Cog 468 - 3 Semester Hours

Cognitive Science Capstone Seminar

The course will feature interdisciplinary individual research projects of a relatively modest scale. Students will have wide latitude in negotiating a realm of study, as well as the approach to study of the selected topic, so long as the project stands in a justifiable relationship to the computational/representational assumption which unifies the field.

Senior status and either (1) a Cognitive Science major with all lower division core requirements of the Cognitive Science degree, and the Writing Across the Curriculum and Oral Communication Across the Curriculum requirements met, or (2) a Computer Science major seeking the B.S. degree with a concentration in Artificial Intelligence together with CSC366.

This course provides the Capstone experience for Cognitive Science majors. It also is a featured contributor to the General Education requirements of Writing Across the Curriculum and Oral Communication. The course will be offered once a year.

1. Students will satisfy the capstone goals of integration, application, transition, breadth.
2. Students will assess cognitive science at Oswego.
3. Students will demonstrate their resourcefulness, resilience, and persistence in the experience of doing an individual research project.
4. Students will craft a project portfolio.
5. Students will perform process analyses.
6. Students will present their work orally and in writing.
7. Students will participate in peer review processes and apprenticeship relationships.
8. Students will organize, administer, and participate in a capstone conference.

1. Brief discussion of the Capstone Goals and the Cognitive Science Learning Outcomes.
2. Presentation of "plausible projects" in the context of capstone goals and content outcomes.
3. Students work on crafting a project proposal which directly incorporates a plan for achieving capstone goals and measuring content outcomes.
4. Students present their proposal orally in class. At the same time they will provide a detailed description of their proposal. A mechanism for collectively evaluating the proposals (with capstone objectives and curricular outcomes in mind) will be used to provide feedback to the students on their proposals.
5. Students will revise their proposals and present oral and written updates, as necessary.
6. Students will be required to produce and share in the course a six page paper which is consistent, in most respects, with the guidelines required for papers for the Cognitive Science Society's annual conference.
7. According to a parallel, incremental, developmental process, project definition (proposal), project implementation, and project analysis will be pursued. Students will be required to present oral and written "status reports," "process analyses," and "peer reviews" relating to the projects throughout the course. These status report/analyses/reviews will be fairly well scripted.
8. Students will organize and administer the annual Oswego Cognitive Science Day Conference.
9. Students will be required to submit their six page papers, strictly adhering to the required format, for "peer review." Reviews with comments will be returned for revision.
10. The revised papers will be submitted to a "class conference organizing committee." The papers will be reviewed and ranked, with results computed "anonymously."
11. Students will present their work as a 15 minute talk during a "class conference." An award for the best paper of the semester will be presented. The papers will be archived electronically as a form of program assessment.

Methods of instruction will take the form of cognitive scaffold construction in support of the featured research project, its conception, development, and final presentation. Instructional activities will include the establishment of processes and parameters of peer collaboration, portfolio construction, process analysis, and conference organization and administration. Additionally, the methods of instruction inherent in the instantiation of cognitive apprenticeship known as legitimate peripheral participation [Lave, 1991] will permeate the course.

1. Students will propose, develop, and defend a modest research project.
2. Students will create a project portfolio.
3. Students will present oral and written reports.
4. Each student will be responsible for securing a project committee consisting of four members: two internal (within the class) peer reviewers, an internal project advisor (the instructor for this course), and an external project advisor (another faculty member associated with cognitive science at Oswego).
5. Students will participate in project committees as peer consultants and reviewers.
6. Students will collaboratively organize, administer, and participate in the Capstone Conference.

1. Surveys of student's research committee members.
2. Assessment of Portfolio.
3. Oral and written presentations.
4. Final paper.
5. Assessment of contribution to success of the conference.

The college has the faculty resources and expertise to offer this course. The college also has adequate computing resources and library resources to offer this course.

Churchland, Patricia. Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind/Brain. Cambridge, Massachusetts: A Bradford Book, The MIT Press, 1986.

Clark, Andy. Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again. Cambridge, Massachusetts: A Bradford Book, The MIT Press, 1997.

Dennett, Daniel. Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life. New York: Touchstone, Simon and Schuster, 1995.

Gardner, Howard. The Mind's New Science. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1985.

Gardner, Howard. Art, Mind & Brain: A Cognitive Approach to Creativity. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1982.

Garfield, Jay. Foundations of Cognitive Science: The Essential Readings. New York: Paragon House, 1990.

Gazzaniga, Michael. Cognitive Neuroscience: The Biology of the Mind. Norton, New York, 1998.

Hofstadter, Douglas. Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. New York: Vintage Books, Inc., 1989.

Jackendoff, Ray. Consciousness and the Computational Mind. Cambridge, Massachusetts: A Bradford Book, The MIT Press, 1992.

Lave, Jean, Etienne Wenger. Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Levy, Steven. Artificial Life: The Quest for a New Creation. New York: Pantheon Books, Inc., 1992.

Minsky, Marvin. Society of Mind. New York: Simon and Schuster, Inc., 1982.

Pinker, Steven. How the Mind Works. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997.

Spitzer, Manfred. The Mind Within the Net. MIT Press, 1999.

Stillings, Neil, Mark Feinstein, Jay Garfield, Edwina Rissland, David Rosenbaum, Steven Weisler, and Lynne Baker-Ward. Cognitive Science: An Introduction. C ambridge, Massachusetts: A Bradford Book, The MIT Press, 1987.

Thagard, Paul. Mind: Introduction to Cognitive Science. Cambridge, Massachusetts: A Bradford Book, The MIT Press, 1996.

Von Eckardt, Barbara. What Is Cognitive Science? Cambridge, Massachusetts: A Bradford Book, The MIT Press, 1996.

Winograd, Terry, Fernando Flores. Understanding Computers and Cognition. Addison Wesley, 1986.

Winston, Patrick Henry. Artificial Intelligence. Reading, Massachusetts, 1977.