ARCS Projects

2023

• Sakai to Canvas transition: In the Spring 2023 semester we began our transition from Sakai to Canvas as our LMS (Learning Management System). We began with a small group of 11 faculty and 13 courses. Over the summer we worked with another small group of faculty who hosted their summer courses in Canvas. We opened up Canvas to all faculty for the Fall 2023 semester and almost 60% of the faculty participated. We will continue to transition away from Sakai with the goal of not using Sakai for the Fall 2024 semester.

2022

• Physics 24: Nicholas Brezny, Theresa Lynn, Mark Ilton, Sharon Gerbode – Following development of online lecture content and guided check-in questions in spring 2021, the Physics 24 “Flip” teaching team piloted four sections in spring 2022 with a fully flipped approach. The other eight sections were administered with a traditional approach. The ARCS team worked with faculty to carry out an initial and an end-of-semester survey to evaluate the effects of learning modes on students.
• Chemistry 42: Karl Haushalter, Kathy Van Heuvelen – For Chemistry 42 Profs. Karl Haushalter and Kathy Van Heuvelen were looking for assistance with selecting a learning platform that would improve real-time communication and feedback in a large lecture course. We evaluated several products and the department experimented with using PollEverywhere during the Fall 2022 semester. 
• Biology 46: Matina Donaldson-Matasci, Steve Adolph – Prof. Matina Donaldson-Matasci and Prof. Steve Adolph were looking for a solution to provide a uniform computing environment for students for the core course Biology 46. Among the available solutions, they opted for RStudio Cloud (now Posit), a paid cloud computing service for RStudio. We helped with testing the various features of RStudio Cloud, creating the documentation for students, selecting a suitable subscription plan, negotiating the contract, and setting up the Harvey Mudd College instance for the RStudio Cloud server.
• CS 121: Xanda Schofield, Surani – Prof. Xanda Schofield and Surani Gunasena reached out to us as they were rebuilding the CS 121 course (renamed CS181AK). We created a demo project related to Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing for their course. We also provided consultation on computing tools such as using Google Colab for version control as edits on Jupyter notebooks cannot be readily viewed in Github. In addition, we helped design a pre-course survey and summarize the themes from the survey data. We also helped design the presentation rubrics for the final project.
• Math 189: Jamie Haddock – Prof. Jamie Haddock reached out to us to revise her elective course Math 189AD Mathematical Data Science & Topic Modeling. We helped her with redesigning her course assignments and tutorials by transitioning them from MATLAB to the Python ecosystem. We also helped her set up the workflow using Github, Google Colab and Google Classroom for her course.
• Interdisciplinary Computation: Albert Soto – Professor Albert Soto reached out to us to design his ENGR190BE course. We offered him suggestions on organizing course structure, creating formative/summative assessments, designing the Canvas learning environment, and other instructional design aspects. We provided him consultations to transition his assignments to the Python ecosystem. We helped him set up the workflow for sharing his datasets via Google Team Drive and importing them into assignments on Google Colab.

2021

• Mark Ilton: QClicker – In 2021 Prof. Mark Ilton from the Physics department asked for our help with evaluating an open source platform called QClicker. The Physics department was looking for an improved way to check student understanding using “mini-questions.” Unfortunately, we were not able to get the software running locally before another solution was discovered.
• Erin Talvitie: Google Cloud Platform – We explored various cloud options including Google Cloud Platform for automating the workflow for a machine learning project for Prof. Erin Talvitie. Unfortunately, we could not figure out an appropriate solution for the automation needed for the project. 
• Xanda Schofield: We helped Prof. Xanda Schofield with gathering and processing data for her Natural Language Processing project with two Pomona college faculty and students. We helped the students involved in the project to write python scripts to scrape data from the SEC website, clean and prepare it in the correct format.

2020

• Prof. Timothy J. Tsai: ENG208 – Aashita Kesarwani worked with Prof. TJ Tsai in designing the elective course ENG208 that covers the deep learning applications in signal processing by brainstorming the syllabus and course structure, designing three assignments that involved coding neural networks from scratch, setting up autograding with help from student interns, and consulting on multiple aspects of computing packages and environments to be used for this course.
• CTL Online Learning Course – ARCS worked with the Claremont Colleges Center for Teaching and Learning to develop an online course in Sakai. The course focused on helping faculty pivot from in person classes to online classes during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Orientation 2020 – The ARCS team collaborated with the Division of Student Affairs to design and create a Sakai site for HMC Orientation 2020 since Orientation was not able to be held in person.

2019

• Vatche Sahakian: Physics – JupyterHub server – Aashita Kesarwani, the Research Computing and Data Science Specialist, installed a JupyterHub server on Prof. Sahakian’s Kepler GPU machine that serves multiple users with a uniform computing environment via a web-based interface. It was set up with Julia kernel and nbgrader for autograding and is used for teaching classes as well as research work.
• Jessica Wu: CS – Aashita Kesarwani assisted Prof. Jessica Wu by guiding student interns in finding datasets and creating the coding assignments for her course in data science ethics.
• Matthew Spencer: E80 – ARCS worked with an electrical engineering faculty to create the instructional materials for the 6 labs in his course. The materials created for each lab include a lab prompt, a lab report rubric, a peer review feedback form for lab reports, and an assessment sheet for graders.
• Julie Medero & Lucas Bang: CS70 – ARCS team helped faculty from the Department of Computer Science create a seamless learning experience for students. Sakai, Gradescope, GitHub Classroom, GitHub, and Docker were integrated into this course. You can read more about this project in the ARCS Projects Spotlight 2019.
• Lelia Hawkins: Chem 41 – James Sadler and Yi Luo worked with Professor Hawkins to create training material to teach her students how to use the Toonly software to create and edit informative animated videos. Once the material was created they offered a class session to walk the students through how to use the software.

2018

• Isabel Balseiro: HMC LIT 179X – ARCS helped design the course syllabus, project instructions, assessments, and workshops to integrate Scalar, an open-source scholarly publishing tool that can be used to create media-rich content, into this course. ARCS also taught two workshops on Scalar in class in the Spring and Fall semesters of 2018. Scalar technical support was also provided to faculty and students.
• Kate Kharitonova: CS121 – ARCS worked with a computer science faculty to create instructional materials such as a course syllabus, Github learning resources, and a student feedback survey for this course.
• Tableau visualizations of WHAM data – The ARCS scientific computing intern, Chukwudi Oguejiofor, worked with the HMC Teaching and Learning committee to visualize data collected through the Workload and Health at Mudd (WHAM) surveys using Tableau.

2017

• Julie Medero, Beth Trushowsky, Yekaterina (Kate) Kharitonov: CS70 – ARCS created training materials, FAQs and instructional videos for CS 70 in order to help students who are coming to the course without much experience in using Linux and Github.
• You can read more about this project in the ARCS Projects Spotlight 2017.
• F&M: Galileo Redesign – ARCS worked with the Facilities and Maintenance Department to design the audiovisual systems during the renovation of the Galileo Auditoria. This included the video projection, assisted listening, lecture capture, and audio distribution systems.
• Talithia Williams, Susan Martonosi, Kenji Koza: Math35 – ARCS worked closely with the faculty to develop course content, course assignments, and user guides to support the transition from using Minitab to R, an open source statistics package, for Math 35.

2016

• Satyan Devadoss: Website for student projects in computational geometry
• Lelia Hawkins & Rachel Levy: Developing an R package for atmospheric sample data analysis and visualization

2015

• Albert Dato: Interactive Simulation – Using a game engine, create an interactive experience for students to