2000 — 2003 |
Mccartney, Robert |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Academic Diversity in Computer Science @ University of Connecticut
This project initiates the Academic Diversity in Computer Science Program at the University of Connecticut. The program provides financial and academic support to a group of talented low-income students working towards a bachelor's degree in Computer Science. The students in this program also gain a significant background in a secondary discipline, either as a major or minor concentration. The program is designed to appeal to students with broad interests and works with organizations on campus to help recruit students from populations generally under-represented in Computer Science. Students are in this program for the final three years as undergraduates, and receive this scholarship support for the first two years. The program admits twenty students per year who have access to additional academic support in the form of student tutors and participation in a mentoring relationship. The Teaching and Learning Institute on campus interacts with the project to examine pedagogical issues that may arise in having a more diverse student population in the Computer Science Department.
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1 |
2008 — 2011 |
Mccartney, Robert |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Collaborative Research: a Disciplinary Commons in Computing Education @ University of Connecticut
Computer Science (31)
This collaborative project establishes a Disciplinary Commons: a group of educators, from diverse institutions within a geographic region, who teach the same computing course. Building on a model previously piloted on a smaller scale in the United Kingdom and in the United States, these teachers meet together regularly for over a year. In addition, the teachers each prepare a detailed portfolio describing their own teaching of the course, critique each other's portfolios, and visit each other's classrooms. This combination of critical self-examination and peer review helps them understand their own teaching, identifies places where innovation and change are needed, shares what works, borrows from others, and sees their own teaching in the context of a broad range of possibilities. Finally, this project has a third, larger goal: to establish a new scholarship of teaching within computing education by modeling a rigorous, peer-reviewed forum to describe what is done when teaching.
The Intellectual Merit is that the Commons advances knowledge and understanding within computing education in two ways. First, it produces exemplary materials within specific subfields of the computing discipline in the form of multiple, evaluated portfolios. Second, it builds a community of reflective (and communicating) practitioners, whose interactions lead to improvements in the teaching and learning in the discipline; more generally these communities promote a scholarship of teaching, involving public evaluation and review of teaching materials and approaches.
The Broader Impacts are that as the participants bring reflective and collaborative practices back to their home institutions, it promotes local change within a large number of different contexts. The participants become part of a regional community, with deep understanding of the teaching and learning in classrooms at a variety of other institutions serving different student populations, giving them perspectives that few educators obtain. Collaborations among members of these communities (and others who are brought in) have the potential for innovations that are regional and national in scope.
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1 |
2008 — 2011 |
Mccartney, Robert |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Collaborative Research: Commonsense Computing: What Students Know Before We Teach @ University of Connecticut
Computer Science (31)
This collaborative project, involving six institutions, is identifying the preexisting knowledge students have about computer science topics prior to their starting a first course in computing. Identifying these preconceptions can be used to inform and transform introductory computer science instruction by helping students to learn new concepts within the contexts of their preconceptions. Topics to be explored include: conditional expressions, search, user-interface design and evaluation, and concurrency.
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1 |
2009 — 2012 |
Bennett, John Fox, Martin (co-PI) [⬀] Mccartney, Robert Young, Michael (co-PI) [⬀] Hannafin, Robert |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Transforming Engineering Education Through Social Networking @ University of Connecticut
This exploratory project will investigate the utility of social networking as a learning environment to motivate and improve the performance of high school students, especially Hispanic students, and college students in the areas of math, science, and engineering. The Learning Enabled Social Network (LESN), a joint project between the University of Connecticut?s Schools of Engineering and Education, seeks to discover how these inherently motivating environments can be adapted to enhance motivation and interest in engineering education and how to harness the power of project-based learning and social networking to enhance learning and promote the science, technology, engineering, and math disciplines. LESN is based on a strong theoretical framework of communities of practice to engage students in authentic problem solving activities. The structure of the technology allows vertical integration from elementary school to professional engineering as well as horizontal participation across various cultures and disciplines. The tool?s student-centered design seeks to facilitate student-centered learning and transform faculty teaching. Collaboration between the University of Connecticut and Windham high school will seek to identify features of the online social network that lend themselves to improved engineering problem solving. This project will also advance the understanding and skills of participating engineering faculty and administrators as related to innovative pedagogy as a result of working with the project.
Engineering education must be transformed if it is to meet the needs of the 21st century. Academic performance and motivation must be addressed at the K-12 level if we are going to improve recruitment and expand the diversity of incoming engineering enrollment. Critical thinking skills to solve real-world problems must also be improved if our graduates are to be capable of working in multi-disciplined and multi-cultured communities, which are increasingly becoming common forums for engineering work. Social networking can effectively boost academic performance and eventually lead to improved recruitment and retention in science and engineering disciplines.
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1 |
2011 — 2017 |
Gokhale, Swapna [⬀] Mccartney, Robert |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Integrating Open Source Software Projects Into the Software Engineering Curriculum @ University of Connecticut
The University of Connecticut is developing a methodological approach to the integration of open source software systems into the undergraduate software engineering curriculum. A key goal of the project is to cultivate the students' attitudes and skills to handle a variety of industrial challenges. The project provides students with a realistic view of what software engineers do in industry by focusing on code comprehension and reverse engineering skills. Maintenance-centric software engineering assignments are made based on the diverse set of readily available open source software projects. Open source software code is also used to teach requirements, design, and testing skills to the students. The students will apply their skills to evolve existing, legacy software systems.
The methodology includes a systematic approach to the selection of suitable open source software projects based on metrics-based predictive analysis. The predictive model for project selection will facilitate the adoption of the integration methodology at other institutions.
This open source software integration project offers a systematic, tested approach to designing software engineering assignments that mimic industrial experiences and challenges. The integration transforms the present 'build-from-scratch' type software engineering assignments into 'maintenance-centric' assignments in line with those found in the software industry.
The results, experiences, and challenges of the integration project will be shared with the computing education community through workshops and publications. University of Connecticut K-12 outreach programs will increase the awareness of software engineering as a profession among high-school juniors and seniors, underrepresented groups, and K-12 teachers.
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