Pilot mentorship project promotes equity and diversity in STEM

Minority groups are chronically underrepresented in both faculty and post-graduate roles in academia. Part of this problem begins with the known socioeconomic and cultural barriers to finding and obtaining research experiences on campus. Our mentorship program targets early steps in student career development to mitigate systemic and invisible barriers that lead to lowered diversity in later stages of academia. By providing opportunities targeted towards and allocated for equity-seeking groups, the program works towards increasing inclusion in academic spaces. Here we present a two-pronged mentorship and research micro-experience program which uniquely supports undergraduate students in obtaining and succeeding in research positions. The mentorship component of the program focuses on student’s professional development and cultivating community. Mentees and mentors meet once a week to learn about different career paths and opportunities in science. Mentors use crafted tools to help students develop their skills and knowledge that will help them navigate academic and professional spaces. In addition, the micro-experience component provides a 40-hour paid internship for students, helping them to take the critical first step in gaining research experience. Student and mentor feedback from the program demonstrates the community building and sense of belonging this program has fostered for underrepresented populations in academic spaces

Software for Secondary-School Learning About Robotics

The ROVer Ranch is an interactive computer program designed to help secondary-school students learn about space-program robotics and related basic scientific concepts by involving the students in simplified design and programming tasks that exercise skills in mathematics and science. The tasks involve building simulated robots and then observing how they behave. The program furnishes (1) programming tools that a student can use to assemble and program a simulated robot and (2) a virtual three-dimensional mission simulator for testing the robot. First, the ROVer Ranch presents fundamental information about robotics, mission goals, and facts about the mission environment. On the basis of this information, and using the aforementioned tools, the student assembles a robot by selecting parts from such subsystems as propulsion, navigation, and scientific tools, the student builds a simulated robot to accomplish its mission. Once the robot is built, it is programmed and then placed in a three-dimensional simulated environment. Success or failure in the simulation depends on the planning and design of the robot. Data and results of the mission are available in a summary log once the mission is concluded

A Human-Centric System for Symbolic Reasoning About Code

While testing and tracing on specific input values are useful starting points for students to understand program behavior, ultimately students need to be able to reason rigorously and logically about the correctness of their code on all inputs without having to run the code. Symbolic reasoning is reasoning abstractly about code using arbitrary symbolic input values, as opposed to specific concrete inputs. The overarching goal of this research is to help students learn symbolic reasoning, beginning with code containing simple assertions as a foundation and proceeding to code involving data abstractions and loop invariants. Toward achieving this goal, this research has employed multiple experiments across five years at three institutions: a large, public university, an HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities), and an HSI (Hispanic Serving Institution). A total of 862 students participated across all variations of the study. Interactive, online tools can enhance student learning because they can provide targeted help that would be prohibitively expensive without automation. The research experiments employ two such symbolic reasoning tools that had been developed earlier and a newly designed human-centric reasoning system (HCRS). The HCRS is a first step in building a generalized tutor that achieves a level of resolution necessary to identify difficulties and suggest appropriate interventions. The experiments show the value of tools in pinpointing and classifying difficulties in learning symbolic reasoning, as well as in learning design-by-contract assertions and applying them to develop loop invariants for code involving objects. Statistically significant results include the following. Students are able to learn symbolic reasoning with the aid of instruction and an online tool. Motivation improves student perception and attitude towards symbolic reasoning. Tool usage improves student performance on symbolic reasoning, their explanations of the larger purpose of code segments, and self-efficacy for all subpopulations

Using Social Networking for Educational and Cultural Adaptation: An Exploratory Study

This study investigates how an innovative technology, social networking, can be used in the process of building and maintaining social capital and exchanging knowledge in an educational setting. We employ a qualitative methodology, autoethnography, to examine how social networking can help students learn from other classmates and professors, exchange knowledge, and adjust both to a new program of study and to living in the United States. Using the theoretical foundation of social capital (Jacobs, 1960) and a social support framework created by Drentea and Moren-Cross (2005), autobiographical narratives are classified as instrumental support, emotional support, and community building. Our findings provide evidence that social networking sites can enhance social capital through these mechanisms in a doctoral education context, and our research serves as an important first step in addressing a gap in educational and cultural adaptation studies using social networking tools

Building a Digital Learning Assistant Program to Promote Peer Learning in the Digital Liberal Arts

