The Reinventing CS Curriculum Project (2002-2007)
This project overhauled the CS0, CS1, and CS2 course materials with structured labs, instituted a CS placement exam, and conducted educational research on project- and team-based laboratory assignments.
The Renaissance Computing Project (2008-2013) (PI: Soh)
Here we re-organized the CS1 and CS2 curricula at UNL to create numerous contextualized CS1 courses to address different student backgrounds and conducted studies to investigate the impact of these courses on student learning and performance.
Intelligent Learning Objects Guide (iLOG) (2007-2010) (PI: Soh)
This project created a set of learning objects for CS1 subjects and research on their impact and investigated how students interacted with the learning objects and how that impacted their learning and performance. We also built an agent-powered learning objects management system called the Intelligent Learning Object Guide (iLOG) that is the first of its kind to capture empirical usage metadata and metatag each learning object on CS topics accordingly for the metadata to be leveraged in subsequent learning object usage.
Intelligent Tutoring System: The ILMDA Project (2005-2007) (PI: Soh)
We developed an intelligent tutoring system called ILMDA using an agent that learns from its own experience interacting with student users to adapt CS contents and exercises for each student, and subsequently improve its adaptation over time via case-based reasoning.
Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) System: I-MINDS, ClassroomWiki, and The Written Agora (2003-2013) (PI: Soh)
We have primarily focused on designing multiagent algorithms to form student teams to improve student learning in classroom use. We have developed several CSCL systems such as I-MINDS, ClassroomWiki, and The Written Agora. First, we developed I-MINDS and subsequently supported team management for Jigsaw cooperative learning in CS labs. We further updated I-MINDS with more advanced multiagent team formation that considered complex interplays of human factors (e.g., comfort level, proficiency, changing behavior over time). Then, we developed a second prototype called ClassroomWiki specifically for collaborative writing Recently, we developed a third-generation system called the Written Agora that incorporates Web 2.0 features for social interactions and is capable of delivering learning objects, surveys, and assessments.
Adding an Intelligent Tutoring System to Alice (2010-2015) (PI: Cooper, collaboration with Dunsmore and Si at Purdue)
While it turned out that we were never able to generate enough data to build a reasonable ITS, we did instrument Alice to enable detailed logging of student work. Later analysis of intermediate and final versions of Alice programs have been carried out by Denner et al, and more recently by Grover et al.
Digital Libraries and Computing Education (2010-2013) (PI: Cooper)
We built a prototype search engine for educational materials (focusing on AP CS). We saw that a curated library (even of only a few materials) could be and was very useful to high school AP CS teachers.
Teaching Secure Coding in introductory Computing (2010-2015) (PI: Cooper)
Funded through NSF's TUES program, this project led to the development of curricular materials (and an associated serious game) meant to augment CS1 and CS2 classes. Students learn secure coding concepts as they complete laboratory exercises addressing common CS1 and CS2 topics.
Foundations for Advancing Computational Thinking (2013-2015) (PI: Cooper, with Pea)
Funded through an NSF Eager grant, this project support education PhD student Shuchi Grover to develop a middle school computational thinking module. Modified from the Exploring Computer Science course, this module was developed to be delivered in an online environment.