students

Promoting STEM to Middle School Girls through Coding and Fashion

Barbara L. Stewart

Professor, Human Development and Consumer Science
University of Houston
bstewart@uh.edu

Carole Goodson

Professor, Technology
University of Houston
cgoodson@uh.edu

Susan L. Miertschin

Associate Professor, Teaching, Computer Information Systems
University of Houston
smiertsch@uh.edu

Susan L. Schroeder

Lecturer, Program Manager
University of Houston
SSchroeder@uh.edu

Misha Chakraborty

Adjunct Professor
University of Houston
Prairie View A&M University

Marcella Norwood

Associate Professor, Program Coordinator, Global Retailing M. S.
University of Houston

Abstract—Informal education approaches such as science camps have been used to promote interest in STEM fields for pre- college students. This paper presents the evaluation of outcomes of a computing outreach initiative targeting middle school aged girls from populations currently underrepresented in STEM. A fashion and retail themed code camp was offered free of charge through a grant from the Texas Workforce Commission and was assessed to be highly successful with respect to student and parent satisfaction. Assessment for changes in attitudes toward STEM and coding also showed positive changes. Read the full article here “Promoting STEM to Middle School Girls through Coding and Fashion”

Improving Student Success by Being Automatically Personal

Mark A. Palmer

Formerly IME Department
Kettering University
Currently Flushing, MI
MarkAPalmer@att.net

Abstract – This paper describes the development and use of “automatically-personal e-mail” routines allowing one to send interpretive e-mails to one’s class based on clicking a command in an Excel grade book. The macros are included in a template file which are available under the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Creative Commons License. Nudges, in the form of light-touch directed-feedback have been shown to be effective in engaging students, but they are often time consuming for faculty. The author has found that he can send detailed performance updates to students automatically through macros in a well defined Excel Gradebook. This increases student engagement as they see it as a way of demonstrating caring. Using an Engineering Materials Course as an example, the author demonstrates the steps necessary to send 6 such nudges throughout an 11 week term. Sample commented coding and examples of the messages sent to students are provided as examples. Read the full article here “Improving Student Success by Being Automatically Personal”

The Effect of An Automatic Feedback System on Students’ Comments to Improve their Performance

Shaymaa E. Sorour

Dept. of Educational Technology
Faculty of Specific Education Kafrelsheikh University
Egypt
shaymaasorour@gmail.com

Hanan E. Abdelkader

Dept. of Computer Teacher Preparation
Faculty of Specific Education
Mansoura University
Egypt
h_elrefaey@yahoo.com

Abstract—This research focuses on understanding student performance by giving automatic feedback after writing freestyle comment data in each lesson. Writing comments express students’ learning activities, tendencies, attitudes, and situations involved with the lesson. Random Forest and Support Vector Machine were applied to analyze the students’ prediction results. Also, a Majority Vote (MV) method is employed in consecutive lessons during the semester to the predicted results. The proposed system tracks student’s learning activities and attitudes with different courses and provides valuable feedback to improve educational performance.

Keywords—Automatic feedback, Comment data, SVM, RF, MV

I. INTRODUCTION

Improving the performance of students, determining their actual progress, and enhancing their learning process can be extremely valuable in the educational environment. To achieve a high level of student performance, we have to find ways to measure their current progress and predict the results of the learning process at the earliest stages. Read the full article here “The Effect of An Automatic Feedback System on Students’ Comments to Improve their Performance”