The Innovation in Technology Education Center (iTec) at DePaul University’s College of Computing and Digital Media (CDM) will kick off a series of public lectures on Oct. 28 with a discussion led by one of the original developers of wiki engines. 

Mark Guzdial, a professor in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology, will give a presentation titled “Media Computation: Contextualized Computing Education.” He will address the teaching approach he developed for liberal arts, architecture and business/management majors who need to learn programming but are not on track to become professional software developers. Guzdial’s approach provides a different context for programming by making it relevant and motivating to non-computer science majors. Preceded by a 4:30 p.m. reception, the discussion will begin at 5:30 p.m. in Room 924 of DePaul’s CDM Building, 243 S. Wabash Ave., Chicago. The program is free and open to the public.

Guzdial, the inventor of the media computation method, built the first wiki designed for classroom use, which was called the Swiki or CoWeb. He recently was awarded the Association for Computing Machinery’s prestigious Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award. 

“This series will bring distinguished computing educators to campus to share their innovative techniques and projects,” said Lucia Dettori, associate dean of CDM. “Dr. Guzdial is a leader in the industry of computing education. He is a crucial part of its growth, and we are honored to have him here.”

iTec sponsors periodic seminar series in which leading speakers from the educational research community are invited to present on topics of interest to DePaul faculty and students and the larger Chicago tech community. For a list of future speakers, visit http://itec.cdm.depaul.edu/seminar.html.

About CDM

With more than 3,000 students enrolled in its undergraduate and graduate programs, the College of Computing and Digital Media is one of the largest colleges of its kind in the nation. CDM’s faculty come from distinguished research, academic and industry backgrounds and have access to on-campus research laboratories dedicated to artificial intelligence, computer vision and graphics, digital media, high-performance computing and other premier technologies. The National Security Agency has recognized CDM as a national leader in computer network security and information assurance education. The college has received numerous national honors in recent years, including being one of the inaugural six universities selected to participate in the Sony Pictures Imageworks IPAX program. CDM utilizes faculty and industry experts-in-residence to prepare students for the job market in Chicago and around the nation.