Kevin Hua has just finished his B.Cog.Sc. (Honours) degree in the Cognition and Computation Specialization and will convocate later this month. He is currently in the Data Science stream of a Masters of Computer Science degree at OCICS.
During my time in the B.Cog.Sc program, I had the pleasure of working in three Carleton University labs as part of my co-op experience, funded in part by NSERC’s Undergraduate Student Research Award (USRA). In all three experiences, my primary role was as a computer programmer, but in each case I experienced other aspects of Cognitive Science.
My role in the Computer Science department’s Graphics, Imaging, and Games Lab (GIGL) was a prototype designer and experimenter. My tasks involved programming several mockups of computer games that were then transferred to other lab members for further development. In one project, after I completed all of the prototyping necessary, I also did a study to evaluate people’s perception of randomness in video games. Although this co-op involved predominately mathematics and coding knowledge, I also gained experience in conducting experiments involving real people.
In Dr. Kasia Muldner’s Cognitive Science lab, I was responsible for designing and coding two architectures for lab use. The first was a Graphical User Interface (GUI) based-system, intended to work alongside eye-tracking software. A Master’s student used this system as part of his thesis involving eye-tracking and simple arithmetic problems. My second project was to build a Cognitive Tutoring system for simple geometry proofs. My experience in the B.Cog.Sc program was immensely helpful for these projects. My knowledge of Artificial Intelligence supported the development of the tutor because the topic was one that I had covered in my Artificial Intelligence class!
In Dr. Herdman’s Advanced Cognitive Engineering Lab (ACE), I mainly worked on a complex client-server system. Although this placement was more technically challenging, I felt that the amount of programming experience I had gleaned throughout the B.Cog. Sc. program sufficiently prepared me for this position.
I strongly recommend the Computation and Cognition Specialization of the B.Cog.Sc. to people who are interested in becoming computer programmers. The Cognitive Science program is strongly multidisciplinary, and therefore is less focused on programming than is the Computer Science program. However, my experience shows that there is ample opportunity to develop sophisticated programming skills as well as a broad understanding of Cognition in this degree.