In order to support first-year women in engineering, a program was designed to help their transition to college and promote connection with other women. The program focused on three main areas based in research: mentor matching with mentee input, regular formal meetings in small mentoring groups, and the formation of...
In this paper, I used a linguistic lens of translanguaging and semiotics to examine how K-12 mathematics teacher candidates (TCs) create meaning around computer science (CS) and mathematics concepts in a computational thinking (CT) setting. I defined the term “disciplinary repertoire” as a mirror to the concept of a linguistic...
Sonification, or the “technique of rendering sound in response to data and interactions” [1], is an alternative to visual graphs and has the potential to make data more interpretable and accessible. As a combination of the arts (music) and the sciences (data), sonification is an interdisciplinary tool for connecting people...
The use of board games for teaching introductory computer science is a promising recent avenue of research. The goal is to introduce computing concepts through their use in the implementations of simple games, thereby keeping students engaged through their learning process. However, there is a gap between students' algorithmic descriptions...
Tracr is a modern browser-based user interface, designed to be used with languages that can generate customized explanations from execution traces. While Tracr is primarily designed for use with the Xtra language, Tracr defines a generalized interface that would allow it to be used with other languages as well. Explanations...
We construct a website to explain how Gaussian mixture models can be optimized using the expectation maximization algorithm. Previous free, online material on this process has been extremely limited. All sources surveyed failed to entirely describe our identified criteria for an in-depth description and useful visualizations. After surveying a variety...
Teaching CS is a challenging task, especially for those without prior programming experience. Even for veteran educators, having to learn CS concepts while also trying to teach those same concepts is difficult; as is the case for many K-12 CS instructors. Unfortunately, there is often no formalized order with CS...
Hardware weekend (HWeekend) is a free 30-hour hardware development event sponsored by the College of Engineering, College of Business, and Inventors Enterprise wherein students work together in small teams to create a marketable project they can demonstrate and pitch to judges at the end of the weekend. Unlike similar events,...
The Amazon basin is a natural wonder of biodiversity that serves as one of the largest single carbon storage mechanisms in the world. For these reasons, preserving the Amazon and other similar forests is a worthy goal. Protecting these spaces is not possible without understanding the threats facing animal populations...
The online computer science classroom is growing, but there is little research on how to teach inclusive design online. As a result, online CS students are graduating without learning how to avoid bias in their software designs. Through the lens of the Inclusive Design Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK), this thesis...