User:Linda.webster

Revision as of 20:25, 24 August 2015

Linda Webster

Linda Webster, Ph.D., MBA, is a tenured Professor of Computer Science and Information Technology at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. Westminster is a traditional residential, undergraduate liberal arts college with enrollment of around 900. Being one of a two-faculty department requires Dr. Webster to teach a wide variety of courses. The CS/IT Department espouses a Problem-Based, Project-Oriented approach to student learning.

Dr. Webster's current areas of teaching include software engineering, systems analysis and design, project management, CS 0 and CS 1 with C++, cybersecurity concepts, information storage and management, and business continuity/information assurance.

Previously, Dr. Webster served as the Associate Dean of Faculty at Westminster College, responsible for campus wide academic advising, transfer student advising, transfer articulation agreements and course equivalencies, new student initiatives, the Tomnitz Family Learning Opportunities Center, academically at-risk students, and general student success. As a faculty member, she continues to coordinate departmental articulation agreements and serve as academic advisor for departmental majors.

Dr. Webster's scholarly interests span computing and IT education, software engineering, student software development projects, and business continuity/information assurance issues, particularly in nonprofit organizations.

Prior to coming to Westminster College, Dr. Webster taught at a several types of postsecondary institutions, including a community college, state university, historical black college, and a liberal arts college. She has worked in business and industry from small entrepreneurial businesses up to large corporations. She brings a unique blend of educational and industry experience to her classrooms.

In her spare time, Dr. Webster enjoys spending time with her family, watching old movies, exploring her family history, and watching men's professional cycling. As a former homeschooling mom (both children are now college graduates), she continues to stay abreast of homeschool curriculum issues.

Ideas for Foss in my Classes

As I think about implementing HFOSS into my classes, the two HFOSS projects that intrigue me is Mouse Trap and Sahana. I see opportunities for my students to be engaged that are more than coding. The course that I am considering these types of projects for is Systems and Software Engineering Studio. Since the focus of this course is on software engineering principles as applied through the systems development life cycle of a project, I am attracted to some of the non-coding activities. Initial ideas I have are in the areas of testing, documentation, communication, and providing real world examples.

In the area of Testing, students can develop a testing plan to work to diagnose bugs, create tickets, check bugs that have been fixed, close tickets, recreate fixed bugs, perform testing on various platforms, write a test, write validation tests, eliminate compiler warnings, and add comments to code.

In the area of Documentation, students can create/edit documentation and coding standards documents, develop documentation standards for coders, create a glossary, and develop user guides.

Contributing to the project community by contributing to the blog posts and answering questions. Making design and edit suggestions/changes to the project web site is something that does not require a high degree of technical knowledge, but can provide great enhancements for improvement.

Adding real world examples for ways in which the project can be used would be helpful to encourage new users and help them understand the potential of the project in question.

The tasks listed above are at varying levels of difficulty, require varying amounts of time, and require varying levels of technical expertise. One idea I have is to categorize these tasks by difficulty and time required. Students would be required to complete lower level tasks and learn about the project before advancing to the higher level tasks. A modification of this would be to assign some value to the tasks with students being assigned to earn a certain number of points for each task.

I look forward to ideas from other participants about incorporating these projects into my class. With the wide variety of projects options available, I look forward to finding a project component that will fulfill the learning objectives of my class. Providing this real world experience for students can give them a view of software development they cannot get out of a textbook.