Dr. Justin F. Brunelle

Adjunct Assistant Professor: Old Dominion University

After completing my Ph.D., I began enhancing my CV by teaching a mixed graduate-undergraduate course in Web Programming (CS418/518) that covers LAMP stack development, Docker, JavaScript, HTML, and other concepts of good web design. I taught this course in Fall 2016 and am planning to teach this again in Fall 2017 and Fall 2018.

I designed CS891 to be taught in Fall 2019, a master's and PhD level "paper's" course called "Introduction to Emerging Technologies". The Emerging Technologies course (that I refer to as "Introduction to Buzzwords") will expose students to the topics and current state-of- the-art in a small set of broad emerging technologies topics. The course will focus on high-demand applications of CS knowledge and theory. Specifically, this will be an exposure to the myths and realities of several (often misunderstood) emerging technologies (e.g., IoT, cloud computing) and a critical deep dive into a research topic within the domain. Students will be expected to read and understand a whitepaper describing the current gaps in topic applications along with understanding and presenting on a peer-reviewed publication within the domain. Students will present an introduction to the technology as well as an analysis of the quality of the peer-reviewed paper's methodology, findings, and conclusions and make their own judgements or recommendations on the focus or next steps of the research.

Adjunct Instructor: Tidewater Community College

During the summers of 2008 and 2009, I designed and taught several courses at Tidewater Community College as an adjunct instructor. The courses each lasted one week of 5-hour per day instruction. The courses were comprised of hand-picked high school students (mostly "at-risk" rising juniors and seniors), and the course was funding by Opportunity Inc. The students were chosen based on their interest and abilities in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) disciplines. During the summer of 2008, I taught Introduction to Modeling and Simulation for Game Developers and Advanced Modeling and Simulation for Game Developers. In 2009, I designed and taught Introduction to Modeling and Simulation for Game developers, Advanced Modeling and Simulation for Game Developers, and Introduction to Web Development.

This course provided a unique opportunity for me to work with young adults that showed promise in the STEM disciplines. It was a pleasure to work with them, and to stoke their excitement for computer science. However, it also provided challenges. In my experience, high school students have a shorter attention span than college students, and therefore require short bursts of lecture broken up by hands-on activities. For this reason, my lectures were adapted during lesson-time to provide opportunities to implement the lecture material.

I developed syllabi for each of the courses, Introduction to Modeling and Simulation for Game Developers 2008 and 2009, Advanced Modeling and Simulation for Game Developers 2009, and Introduction to Web Programming 2008 and 2009. I also wrote daily lectures and provided daily activities.

The beginning gaming classes in 2008 and 2009 covered topics such as What is Modeling and Simulation, and what role does it play in our local ecomony (such as VMASC and work at ODU). We also covered the basics of understanding systems, what a model is, how to understand fidelity, scope, and VV&A. We also took time to understand what it means to develop games, and the background knowledge required to do so. The students then learned Gamemaker, a free software package that allows for WYSIWYG development of games. There is some scriptint that takes place in the background, but it is minor and the students were able to pick up on it. At the end of the class, each student developed, modified, tested, and played an Alien Invaders-like game.

During the Advanced Modeling and Simulation for Game Developers in 2009, we discussed the different types of simulations and how they related to gaming. For example, RPGs are continuous simulations and chess is a discrete system. We also learned more about modeling using agents and how artificial intelligence plays a roll. In 2009, I introduced Adobe Flash to allow the students to develop Flash movies. This required an introduction to ActionScript and Web document publishing.

The Web Development course was nearly identical in 2008 and 2009. This course was meant to give students an introduction to the technical aspects of authoring web documents. The course covered HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and embedding multimedia. This was a brief overview of in-depth topics, but the students came away with a wide breadth of web knowledge. The course also allow students to develop their own personal web pages.

Curriculum Planning Consultant: Virginia Beach City Public Schools and Virginia Beach Department of Parks and Recreation

Stemming from my work with TCC, I was contacted by VBCPS and the Parks and Rec department to help them develop a curriculum for after-school activities for high school students. I provided the lectures and syllabi developed for the TCC courses, and provided feedback and lessons-learned from my work. We also talked about how to best implement team-work into the course, and how to introduce extreme programming to boost collaboration among students. I'm continuing to consult with the course planners.

Guest Lecturer: Old Dominion University

During my career at ODU, I have participated as a guest lecturer in several courses. I've provided introductions to modeling and simulation in CS 410/411, paying particular attention to discrete event simulations, as several projects in that class were focusing on simulations of DESs. This lecture was given from the slides used in the Advanced Modeling and Simluation for Game Developers taught in 2009. I've also given lectures on Agile development for CS410/411, as well as during a 2011 ACM meeting. Finally, I have provided guest lectures on Agile development, and Day in the Life of a Computer Scientist (which focused on research in the field of CS) for CS110.