#teaching

Reflections on teaching OpenStreetMap & other open map tools

Does Your Department Have an AI Policy? Here’s Edinburgh’s

COMP4020: assessment

What does a student hand in for an agentic coding course---and how do I make that artefact worth more than the grade itself?

COMP4020: the story so far

A catch-up post for the COMP4020 Agentic Coding Studio blog series---what the course is, how it works, and what's still unresolved.

The road to COMP4020: climbing the "good" gradient

Producing code is easy; knowing whether it's good is still hard. Three nested feedback loops for ascending the quality gradient in agentic coding.

The road to COMP4020: the core mechanic

The repeating loop at the heart of COMP4020: provocation, prototype, studio crit. An art-school model adapted for agentic software development.

LLMs Unplugged at Brimbank Tech School

A hands-on AI workshop for educators at VU Sunshine Campus, covering AI fundamentals, paper-and-pen predictive models, and change management.

COMP4020/8020: Rapid Prototyping for the Web

Designing a new ANU course on building web apps with coding agents---studio-based, prototype-driven, moving beyond naive vibecoding.

LLMs Unplugged: teaching language models with pen, paper, and dice

A hands-on teaching resource where learners build bigram language models with pen, paper, and dice---no computers required. Tested with school students, public servants, and tech professionals.

LLM Parlour Games for Overeducated Wankers

Workshop materials for designing and playing parlour games with LLMs, including LLM-augmented 20 Questions and Adventures in Amphibology.

Writing graph theory proofs with ChatGPT

Asking ChatGPT to prove the five colour and four colour theorems with my mathematician father-in-law, and his reaction to the results.

Academic integrity guidelines re: ChatGPT and generative AI tools

Draft guidelines for allowing ChatGPT in university coursework while maintaining academic integrity, with citation and accountability requirements.

Are you ready for ChatGPT in the classroom this semester?

Practical advice for educators on incorporating ChatGPT into their teaching this semester rather than pretending it doesn't exist.

Drinking from the bullshit firehose

Draft notes on AI-generated bullshit in higher education---the problem isn't that it's wrong, it's that Brandolini's law means we'll be overwhelmed by the sheer volume.

AI in higher education: dystopia, utopia or something in between?

AI tools in higher education won't operate in isolation---they'll reshape information flows between students, instructors and institutions in ways we need to watch carefully.

Feedback in livecoding: cui bono?

A pre-class prompt for cybernetics students: watch some livecoding videos and think about what's shown, what's hidden, and who the feedback serves.

Moving to the School of Cybernetics

I'm leaving the ANU School of Computing for the new School of Cybernetics---here's what that means for students, colleagues and collaborators.

How to cite code? Leading by example

A YAML-based Statement of Originality that teaches students how to cite code, declare collaborators and list licences in every assignment.

Respectful Learning Memes

Students make brilliant memes to explain course content to each other---so why not make that an official part of the class?

Independent Study Contract writing tips

Practical advice for ANU computing students on writing a capstone project description and learning outcomes that actually guide your research.

Student project: animated 3D code rendering engine

A student project idea: real-time handwriting-style code rendering for livecoding performances, synced to the music.

LENS Online - the Laptop Ensemble in a time of covid19

Taking the ANU Laptop Ensemble online during COVID-19---what changes, what stays the same, and why it might actually work.

ICLC Extempore workshop

Workshop materials and outline for the Introduction to music-making in Extempore session at ICLC 2020, Limerick.

ANU Laptop Ensemble in S1 2020

The ANU Laptop Ensemble is back for Semester 1 2020, open to students in music, art, CS and beyond.

COMP1720 2019 major project exhibtion

Come see the COMP1720 Art & Interaction in New Media major project exhibition---this year's theme is listening in/listening out.

Ben and COMP2300 next year

I'm handing COMP2300 over to Charles Martin in 2020 so I can focus on the c/c/c studio Reimagine Fellowship.

IoT China Study Tour not happening in 2019

The IoT China Study Tour at BIT isn't running this year---the New Colombo Plan grant has expired.

Laptop Ensemble in the Canberra Times

The ANU Laptop Ensemble got a Canberra Times feature, with encouraging words from the School of Music about code in music-making.

Making the most of meetings with research students

Four standard questions I use to keep one-on-one research supervision meetings focused and useful.

The c/c/c studio

The project plan for the c/c/c studio, a creative code outreach program bringing art, music and code to high school students through the ANU Reimagine Fellowship.

Reimagining Engineering & CS at the ANU

My pitch to become a Reimagine Fellow at ANU, making the case for weaving art and creative practice into Engineering and Computer Science.

Class discussions on Discourse

Switching from Piazza to self-hosted Discourse for a 200-student course forum, with practical notes on setup, tradeoffs, and what's missing.

Oils from 威海

A surprise four-hour portrait sitting for a painting class at Shandong University, and the oil paintings that came out of it.

COMP1720 teaser

Five reasons to take COMP1720, ANU's art-with-code course---now using p5.js in the browser, with more sound and music than ever.