Phillip T. Conrad

Lecturer with Potential Security of Employment Mailing Address: Department of Computer Science University of California, Santa Barbara University of California, Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA 93106-5110 Joint Appointment: Dept. of Computer Science (50%), Dept Phone: 805 893-4321 Fax: 805 893-8553 College of Creative Studies (50%) E-Mail: [email protected] Web: http://www.cs.ucsb.edu/~pconrad

Summary

Winner: 2011 UCSB Faculty Senate Distinguished Teaching Award (≤ 6 awards/year from a faculty of ≥ 1100) Over twelve years of full-time teaching experience, at both the graduate and undergraduate level.

Current position: Lecturer with Potential Security of Employment (LPSOE) at UC Santa Barbara, a position analogous to a tenure-track Assistant Professor, but with responsibilities that emphasize teaching and pedagogy.

Joint Appointment: • Department of Computer Science, College of Engineering (CoE) (50%) a Ph.D. granting research-oriented department, offering a traditional ABET-accredited B.S. in Computer Science degree, plus three specialized B.A. degrees in CS (with emphases in Economics, Biology and Geography) • Computer Science Program, College of Creative Studies (CCS) (50%) a highly selective “graduate school for undergraduates”, offering accelerated undergraduate degree programs in eight majors, including a B.S. in Computer Science

I serve as the liaison between the two programs. I teach courses and have service responsibilities for both programs, facilitate communication between the faculty and staff of both programs, and facilitate undergraduate research connections between CCS CS undergrads and CoE CS faculty. I also serve as the Faculty Undergraduate Advisor for the College of Engineering Computer Science department, and have served on three committees related to the CoE CS undergraduate program. My current research and grant activity focuses in two areas: innovations in teaching computer science and the role of computation in teaching and learning. This is a recent shift for me—prior to joining UC Santa Barbara, my research was in networking, with a focus on transport protocols and networked multimedia. I am a currently a co-PI on a three year $522K NSF Broadening Participation in Computing grant to investigate how culturally-relevant themes may be used to attract more middle-school female and Latina/Latino students to Computer Science. I am participating in an NSF project investigating the application of studio-based learning in Computer Science courses. I am also collaborating with a colleague from the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education on two projects: a project involving the use of XO laptops (from the One Laptop Per Child project) in local schools, and a project to develop software for teacher training in inquiry-based science instruction.

Education Ph.D. Computer Science, University of Delaware, Newark, DE; 2001 M.S Computer Science, West Virginia University, Morgantown WV, 1998 B.S. Computer Science, West Virginia Wesleyan College, Buckhannon WV, 1985 Phillip T. Conrad Page 2

Teaching Awards

• UC Santa Barbara Faculty Senate Distinguished Teaching Award 2011 (six recipients annually from faculty of over 1100) • UC Santa Barbara Housing & Residence Life Outstanding Faculty 2009, 2010 • West Virginia University, Dept. of Statistics & Computer Science 1987 Outstanding Teaching Assistant

Summary of Professional Experience

• University of California, Santa Barbara, 2007-present Lecturer with Potential Security of Employment (LPSOE), Joint Appointment: o 50% Department of Computer Science, College of Engineering (CoE) o 50% College of Creative Studies (CCS) Computer Science program Key Responsibilities: Liaison between CoE CS Dept., and CCS CS Program, Teaching for CoE: Lower Division Courses in Discrete Math, Python, C and Java programming Teaching for CCS: Courses in Software Development, Computer Science Education Service related to Undergraduate Computer Science Curriculum, Advising, Recruiting Research/Grant activity related to Computer Science Education • University of Delaware 2003-2007 Assistant Professor, Continuing Non-Tenure Track (similar to LPSOE), Department of Computer and Information Sciences Focus: Teaching and Service related to Undergraduate Computer Science. Lower Division Courses: C, C++, JavaScript, MATLAB programming Upper Division Courses: Networking, Web Application Development • Temple University, 1998-2003 Assistant Professor (2001-2003), Instructor (1998-2001), Department of Computer and Information Sciences Focus: Research and Graduate/Undergraduate courses in Networking • University of Delaware 1992-1998 Visiting Lecturer (1996-1998), Graduate Fellow (1992-1996) Department of Computer and Information Sciences Research: Transport Protocols, Multimedia Synchronization Teaching: Upper Layer Protocols (graduate seminar), Programming Languages (combined graduate/upper division undergrad), C++ programming, Data Structures. • E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company, Wilmington DE 1988-1992 Staff Analyst IBM Mainframe Applications Programming (Order Entry, Shipping, Distribution) IMS, PL/I, MVS PC LAN design, installation and tech support. Phillip T. Conrad Page 3

