Dr. Alessio Gaspar is Associate Professor in the Information Technology department at USF Polytechnic. He received his Ph.D. in computer science in 2000 from the University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis (France). He then worked as visiting professor at the ESSI polytechnic school (Sophia Antipolis, France) and EIVL engineering school (University of Tours, Blois, France). He later worked as a postdoctoral researchers in the computer science department of the university of Fribourg (Switzerland) before joining USF in 2002.

Dr. Gaspar regularly serves as reviewer for international conferences and journals in the field of computing education research and as a panelist for the NSF CCLI program. He is founder of the Computing Education Research at Lakeland (CEReAL) group and co-founder of the, now mostly online, Polk Linux User Group.

Research and technological interests include;

 Evolutionary Computation Research

• Improvement of genetic algorithms, artificial immune systems, Pittsburgh Style classifier systems
• Applications of these algorithms to time-dependent optimization problems
• Application to time-dependent learning problems

Computing Education Research

• Development of constructivist peer learning pedagogies / andragogies for programming courses.
• Development / integration of innovative open source support technologies to enable hands-on learning in system-oriented computing courses
• Adaptation of hands-on and constructivist pedagogies to online delivery.
• Analysis of students' error profiles in programming courses, development of automatic help tools.
• Analysis of students' participation profiles in online peer learning activities.

Linux system administration and open source technologies expertise

• Stateful and stateless provisioning technologies
• Remote desktop and terminal server technologies
• Scalable Load balancing clustering (e.g. web farming)
• Open source, on demand, virtualization technologies
• Delivery of portable virtual appliances

My interest in the process of learning has spawn from my work in evolutionary computation and machine learning to my work in computing education research. My courses, whether delivered online or face-to-face are based on the following beliefs;

1. Faculty's primary role is to facilitate students' own learning, not on exhibiting mastery of a field in front of a passive audience (archetype of the "sage on the stage"). To quote A. Fabel "Real education - is not something performed on someone, nor is it something one gets; it's something one does for oneself" ('The Computer as a Convivial Tool' in Haret & Papert (Eds.) Constructionism, 1991).
   
   
2. Students should expect more from faculty than to read aloud the textbook for them (classical 3hrs monologues with occasional colorful slide). They should instead expect to be helped to internalize the concepts (e.g. discussion, active learning, peer learning) and practice them (e.g. hands-on activities, discovery learning). Confucius is credited to have said "I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand". I want to make sure we keep learning an interactive and active endeavor rather than a passive listening practice; no one ever got a degree from watching the discovery channel.
   
   
3. Everyone in the course, faculty and students alike, need to have the highest expectations about ensuring that graduating from this course is based on developing new knowledge and skills. Passing a class is not a step toward a "drive through degree", it is a learning experience resulting in self-improvement. This means reliance on hard work and high ethical / professional standards, rather than self-entitlement or favoritism.