John Hamer

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Inter-American Development Bank

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ENOCH SURIANO DE LEON

Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León

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Jholitza Reyes

University of Zulia (Universidad del Zulia)

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Papers by John Hamer

An introductory paper to the first issue

International Journal of Pressure Vessels and Piping, 1973

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Expert systems for codes of practice

Restricted Item. Print thesis available in the University of Auckland Library or may be available... more Restricted Item. Print thesis available in the University of Auckland Library or may be available through Inter-Library Loan. Restricted Item. Print thesis available in the University of Auckland Library or may be available through Inter-Library Loan. Issues in constructing computer programs to assist with code of practice conformance checking are investigated. Representations based on an object-oriented framework are shown to be suited to this class of application, but established techniques do not provide adequate support for the classification of objects. A new technique is synthesised that allows objects to be dynamically classified by multiple, independent classifiers. This classification mechanism is closely integrated with the object-oriented representation. A language tool that incorporates the classification mechanism, called "Class language", has been designed and implemented. The language is described, and an analysis given of its formal properties. This tool ha...

Predicting Visual Complexity

Inspired by the contrast between 'classical' and 'expressive' visual aesthetic de... more Inspired by the contrast between 'classical' and 'expressive' visual aesthetic design, this paper explores the 'visual complexity' of images. We wished to investigate whether the visual complexity of an image could be quantified so that it matched participants' view of complexity. An empirical study was conducted to collect data on the human view of the complexity of a set of images. The results were then related to a set of computational metrics applied to these images, so as to identify which objective metrics best encapsulate the human subjective opinion. We conclude that the subjective notion of 'complexity' is consistent both to an individual and to a group, but that it does not easily relate to the most obvious computational metrics.

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UnMixing Inheritance with Classifiers

Collaborative learning technologies

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Laboratory Reports, Reflective Essays, and the Contributing Student Approach

Requesting reflective essays instead of technical reports has led to students observing more, wri... more Requesting reflective essays instead of technical reports has led to students observing more, writing more, developing their own personal writing style, and becoming more self-aware and self-critical. The essays complement a course taught using Collis' Contributing Student Approach by providing a rich source of material for use in subsequent learning resources such as course notes and self-evaluation quizzes. They also provide timely feedback, both for the students and for the lecturer, and help foster a collaborative, supportive learning environment.

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Aropä and PeerWise: Supporting Student Contributed Pedagogy in Large Classes

EDUCAUSE Australasia 2009, Perth Western Australia. 3‐6 May 2009 http://www.caudit.edu.au/educaus... more EDUCAUSE Australasia 2009, Perth Western Australia. 3‐6 May 2009 http://www.caudit.edu.au/educauseaustralasia09/. Aropä and PeerWise are two web-based tools that support collaborative learning in large, undergraduate classes. Aropä manages peer assessment activities, allowing students to take part in double-blind refereeing of their peers’ coursework. PeerWise is a data bank of multi-choice questions contributed, explained and discussed entirely by students. These systems leverage the latent intellectual capacity of a large class to provide new opportunities for learning. Using Aropä, each student might review three or four essays and receive a corresponding amount of feedback, all within a few days. The immediacy and diversity of the feedback is substantially greater than can be produced by a tutor. While the quality of the reviewing is typically variable, there are affective benefits in challenging students to distinguish between good and poor feedback. By eliminating the stamp of...

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Literate programming: a software engineering perspective

Proceedings Software Education Conference (SRIG-ET'94), 1995

Initial impressions of literate programming tend to the view that this is the software equivalent... more Initial impressions of literate programming tend to the view that this is the software equivalent of the “Faberge egg”: ornate beyond all practical uses. However, recent advances in the field have produced tools that are less ornate, easy to use and eminently practical. We take a critical look at what literate programming has to offer in the practice and teaching of software engineering, and present a brief review of the state-of-the-art tools now (freely) available. No previous experience with literate programming is assumed

An approach to teaching design patterns using musical composition

ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, 2004

ABSTRACT We present an approach to teaching design patterns using a music composition project. Th... more ABSTRACT We present an approach to teaching design patterns using a music composition project. The project is distinctive in that students are encouraged to discover and express their innate musical talents, and are exposed to some deep connections between programming and art. In addition to design patterns, the material provides opportunities for incorporating a surprisingly diverse range of topics---from data structures, grammars, parsing, to formal proofs.The approach has been used successfully in both introductory and advanced courses over a number of years.

Some experiences with the "contributing student approach

ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, 2006

We report on our recent experiences with Collis' "contributing student approach" in two computing... more We report on our recent experiences with Collis' "contributing student approach" in two computing courses. Departing radically from traditional lecture-based teaching, the approach involves students preparing learning resources to share with other members of the class. Contributions are peer assessed, lectures become class meetings, and the course web page is replaced by a shared "wiki" collaboration tool to which all students can contribute. Consequently, students are inescapably placed at the centre of all learning activities.

