Computers and Education
Computing has a large and growing impact on education. It is improving classroom interactivity, increasing accessibility, facilitating personalized learning inside and outside the classroom, and providing a platform for exploring fundamental questions about how people learn.
At the same time, demand for computer science education is skyrocketing world-wide. Reaching larger and more diverse audiences requires both understanding how people learn computer science and creating best practices for teaching specific computing topics.
Our faculty study broadly in both of these facets of computers and education. We build new systems, run them at scale, and design interfaces and study the human impacts of technology in the classroom. We gather and analyze data about student behavior to better understand the learning process using both data science techniques and qualitative research.
CS Faculty and Their Research Interests
| Lawrence Angrave | success factors of underrepresented students in online courses, universal access, crowd-based course curation. |
| Geoffrey Challen | technology to improve classroom interactivity and outcomes, data-driven approaches to teaching and learning |
| Neal Davis | incentivizing productive student behaviors, open source curricula, assessment, learning analytics |
| G. Carl Evans | outcomes assessment |
| Wade Fagen-Ulmschneider | data discovery, social media, open-ended creative assessments |
| John Hart | teaching at scale, MOOCs |
| Geoffrey Herman | how students learn computing, teaching at scale, assessing student learning |
| Eric Shaffer | teaching at scale, outcomes assessment, learning analytics |
| Mariana Silva | teaching at scale, assessment, collaborative learning, online learning platforms |
| ChengXiang Zhai | scalable education, applications of information retrieval, data mining, and ML |
| Craig Zilles | computer-based testing, learning analytics, plagiarism detection |
Collaborators
| Gabrielle Allen, Astronomy/College of Education | STEM education |
| Carolyn Anderson, Educational Psychology, Psychology, and Statistics | underrepresented STEM students, multi-level statistics |
| Suma Bhat, Electrical and Computer Engineering | online spaces to support underrepresented STEM students |
| Tim Bretl, Aerospace Engineering | online learning platforms, outcomes assessment, prison education, pedagogy |
| Bill Cope, Education Policy, Organization and Leadership | e-Learning platforms |
| Jennifer Cromley, Educational Psychology | STEM students' achievement and retention |
| Maya Israel, Special Education | K-12 teaching of CS, video data analysis |
| H. Chad Lane, Educational Psychology | AI in education, educational games, informal CS education |
| Robb Lindgren, Curriculum & Instruction | learning in emerging platforms (e.g., simulations, virtual environments) |
| Luc Paquette, Curriculum & Instruction | modeling student behavior, educational data mining, learning analytics |
| Michelle Perry, Educational Psychology | online spaces to support underrepresented STEM students |
| Matthew West, Mechanical Science and Engineering | online learning platforms, learning analytics, computer-based testing |