Browsing by Author "Seyam, Mohammed"

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    Diversity-focused Course Design for Computer Science Students: Incorporating Diversity Conference Attendance into Course Design and Delivery
    Seyam, Mohammed; Abu-Elkheir, Mervat (ACM, 2023-06-29)
    Computer Science (CS) has the potential to be one of the most diverse fields when it comes to education and employment opportunities, yet there still exists an equity gap in the field when it comes to accessibility and empowerment. To mitigate that, conferences that celebrate diversity in CS were founded and are becoming major yearly technology events. For years, our department offered scholarships for students to attend a number of these major diversity conferences. A few years ago, we started working on pre-conference preparation, during-conference activities, and post-conference reflections, in order to provide a deeper and a more comprehensive experience for the attendees. In 2021, we started offering a diversity-focused course for students attending the Tapia and Grace Hopper Conferences, with the goal of incorporating their conference experiences into a CS course that discusses diversity and inclusion topics. This paper presents how we planned and implemented this course, and students’ reception and feedback. We also provide lessons learned that can work – with the course description – as guidelines to help structure and plan diversity-focused courses for CS departments whose students attend diversity conferences.
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    For the Public Good: Research Impact and the Promise of Open Access
    DePauw, Karen P.; Seyam, Mohammed; Roy, Siddhartha; Abbas, Montasir M.; Hole, Brian; Potter, Peter J. (Virginia Tech. University Libraries, 2016-10-24)
    As a land-grant institution, Virginia Tech is committed to research that meaningfully engages with the vital concerns of our day such as feeding, building, and empowering a healthy world. How does Virginia Tech’s commitment to engagement fit with the Open Access vision for unrestricted online access to scholarly research? Have OA journals, public repositories, and federal mandates simply made a researcher’s life more complicated or could OA be the key to unlocking research impact on a global scale? And what are the implications for tenure and promotion? Join us for a public forum devoted to these questions and more on Monday, October 24, at 6:30 pm in Torgersen 1100. We expect a lively discussion featuring panelists from the Virginia Tech community and ample opportunity for audience Q&A. Montasir (“Monty”) Abbas is Associate Professor in the Charles E. Via, Jr. Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at Virginia Tech, where he also serves as Coordinator of the Transportation, Infrastructure and Systems Engineering Program. His interests are in real-time traffic control, traffic flow theory, driver behavior, ITS, transportation modeling and safety, artificial intelligence and systems optimization. Abbas currently serves as President of VT’s Faculty Senate. Karen DePauw is Vice President and Dean for Graduate Education at Virginia Tech. An internationally recognized scholar in the fields of adapted physical activity, disability sport and disability studies, she holds academic appointments in the Departments of Sociology and Human Nutrition, Foods & Exercise. As an academic administrator, she has held key leadership roles in graduate education including serving as Chair of the Board of Directors of the Council of Graduate Schools (2010) and Chair of the GRE Board (2013-2014). Brian Hole is founder and CEO of Ubiquity Press, a researcher-focused publishing company that specializes in open access academic journals and open data. Prior to that, he managed the British Library’s LIFE3 project on costing digital preservation, and the DryadUK project, which developed a sustainable framework for integrating Open Data archiving into scientific publisher work flows. When not engaged in his publishing work, Hole is working on a part-time PhD at University College London, focusing on public archaeology in India, specifically at issues of community engagement and utilization of cultural heritage. Peter Potter is Director, Publishing Strategy, at Virginia Tech. In this role he is charged with assessing the research and scholarly environments at VT in order to guide the University Libraries’ long-term planning in the area of publishing services. A historian by training (B.A. Virginia Tech; M.A. University of Virginia), Potter has devoting his professional career to scholarly publishing, most recently serving as editor in chief at Cornell University Press. Siddhartha Roy is doctoral student and graduate researcher in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Virginia Tech. He works with Dr. Marc Edwards researching failure mechanisms in potable water infrastructure and is a member of the Virginia Tech Research Team that has been working to resolve the water quality issues in Flint, Michigan. Mohammed Seyam is a doctoral student in Computer Science at Virginia Tech. He earned an undergraduate degree in information systems from Mansoura University and a master’s degree in information systems from Cairo University, both in Egypt. Among his many activities on campus he served as the graduate student representative on the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors during the 2015-16 academic year. A vocal advocate of OA, he traveled to Washington to take part in OpenCon 2014, a conference for researchers on open access, open data, and open educational resources."
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    Open Education Week Panel Discussion
    Doolittle, Peter; Hart, Heath D.; Hartman, Greg; Seyam, Mohammed; Walz, Anita R. (Virginia Tech, 2015-02-25)
    Introduction by Julie Speer, Associate Dean for Research & Informatics. Open remarks by Anita Walz, Assessment, Open Education & Online Learning Environments Librarian. Mohammed Seyam discusses the value of openly licensed material as a student, research, and graduate assistant. Heath Hart reflects on his adoption of an open educational resource and a (subscribed) online textbook in, “A Rousing Success and an Unmitigated Disaster.” Greg Hartman discusses his experiences authoring open-source (CC BY-NC) textbook, “APEX Calculus” http://www.apexcalculus.com. Peter Doolittle discusses the open education movement from a teaching and learning perspective, moving beyond just content into process. Presentations are followed by audience and panelist discussion.
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    Towards Establishing a Training Program to Support Future CS Teaching-focused Faculty
    Farghally, Mohammed; Seyam, Mohammed; Shaffer, Clifford A. (ACM, 2024-03-07)
    Computer Science programs have seen high enrollments in recent years, which contributed to widening the capacity gap. One way to address this problem is to hire more teaching-focused faculty at both research and non-doctoral granting institutions. Although this kind of hiring has already been taking place in several institutions, PhD-granting CS departments have not been able to produce enough PhDs to meet the increasing demand, especially for PhD holders with interest in - and capacity for - teaching. In this paper, we describe our experience with the initial phase of building a training program within our (large, land grant, R1) institution, targeting graduate students interested in pursuing an academic teachingfocused career in CS. Through a semester-long set of meetings, conversations, and activities, we worked with participants on improving their teaching skills and applying effective pedagogies in the classroom. At the end of the semester, we surveyed participants about the value of those meetings to them, ideas for improvement, and perspectives for future directions. Most participants rated the meetings positively in terms of content relevance and usefulness, and the opportunity to connect and interact with other participants and invited faculty members. We also discuss the lessons learned and best practices, which can be widely applied by other departments looking to better prepare their graduate students for a CS teaching-focused faculty position.