Teaching

Parisa Eslambolchilar



Student Supervision- MSc./MRes Projects

Student Supervision- MEng Individual Projects

Student Supervision- MEng Group Projects

Summer Internship Projects

Student Supervision- BSc. Projects


Interaction Technologies: Hardware and Devices

Code: CS-M79
Credit Points: 10
Taught: Semester 2
Contact Hours: 20 lectures
Lecturer: Dr. Eslambolchilar
Assessment: 50% coursework 50% written examination (in May/June)

Synopsis:
Future interaction technologies rely on developments in hardware, and being able to interface the hardware and software. Students are expected to achieve substantial hands-on practical experience of the 'cutting edge' and issues in the field.

Syllabus:
Input devices, output devices. Drivers. Hardware protocols, eg, USB, phidgets etc. Software protocols, eg, MVC.

Non-standard devices, such as haptic, multiple mice, 3D displays, special purpose sensors.

Learning Outcomes:
Thorough knowledge of hardware and i/o devices. Ability to build interactive devices and
program drivers. Knowledge of non-standard devices, such as haptic devices and phidgets etc.

Transferable Skills:
Practical skills in building complex systems, both hardware and software, and debugging
hardware/software interfaces.

Reading:
  1. Mobile HCI conference papers,
  2. CHI conferences papers relevant to handhled devices, ubiquitous computing and mobile computing,
  3. Phidgets, online catalogs for USB sensing and control: www.phidgets.com
  4. Python, Online materials to learn Python for programming on handheld devices,http://docs.python.org/tut/
  5. Arduino, electronic prototyping for interaction design: http://www.arduino.cc/
Demo:
1- Fortune Teller:  developed and demonstrated by Mr. Andrew Robnison, Mr. Evan Price and Mr. Matt Edmunds.
2- PongEx: Play Pingpong with Phidgets :developed and demonstrated by Mr. Adam Lee, Mr. Shenggang Chen  and Mr. Rui Wang.

Some useful links:
1- Phidgets
2- SHAKE User manual
3- SHAKE drivers on various platforms are available from here
4- Talking to the SHAKE on non-Windows platforms: The simplest language is the processing. Some example codes can be found at http://github.com/elsmorian/shakesynth/tree/master. Thanks to Mr. Chris Elsmore who contributed enormously to blogging about the processing language and example codes.


Principles of Computer Science I


Code: CS-150
Credit Points: 15
Taught: Semester 1
Contact Hours: 30 lectures, 11 one hour lab classes
Lecturer: Dr. Eslambolchilar
Assessment: 30% Coursework 70% written examination (in January)

Synopsis:
This module gives an overview of some of the main principles underlying computers and computing from both a theoretical and an applied point of view. It is accessible and relevant to students of all disciplines who wish to learn about, or reinforce their understanding of, computers and computer science.

Syllabus:
Overview (ch 1, 1 week).
The Information Layer.
Binary values and number systems (Ch 2, 1 week).
Data representation (Ch 3, 2 week).
The Hardware Layer.
Gates and circuits (Ch 4, 2 week).
Computing components (Ch 5, 1 week).
The Programming Layer.
Low-level programming languages and pseudocode (Ch 6, 4 week).

Learning Outcomes:
Students will gain an appreciation of the scope and limitations of computer science and its applications.
They will be familiar with the principles involved in a number of areas of modern computing.

Transferable Skills:
Computational thinking and problem solving

Course Texts:


N. Dale and J. Lewis, Computer Science Illuminated, 4th Edition, Jones and Bartlett, 2011

From languages to hardware


Code: CS-113
Credit Points: 10
Taught: Semester 1
Contact Hours: 20 lectures
Lecturer: Dr. Eslambolchilar
Co-requisite: CS-141
Assessment: 30% Coursework 70% written examination (in January)

Synopsis:
This module introduces the fundamentals of digital design as well as basic structures of computers in a clear and accessible manner to engineering and computer science students. This
module builds a bridge between high-level interaction and machine instructions.

Syllabus:
Basic digital logic: This topic provides a clear view about how simple logical building blocks can be used to build computers (bottom up approach).

Structure of computers - Von Neumann organisation, control flow, data and memory and time. In this subject a broader view of structure of computers comes to light, for instance, students
will be aware how Boolean gates can become memory units, and how the fetch-decodeexecute cycle works.

Representing data in both high-level and low-level programming (ASCII, integer and floating point).

Machine and assembly language, building a bridge between high-level and low-level programming.

Learning Outcomes:
Students will be familiar with the basic, abstract hardware building blocks that are used to construct computers. They will gain a broad understanding about the concept of layers of abstraction, from applications to hardware, and from high-level programming languages to machine languages. They will be aware of the current state of the art in computer hardware.

