The joint project for the two courses is a working prototype of a constructionist educational technology, to be displayed at the BB&A Expo, and an accompanying paper suitable for submission to an academic conference related to education and technology. You will select a conference appropriate for your project and hopefully also your professional goals, and write a paper according to the conference's submission guidelines. Here is a list of ACM conferences. Conferences differ, but there is typically a category of demos which or short papers approximately four pages long. When a poster is the most appropriate submission format (for example, ISTE), you will still be required to submit a paper for the BBA final assignment. It is not a course requirement to actually submit your paper to a conference. You may also propose a different venue, but you must be writing for some authentic audience.
In prior years, BBA was taught on a different schedule, and students were required to write papers suitable for submission to IDC as a Demo Paper. In the last two years, 12 student papers were accepted and presented at IDC. Final projects have also gone on to become commercial products. The following IDC demo papers are excellent examples for your own final project:
- Domino: Mobile Phones as Accessible Microcontrollers(bib)
- ClipWorks: a Tangible Interface for Collaborative Video Editing(bib)
- Patchwork: an Expressive E-Textile Construction Kit(bib)
- Tree it: a tangible user interface for constructing the sample space(bib)
- Inside out: teaching empathy and social-emotional skills(bib)
- Tingets: a system for young students to communicate and reflect(bib)
- Manipul8: an interactive experience to inspire pattern-based algebraic thinking and representational fluency(bib
- Testudinata: a tangible interface for exploring functional programming(bib)
- DiMBI: An Interface to Connect People to Math's Big Ideas of Patterns and Relations (bib)
- Tuk Tuk: A Block-Based Programming Game (bib)
- The Conference of the Birds: A Collaborative Storytelling Environment for Literacy Development (bib)
- Sonification Blocks: A Block-Based Programming Environment For Embodied Data Sonification (bib)
Sometimes course projects go on to become more substantial research projects. If you are interested in inviting a BB&A teacher to collaborate as a co-author, we can support your revision process after the class ends to avoid any conflict of interest.
Timeline
- Week 8 (March 11) Introduce final projects. Brainstorm ideas.
- Week 10 (April 1) Final project brainstorming
- Week 12 (April 15) Critiques: Outside experts critique project prototypes and concepts
- Week 13 (April 22) Initial prototype + List of 5 papers for the Literature review
- Week 14 (April 29) Second prototype + Literature review
- Week 15 (May 06) Final paper presentations (lecture) and BB&A Expo (lab)
Support
This is a lot of work, but we will support you along the way. In addition to class work time and office hours, your group will be having regular 1-on-1 meetings with members of the teaching team.