WORKSHOP ON AI TEACHING AND PRACTICE
to be held in conjunction with
Tenth Australian Joint Conference on AI (AI'97)
Perth, Australia
Sunday, November 30, 1997
The purpose of the workshop is to exchange experience and ideas of the
practice of teaching artificial intelligence in Australia and elsewhere.
BACKGROUND
In Australia, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is offered at approximately
20 universities. At its best, an AI course contains essential
concepts for engineering and computer science undergraduates. Many
new and successful techniques in Engineering have migrated from AI,
including expert systems, neural computing, object-oriented
programming, data mining techniques, fuzzy controllers, genetic
algorithms and evolutionary programming, as well as many of the basic
ideas of search and algorithm complexity. AI is therefore an
important bridge between theoretical Computer Science and its
application in the real world.
However, students view undergraduate AI courses as too theoretical to
be vocationally relevant. Often, this attitude is attributable to the
perception that AI is in low demand in industry, that "traditional" AI
languages like Lisp and Prolog are not used outside of universities,
or that AI courses are "too theoretical" with little practical value
after graduating. Students sometimes fail to see that AI can help
them gain employment, helps them to think more laterally or that AI
can be fun and interesting.
WORKSHOP FOCUS
We invite interested AI researchers and instructors to submit papers
in the area of AI instruction. The workshop is intended to pursue
questions such as:
Should AI teaching promote software engineering outcomes without
surrendering important theoretical lessons? Do undergraduates view AI
classes as irrelevant to industrial careers, and if so, what can be
done to correct this impression? Should Australian AI teaching follow
US trends or do we need to develop other specific National curriculums
for AI? Do we need to emphasise those research and commercial areas
in AI in which Australia exhibits particular strengths? What
resources exist for teaching AI in Australia? Where are they located?
How can we best exploit the Internet for AI teaching?
Besides these questions, we hope that participants will exchange new
and useful ideas for course information and structure, assessment
practice, practical assignments and industrial examples of AI in use.
Of particular interest will be the use of source materials and
programming exercises used to teach undergraduate AI.
Apart from producing a survey of AI teaching in Australia, this
workshop will also develop a network of AI teachers which will benefit
the professional development of both experienced Lecturers in the
field as well as newcomers.
PARTICIPATION
We invite submissions from all teaching staff employed in Australian
and Asia-Pacific Universities teaching AI or with an interest in
undergraduate AI curriculum. The expected attendance would be 20 and
limited to 8 to 10 presentations.
Diversity is a key issue and presenters will be, as much as practical,
drawn from diverse AI teaching methods in order to provide the
broadest scope. Discussion at such a workshop is likely to be lively
and productive.
If you would like to participate, but cannot submit a paper, please
send an expression of interest. ALL workshop participants (including
speakers) will be required to register for the AI'97 conference.
SUBMISSIONS
Your paper should reach the program committee by 31 August, 1997.
Postscript submissions by email are encouraged, sent to Dan Corbett
(·········@UniSA.edu.au). Final versions of your paper may be no
longer than 8 pages but initial submissions may be shorter. All
submitted papers will be refereed.
TIMETABLE
Deadline for submission: 31 August, 1997
Notification to authors: 30 Sept, 1997
Deadline for final version: 31 Oct, 1997
Workshop: 30 Nov, 1997
ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
Peter Eklund, University of Adelaide, ·····@cs.adelaide.edu.au
Dan Corbett, University of South Australia, ·········@UniSA.edu.au
FURTHER INFORMATION
Enquiries may be directed to Peter Eklund (·····@cs.adelaide.edu.au)
or to Dan Corbett (·········@UniSA.edu.au). The workshop homepage
can be found at: http://www.cs.adelaide.edu.au/~peter/ai97/
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Dan Corbett
School of Computer and Information Science
University of South Australia Phone: +61 8 8302 3102
The Levels, SA Fax: +61 8 8302 3381
Australia 5095 email:
·········@UniSA.edu.au
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