Our team of instructional technologists and designers, librarians, faculty, and students have collaborated over the past year to develop a peer digital learning initiative at our small, liberal arts institution. In this presentation, we will consider concepts, models, and activities instrumental to our experience building a peer learning community around technology, digital literacy and identity, and student agency. The initiative kicked off this past August with a four-day pre-orientation program. We aimed to give students hands-on experience with various digital technologies being used for teaching and learning on campus, generate conversation around what it means to a learner and citizen in the digital age, and foster awareness of and reflection on personal agency in learning. One of the core concepts of the pre-orientation was giving the students a “dorm and a domain” or a space to physically and virtually exist on campus. Once the fall semester began, many pre-orientation participants and other interested students continued on into our Digital Learning Assistant (DLA) training program. Our primary goal was to prepare students to serve as tutors to other students in need of assistance with digital learning projects assigned in courses. Students in the training program participated in online and face-to-face activities to help advance their knowledge of core digital tools that faculty use most often in their courses for blogging, digital archives and data visualizations, digital mapping and GIS, digital storytelling, and e-portfolios. Each student selected one of these tracks for their first area of focus. In addition to developing technical skills, an important part of the training program has been to help students consider tools and skills in the context of digital identity and digital literacy as well as learn to help mentor fellow students effectively. This semester, the DLAs began offering drop-in hours to assist students, while also continuing their training in both technology and peer teaching. As they continue to develop these skills using the online course or lynda.com tutorials, they simultaneously develop their own websites in preparation for a campus-wide launch of Domain of One’s Own. Our program has been guided by our shared interests in fostering student agency, developing communities for peer learning, and growing critical digital literacy skills and perspectives. We have been inspired by our institution’s rich peer learning culture, as well as similar projects at other institutions like University of Mary Washington’s Digital Knowledge Center

An Exploratory Overview of Teaching Computer Game Development

The computer game industry has exploded reaching sales of several billion dollars a year and, consequently, a majority of college students are familiar with the gaming environment. In fact, videogame development has been cited as one way to motivate students to explore the world of Computer Science. However, most videogames are extremely complex computer programs created by a team of developers including programmers and graphic artists and represent thousands of hours of work. Fortunately there are software tools available that provide a way for simple computer games to be created fairly easily using a building block approach. This paper discusses the successes and challenges of teaching a videogame design and development summer program using the software development tool, Game Maker, and from this experience examines how videogame development might be incorporated into a Computer Science curriculum. The first section provides an overview of the Game Maker program and outlines the material taught in the program. Observations of the most successful teaching methods and approaches utilized are also explored. We conclude with a discussion of where videogame design might best be suited in a Computer Science curriculum citing its attractiveness to non-Computer Science majors, its use as a way to introduce introductory programming concepts and as a way to help students learn to read code. While Game Maker is not sophisticated nor is it a substitute for teaching a standard programming language, it can be easily integrated into introductory Computer Science courses

Mediated and collaborative learning for students with learning disabilities : This is about life, it\u27s the rules of life.

Many approaches have been developed to help students with learning disabilities become independent learners. One such program, developed by the National Institute for Learning Disabilities (NILD), is a one-on-one model of educational therapy that is designed to stimulate students\u27 neurological weaknesses and improve deficits in perception and/or cognition. As an educational therapist, I am always looking for ways to enhance my ability to mediate my students\u27 learning and to help them transfer what is learned in educational therapy to other settings. In my search I became acquainted with the Cognitive Enrichment Advantage (CEA) approach to learning. As an adaptation of Feuerstein\u27s theory of mediated learning, the CEA approach gives students an explicit way to learn how to learn that I saw could be incorporated within the NILD Educational Therapy™ Model. I chose a case study approach and used action research as a way to examine my \u27new\u27 practice systematically and carefully. The purpose of this study was to look at my practice to see what my students, their parents and I would experience if I focused on mediated learning as we collaboratively developed meta-strategic knowledge through the learning of CEA\u27s Building Blocks of Thinking and Tools of Learning. I collected data through a reflective journal, audio recordings of student research team meetings, parents\u27 focus group meetings, and individual exit interviews of students and their parents. I analyzed data in multiple ways to ensure validity. My students and I used the CEA approach during educational therapy and research team meetings. The findings showed that the students could use meta-strategic knowledge to develop learning strategies that were meaningful to them and transferable to other settings. The findings from parent meetings and interviews also showed that learning the CEA approach was helpful to them as they mediated their children\u27s learning. Implications for future research focused on the possible need for more collaboration within the one-on-one educational therapy model, the need for parent training workshops, and the call for further research to validate the findings of this study. Suggestions for NILD\u27s corporate use of these findings also were given

Contours of Inclusion: Frameworks and Tools for Evaluating Arts in Education

This collection of essays explores various arts education-specific evaluation tools, as well as considers Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and the inclusion of people with disabilities in the design of evaluation instruments and strategies. Prominent evaluators Donna M. Mertens, Robert Horowitz, Dennie Palmer Wolf, and Gail Burnaford are contributors to this volume. The appendix includes the AEA Standards for Evaluation. (Contains 10 tables, 2 figures, 30 footnotes, and resources for additional reading.) This is a proceedings document from the 2007 VSA arts Research Symposium that preceded the American Evaluation Association's (AEA) annual meeting in Baltimore, MD

Masters Students' Experiences of Learning to Program: An Empirical Model

The investigation reported here examined how Masters students experience learning to program. The phenomenographic research approach adopted permitted the analysis of 1) how students go about learning to program, that is the ‘Act’ of learning to program, and 2) what students understand by ‘programming’, that is the ‘Object’ of learning to program. Analysis of data from twenty-three participants identified five different experiences of the Act of learning to program and five different experiences of the Object of learning to program. Together the findings comprise an empirical model of the learning to program experience amongst the participating students. We suggest how our findings are significant for programming teachers and offer tools to explore students’ views

Complete LibTech 2013 Print Program

PDF of the complete print program from the 2013 Library Technology Conferenc