THE INFINITY PROJECT

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THE INFINITY PROJECT
IN
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• Innovative educational approaches to modern
  engineering that are both fundamental and fun
• Developed by
• Southern Methodist University (SMU)
• Texas Instruments (TI) - the DSP hardware
• Hyperception - the VAB software

The Infinity Project and the infinity Project
logo are service marks of SMU
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• Advantages
• Informative and entertaining
• Early exposure to real-world applications
• FUN!!
• Disadvantages
• Designers hid the software intentionally
• For CSE majors - a gap between the tool and their
  topics of study

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Extending InfinityWhat are we doing?

• Teaching by literacy
• Guided viewing of the code from selected
  graphical modules
• Focus on one module with variations
• Annotate code to point out differences
• Pose questions leading the student to analyze and
  make predictions about module behavior

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Extending InfinityWhy are we doing it?

• Retain freshman computer science engineering
  majors
• Increase their literacy with software early in
  their college career
• Develop their understanding and intuition
  about what software can do

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Extending InfinityHow will we do it?

• Use Infinity Project experiments as foundation
• Design a framework to view the module code
• Annotate and highlight the code of relevant
  modules
• Create variants of the relevant modules with
  single changes
• Develop thought exercises to link code to system
  behavior when experiment is run

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Extending InfinityWho are we?

• CSE_at_UTA is the
• Computer Science and Engineering Department at
  the University of Texas at Arlington
• The CSE_at_UTA Infinity Project development team is
• Research Associates Armando Mora, Dan Waters,
  Lisette Zounon, Tauheed Ahmed, Srikant Vemparala,
  Peter Bui, Kalyan Chanda, Raza Jafri, and Vijai
  Mohan
• Principal Investigator Dr. J. Carter M. Tiernan

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Infinity Labs for CSE1105

• A taste of CSE
• A glimpse of how fun and powerful software
  programming can be
• A series of exercises to help you
• Learn programming concepts
• Get an idea of how your courses fit together

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Purpose

• Different approach to computer science concepts
• Connections between concepts and real-world
  examples and applications
• Introductory hands-on experience with DSP
  hardware components
• Fun!

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Logging on

• Rooms 123NH and 124NH
• Username cse1111
• Password infinity

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Process

• Labs are intended to be worked in pairs
• The labs are designed to be self-explanatory and
  well-linked so you should be able to follow them
  without additional direction
• In the lab the TAs will be available to assist if
  you need help going through the Infinity labs

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The Infinity Plan
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An Infinity Kit

• DSP board
• Microphone and webcam
• VAB - Virtual Application Builder