Transferable Skills:
Decomposing complex systems,
Translating between different representations of a complex system

Course Texts:

  1. A. Clements, Principles of Computer Hardware, 4th Ed, Oxford University Press, 2006
  2. M. M. Mano, M.D. Ciletti, Digital Design, 4th Ed. Prentice Hall, 2007
  3. F. Vahid, Digital Design, 1st Ed., Wiley, 2007


Computers and Society

Phase I: Research a Topic

  1. CS_124 Coursework Phase I Requirements: researching a topic
  2. The ACM Digital Library: a source of many journal and conference papers. You'll have more access to PDFs if you log on from campus.
  3. IEEE Xplore: another source of many journal and conference papers. Again, log in from campus, and you'll automatically be logged in as a Swansea University user.
  4. theregister.co.uk: an IT news web site that can help first year students develop report topic ideas.
  5. Plagiarism.org: a whole web site devoted to the topic of plagiarism. It also describes what a citation is, how to cite sources, and describes citation styles. The web site is very good so have a look.
  6. A Very Rough Guide to University Exams: a few slides on how to answer (British) university-style questions.
  7. AMA Citation Style: The American Medical Association Manual of Style, 9th edition. This link is very helpful because it describes precisely the information needed in citations.
Research paper topics inlcude: online gaming and gambling, computers and their impact on work quality and productivity, computer addiction, computer use and its negative physical impacts, computer networks and identity theft, computers and privacy impact of online social-networking, massive, multi-player online role-playing games (MMORPG), open source vs proprietary software, piracy: how-to, piracy of music, software piracy and its impact on industry,

Phase II: Writing a Research Paper

  1. CS_124 Coursework Phase II Requirements: writing a research paper
  2. Writing a Research Paper: a nice guideline of how to a research paper from the Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL)
  3. AresearchGuide.com: The goal of this site is to provide all the necessary tools for students to conduct research and to present their findings.
  4. Planning and Writing a Research Paper: This page lists some of the stages involved in writing a library-based research paper. (from the University of Wisconsin Madison Writing Center)

Phase III: Giving a Presentation

Phase III of CS_124 is to give a 10 minute presentation that summarizes the findings in your research paper from Phase II. The format of your presentation can be either Powerpoint or PDF. You may bring your own laptop or you may use a given Windows XP laptop (with Microsoft Powerpoint 2003 installed). You may (1) bring your presentation on a memory stick, (2) send the presentation file to Parisa the day before your presentation via email (and Parisa will place it on the laptop, or (3) place it on the web server (instructions below) and Parisa can download it onto the laptop.

Helpful links on how-to give a good presentation (helpful for all presentations including first year and Gregynog!):
  1. Giving a good presentation -A nice and concise article on how to give a good presentation.
  2. How-to give a good presentation -Some more helpful guidelines on giving a good presentation
  3. Death by Powerpoint by Alexei Kapterev -Death by PowerPoint (and how to fight it), a great video
  4. Life After Death by PowerPoint -Funny and true!
  5. Death by PowerPoint by Angela R. Garber -a nice article that describes some common presentation mistakes
  6. ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com -Wow! A whole website dedicated to making better presentations!

Links to Useful Tools

  1. http://www.koolwire.com/: This amazing web service will actually convert PDF (Portable Document File) files to RTF (Rich Text Format) for free!
  2. http://www.doc2pdf.net: This web service will actually convert Doc files (Microsoft Word) to PDF (Portable Document File) files for free.
  3. http://www.pdfonline.com: This great web service will convert Doc files (Microsoft Word) to PDF (Portable Document File) files and vice-versa for free. Just google "doc to pdf" for more similar services.
  4. http://www.freewaregenius.com/: This helpful article reviews different freeware tools to convert PDF to DOC (ugh) format. Check out the rest of the web site for more free tools!
  5. http://www.NeoOffice.org: NeoOffice is a full-featured set of office applications (including word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, drawing, and database programs) for Mac OS X.
Here are directions on how to set up a simple web page.


Project Specification and Development: 3rd Year Students' Supervision and Documentation


3rd Year Project Guidelines:Writing a Dissertation- This comprehensive, detailed, 3rd year project guidelines is written by Dr. Bob Laramee.

Helpful links on how-to give a good presentation (helpful for Gregynog!):
  1. Giving a good presentation -A nice and concise article on how to give a good presentation.
  2. How-to give a good presentation -Some more helpful guidelines on giving a good presentation
  3. Death by Powerpoint by Alexei Kapterev -Death by PowerPoint (and how to fight it), a great video
  4. Life After Death by PowerPoint -Funny and true!
  5. Death by PowerPoint by Angela R. Garber -a nice article that describes some common presentation mistakes
  6. ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com -Wow! A whole website dedicated to making better presentations!
To see the list of third year projects please visit here , however, projects are not limited to this list so please contact me and we can have a chat!

Examples of recent 3rd year projects are available here and you may want to check the demos in CS-M79.



Future Interaction Technologies: MSc/MRes Students' Supervision


Recommendations for the Undertaking of MSc Projects and the Submission of Dissertations -the general guidelines for MSc Disserations. They are, in general, applicable and useful for third year projects.

To see the list of MSc/MRes projects please visit here, however, projects are not limited to this list so please contact me and we can have a chat!




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