabulary used to discuss computer technology. This meant that I spent more time on general concepts and term definitions than I had originally planned. This was a good thing, though, because I was able to tailor the curriculum on the fly to meet the students’ needs.
The engagement and interest of this group more than made up for its lack of technical background. The majority of the students were generally eager to participate and contribute ideas. They had a lot of fun with the hands-on design tasks, and they were surprisingly attentive during my longer lectures.
The major problem was that my middle schoolers failed to see the point of iterating through the design process. They resisted running the tests multiple times and they seemed unwilling or unable to find potential improvements in the design. This was a bit frustrating, and I still can’t understand why this was so difficult for them.
The second week of Cougar Quest was for high schoolers. These students were much less engaged in the class. They were more interested in talking with their friends than participating in the activities. The high schoolers were also quite defiant: one student insinuated that I didn’t know what I was talking about, and I had to spend a lot of class time explaining that our methods directly followed the processes used in industry.
Most of the high school students were disappointed that we didn’t get to use computers in class. I specifically chose to use paper prototypes for a number of reasons, specifically,
However, since the students’ preconceived expectations were not met, some dismissed the paper prototype development process as “dumb” and “boring.”
It was interesting to see that the high school students had nearly as much trouble with the concept of design iteration as their middle school counterparts. Most of the groups I talked to believed that their design was perfect and could not be improved upon. However, with a few well-placed questions, I was able to expose flaws in their approach. It turned out that most students were too lazy to take my suggestions and come up with a better solution.
Of course, there were a number of students who really seemed to benefit from my class. I was pleased to see that a few groups took the assignments seriously and really tried to implement what they had learned about human-computer interaction. Some students came up with phenomenally good designs, especially during the stopwatch design task. This was encouraging to see.
After completing my workshop, the students had the opportunity to rate the class based on different categories. The rating scale was 1-5, with
1 = A Joke2 = Bad3 = Okay4 = Good5 = Awesome
The following table shows the results:
| Category | Week #1 Average Rating | Week #2 Average Rating |
| How Interesting Was the Class? | 3.42 | 3.76 |
| Was it Challenging? | 3.89 | 3.94 |
| Instructor Rating | 4.26 | 4.88 |
| Overall Rating | 3.42 | 4.05 |
This feedback was helpful for a number of reasons. First of all, it shows that I improved week over week. During the second week, I made some slight changes to the way I presented the concepts and I emphasized some activities more than others. Apparently, these were good choices.
Second, this data suggests that the students were more satisfied with the way that I taught than the material that I taught. I was extremely pleased that my Instructor Rating was so high, but there’s obviously room for improvement in the workshop content.
Third, this feedback indicates that my curriculum might be more appropriate for high school students than it is for middle school students. If I were to teach this course again, I would try to differentiate the material in ways that will better engage younger students.
I’ve decided to explain more about my curriculum, in hopes that someone might find it useful. Please feel free to borrow any of my ideas or materials. Citing me as a source would be appreciated, but is not required.
The lesson plans and general outlines are located here. If you would like electronic copies of my handouts and worksheets, please contact me and I will email them to you.
The principles and concepts covered by this curriculum came from the following sources:
The Design of Everyday Things
by Donald Norman
The Inmates Are Running the Asylum
by Alan CooperInteraction Design by Preece, Rogers, and Sharp
CptS 443 by Chris Hundhausen
I think that, by teaching this Cougar Quest workshop, I learned even more than my students! This was my first experience as a lead instructor, so I learned a lot about curriculum development and classroom management. Also, in order to teach a class on human-computer interaction, I really had to become an expert in the subject. My research and preparation for this class gave me a much deeper understanding of the concepts and principles involved.
If I were to teach this class again, I would really like to incorporate some kind of computer-based activity into the curriculum. Many of my students complained that a workshop on human-computer interaction should involve working with computers. I wanted emphasize the pre-implementation aspects of interface design, but the students were disappointed nonetheless. Next time, I would try to meet their expectations and allow them to create digital versions of their prototypes.
It was a pleasure and an honor to represent WSU at Cougar Quest. I hope that my students enjoyed their experiences in my workshop and that they were interested and challened by the subject matter. Mostly, though, I hope that the overall Cougar Quest experience has encouraged them to pursue higher education and consider attending WSU in the future. Go Cougs!
