9455314 Walker Lecture room demonstration experiments, which actually show how things work, are relatively new to computer science educators. In most other fields of science, demonstrations have proven quite effective in combination with a variety of teaching methods and have been successfully used for many years. Such "live" demonstrations, especially for introductory classes, awaken a keen interest in the "chalk and talk" lecture and tend to be remembered long afterward. We believe that lecture room demonstrations need to be considered seriously as a teaching aid for helping to revitalize introductory computer science courses. The real problem is that very few instructional materials are currently available on this subject. This project addresses the need to develop computer science lecture room demonstration materials. More specifically, it concentrates on development of eight innovative, low cost, computer-hardware-related lecture room demonstration experiments to improve the computer literacy course taken by non-computer science majors. These demonstrations help students to better understand basic concepts of how computers operate and permits them to see firsthand, a number of attention-grabbing, real-world applications. Students learn that computers are used for more than just running software applications. The demonstrations show students how computer and peripherals work; illustrate aspects of telecommunications and networking; show actual business and industrial applications; and present emerging computer related technologies such as multimedia, hypermedia and virtual reality. Details of how to build and set up the demonstration apparatus, teaching techniques, and results from classroom trials are made readily available via pamphlets, presentation at workshops, and the Internet. This project is expected to be of great interest and benefit to all teachers of the computer literacy course.
