Nora Keaney
Pronouns: she/her/hers
Research Mentor(s): Mark Guzdial
Co-Presenter:
Research Mentor School/College/Department: CSE & EER / Engineering
Presentation Date: April 20
Presentation Type: Disp/Demo
Session: Session 1 – 10am – 10:50am
Room: Vandenberg
Authors: Nora Keaney, Mark Guzdial
Presenter: 2
Abstract
Computer science has grown as a field in the US, but computing education remains accessible to only some of the population. In an attempt to address both the importance and inequalities of computing education, this study designs a tool that integrates computer science into English and social science classrooms. This study utilizes design iterations to develop Charlabots: teaspoon language programmable chatbots that represent historical or fictional figures. As a design based research project, Charlabots is designed by a team of computer science students and researchers, and then assessed by a group of education researchers, teachers, and students who provide feedback to the designers. From expert review and teacher feedback, we see that Charlabots has potential for use in humanities classrooms, given some key design changes. Charlabots is a useful tool because it involves varying levels of computation, meaning that it can be used by students of varying degrees of computer science fluency. Additionally, we find that Charlabots result in a comprehensive understanding of historical figures and contexts. However, we find that Charlabots needs to be redesigned in a way that is easier to use before it is adopted by teachers, leading to a future goal of altering Charlabots in HTML. This project is part of a growing movement to expand computer science access to a broader group of students, and our findings (both positive and negative) will ideally inform other initiatives to integrate computer science into humanities classes.
Engineering, Social Sciences
