HCI Summer School a great success
by Heather McEwen
In a first for the College, the Research School of Computer Science (RSCS) presented a summer school on Human Computer Interaction (HCI) from 5 - 9 December 2011.
Forty students from ANU, UC, UniSA, QUT and Deakin University gathered for theoretical and practical workshops led by Dr Henry Gardner the Director of RSCS, and Professor Bruce Thomas, Deputy Director of the Advanced Computing Research Centre, University of South Australia. Professor Thomas is also Director of the Wearable Computer Lab.
The Summer School is the brainchild of both academics and is a collaboration between ANU and UniSA, as a summer course to help students to gain credits towards their degrees. It was supported by Microsoft Research and the Australian Government funded Engineering Hubs and Spokes project.
While the summer school is aimed at students with at least three years of tertiary level computer science under their belts, 5 students from Canberra Boys Grammar also attended - in part because the school’s ICT teacher is an ANU alumnus who was keen to let selected students experience computer science.
“I approached Matthew Purcell at Canberra Boys Grammar to find out if he was interested in selecting appropriate students to participate,” said Dr Gardner.
“Happily, he agreed, and we found that these high-school students enjoyed the experience and left feeling even more enthused about ICT,” he said.
A special Microsoft Kinect SDK workshop, delivered by Bronwyn Zande and John O’Brien from Soul Solutions, was a major feature of the course and a huge attraction to all participants because it gave everyone a chance to do some programming.
“Basically coding for Kinect allows the end user to control the computer with hand and body gestures rather than by using a mouse and keyboard,” said Dr Gardner.
“The applications for this kind of technology are huge.”
The Canberra Boys Grammar students were enthusiastic about the course which, while challenging, was helping them to make decisions about their future study.
“Sometimes it was difficult,” said Andrew Flint. “It was technically hard, but the coding was fairly easy to comprehend because it was explained very well and the methods were straightforward,” he said.
Most of the coursework students that participated wanted to find out what sort of research is going on in HCI, and were very much aware of how big the field is in industry and academia.
2nd Year Master of Computer Science student, Fatemeh Rajabiyazdi, is particularly interested in combining health with computer interaction.
“I’m considering a PhD and I really want to know what’s happening in the research space,” she said.
“I’d recommend the course to anyone that is interested in research in HCI, especially if they are a computer science student who is not really sure where to specialise,” she said.
Shivendra Sharma is a 4th Year Engineering and IT student. He wanted to know what kind of research is going on, and how it is applied.
“I like the way in which HCI merges engineering and computer science together,” he said. “There is big interest in industry and that is attractive to me.”
Jyoti Dhall from the University of Canberra has just started a PhD in a related field and he wanted to broaden his vision a little.
“I’ve found the course very informative. Listening to great minds and hearing how HCI works, getting the fine details and putting it all into practice is invaluable,” he said.
“I’ve found it motivational and inspirational.”
The 2011 Summer School lecturers and tutors included staff and students from the Information and Human Centred Computing (iHCC) research group at RSCS and, based on its success and the level of participation, a new one is planned for the future.
