Brandon Geng
Pronouns: He/Him/His
Research Mentor(s): Mark Guzdial, Professor
Research Mentor School/College/Department: Computer Science and Engineering / Engineering Education Research, College of Engineering
Presentation Date: Thursday, April 22, 2021
Session: Session 2 (11am – 11:50am)
Breakout Room: Room 16
Presenter: 7
Abstract
In a rapidly evolving world centered around connectivity and technology, data literacy and basic programming knowledge have turned into some of the most valuable skills children can learn in school. The problem is, however, learning data literacy and programming skills can be daunting even for college students and adults, and research needs to be done on ways to make learning these key skills easier for children. In order to introduce foundations of data literacy to students, one option is to combine data skills with other, more traditional, classes. This project is about creating a timeline tool for middle school students. We hope this tool will allow students to provide data on important historical events and generate a visualization of the data in the form of a timeline. While the project has not finished, we currently are hoping to create a tool that is both easy for teachers to teach and students to use, all while being helpful in advancing student’s knowledge of history and data literacy. In doing this, we hope that this will result in satisfied teachers who are comfortable combining non-data based subjects with data-based learning through this timeline tool and beyond. we hope to see an increased interest in programming and data among students as well as an increase in data literacy. In the end, we are aiming for an easy-to-use timeline creator that will empower students to learn about programming and gain basic data literacy.
Authors: Brandon Geng, Alexandra Rostkowycz, Tamara Nelson-Fromm, Mark Guzidal
Research Method: Computer Programming