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A musical approach to teaching design patterns

ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, 2002

ABSTRACT In case you missed the signs, design patterns [2] have suddenly become a core programmin... more ABSTRACT In case you missed the signs, design patterns [2] have suddenly become a core programming topic. The Computing Curricula 2001 [1] includes the topic as a major part of SE1 &quot;software design,&quot; and in a recent survey [4] software practitioners ranked &quot;software design and patterns&quot; as one of the areas of knowledge they consider most important to their work.Teaching design patterns, however, is not so easy. Patterns need to be studied in the context of a software design project; to do otherwise renders the topic asomatous. We have met with some success in using &quot;musical composition&quot; to teach a number of standard design patterns, including Composite, Decorator, Visitor, and Factory. The idea of musical composition comes from Paul Hudak&#39;s Haskore system [3].The project centers on the design of a &quot;musical object,&quot; by which we mean either a note (with a pitch and duration), a rest (having just a duration), or a combination of musical objects. The combinations can be contemporaneous (as for a chord), or sequential (like a scale). The two primitive music types together with the combinators come together using the Composite inheritance pattern. Decorators can then be added to describe tempo changes (the scaling of the duration of all parts of a musical object), pitch transpositions, and to assign different instruments to parts of a composition.With the descriptive part of the system so formed, a Visitor can be used to traverse the musical tree and generate a linear sequence of &quot;musical events,&quot; which can then be written as type 1 MIDI files for playback on most standard PC equipment. As well as learning about design patterns, students are given the opportunity to try their hand at transcription or composition. Some examples of their work can be found at http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/courses/ compsci360fc/ archive/1999/Ass2/PickOfTheBest/.

The versatile list

Proceedings of the Australasian conference on Computing education - ACSE '00, 2000

The l'mmhle "list" is usually pmsenmd early in a first course on data structures and algorithm% o... more The l'mmhle "list" is usually pmsenmd early in a first course on data structures and algorithm% one topic among many, generally considered less interesting than trees graphs. We believe the list deserves better, and show how the list can be used to bring together a wide variety of Computer Sciencv topics, i n c l u d i n o : a l g e b r a i c proof by induction, abslzact data types, refw~ion, and generic programming. The emphasis is on developing abstraction and design ~I1~ applying both theory and engineering considerations, ultimately azriving at an unexpectedly powerful framework.

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A Visual Programming Environment for OO Languages

by John Hamer and John Hosking

Technology of Object-Oriented Languages and Systems, 1991

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Hashing revisited

ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, 2002

Hashing is a singularly important technique for building efficient data structures. Unfortunately... more

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A comparison of peer and tutor feedback

Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 2014

We report on a study comparing peer feedback with feedback written by tutors on a large, undergra... more We report on a study comparing peer feedback with feedback written by tutors on a large, undergraduate software engineering programming class. Feedback generated by peers is generally held to be of lower quality to feedback from experienced tutors, and this study sought to explore the extent and nature of this difference. We looked at how seriously peers undertook the reviewing task, differences in the level of detail in feedback comments and differences with respect to tone (whether comments were positive, negative or neutral, offered advice or addressed the author personally). Peer feedback was also compared by academic standing, and by gender. We found that, while tutors wrote longer comments than peers and gave more specific feedback, in other important respects (such as offering advice) the differences were not significant.

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Using Stealth Mixins to Achieve Modularity

2007 Australian Software Engineering Conference (ASWEC'07), 2007

Organising a complex, interactive application into separate modules is a significant challenge. W... more Organising a complex, interactive application into separate modules is a significant challenge. We would like to be able to evolve modules independently, and to add new modules into the system (or remove optional ones) without requiring major revisions to existing code. Solutions that rely on pre-planning when writing core modules are clumsy and error-prone, since programmers may omit to include

ThermalDesigner: an application of an object-oriented code conformance architecture

by Robert Amor, John Hamer, and John Hosking

In an earlier paper an architecture was described for supporting code conformance applications ba... more In an earlier paper an architecture was described for supporting code conformance applications based on Kea, an object-oriented functional language. Here we describe a prototype application, developed using Kea, for checking conformance with a thermal insulation standard. Called ThermalDesigner, this application incorporates an object-oriented building model, a graphical plan entry system for editing plans, and form-based interaction for obtaining non-plan

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A cognitive approach to identifying measurable milestones for programming skill acquisition

by John Hamer and Lynda Thomas

ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, 2006

Traditional approaches to programming education, as exemplified by the typical CS1/CS2 course seq... more Traditional approaches to programming education, as exemplified by the typical CS1/CS2 course sequence, have not taken advantage of the long record of psychological and experimental studies on the development of programming skills. These studies indicate a need for a new curricular strategy for developing programming skills and indicate that a cognitive approach would be a promising starting point. This paper first reviews the literature on studies of programming skills, cognition and learning, then within that context reports on a new formal structure, called an anchor graph, that supports curricular design and facilitates the setting of measurable milestones.

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A modular monadic action semantics

A domain-specific language (DSL) is a framework which is designed to precisely meet the needs of ... more

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Contribution-based pedagogies in engineering education

Anyone who has done any teaching will observe how much more deeply they come to understand the su... more Anyone who has done any teaching will observe how much more deeply they come to understand the subject material as a result. Any uncertainty or lack of clarity is quickly exposed when it comes to explaining a concept to somebody else. This principle is exploited in contribution based pedagogies, where students become co-creators of learning resources which are shared with

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An introductory paper to the first issue

International Journal of Pressure Vessels and Piping, 1973

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Expert systems for codes of practice