Publications No. Year Title and Authors Publisher Category 1 1994 "Partial order transport service for multimedia and IEEE/ACM Trans on Journal other applications." P. D. Amer , C. Chassot , Networking, 2(5), 10/1994, T. J. Connolly , M. Diaz , P. Conrad pp. 440–456. 2 1996 "A multimedia document retrieval system using Proc. Multimedia and Computing Conference partially ordered/partially-reliable transport service." Networking, San Jose, 1/1996 P. Conrad, E. Golden, P. Amer, R. Marasli. 3 1996 "Retransmission-based partially reliable transport Proc. IEEE INFOCOM, San Conference service: An analytic model." R. Marasli, P. Amer, Francisco, 3/1996, pp. 621-629. P. Conrad. 4 1996 "Optimizing partially ordered transport services for International Conference on Workshop multimedia applications", R. Marasli, P. Amer, Multimedia Modeling, 1996, pp. P. Conrad. 185–204. 5 1997 "Transport QoS over unreliable networks: 5th IFIP Int'l Workshop on Workshop no guarantees, no free lunch!" P. Conrad, P. Amer, Quality of Service, E. Golden, S. Iren , R. Marasli , A. Caro. Columbia Univ, 5/1997, pp. 315- 318. 6 1997 "An analytic study of partially ordered transport Computer Networks, 29 (6) Journal Services." R. Marasli, P. D. Amer and P. T. Conrad (1997) pp. 675–699. 7 1998 "Partially reliable transport service." Proc. IEEE ISCC '97 - 2nd Symp Workshop R. Marasli, P. Amer, P. Conrad. on Computers and Communications, Alexandria, Egypt, 7/1997. 8 1998 "Metrics for quantifying partially ordered transport Proc. 6th Int'l Conf. on Conference services." R. Marasli, P. Amer, P. Conrad. Telecommunication Systems, Nashville, 3/1998 9 1998 "Network-conscious GIF image transmission over the Proc. 4th Int'l Workshop on High Workshop Internet." P. D. Amer, S. Iren, Gul E. Sezen, Performance Protocol P. T. Conrad, M. Taube, A. Caro. Architectures (HIPPARCH '98), London, 6/1998 10 1998 "Network-conscious compressed images over Proc. 5th Int'l Workshop on Workshop wireless networks." S. Iren, P. Amer, P. Conrad.. Interactive Distributed Multimedia Systems and Telecom Services (IDMS '98), LNCS, Vol. 1483, Springer Verlag, 9/1998 11 1998 "NETCICATS: Network-conscious image Proc. 4th Int'l Workshop on Workshop compression and transmission system." S. Iren, P. Multimedia Information Systems, Amer, P. Conrad published as: LNCS., Vol. 1508, Springer Verlag, 9/1998 12 1998 "Network-conscious compressed image transmission Proc. IEEE MILCOM '98, Conference over battlefield networks". S. Iren, P. Amer, A. Caro, Boston, 10/1998 P. Conrad, G. Sezen, M. Taube. 13 1998 "Testing environment for innovative transport Proc. IEEE MILCOM '98, Conference protocols." P. Conrad, P. Amer, M. Taube, G. Sezen, Boston, 10/1998 S. Iren, A. Caro. 14 1999 "Network-conscious GIF image transmission over the Computer Networks, 31 (7) Journal Internet." P. D. Amer, S. Iren, G. E. Sezen, (1999) pp. 693-708 P. T. Conrad, M. Taube, A. Caro. 15 1999 "Teaching Network Performance Measurement Using Proc. PDPTA, 1999, Las Vegas, Conference Java When The Students Don't Already Know Java." 7/1999 P. Conrad, B. Greenstein. Phillip T. Conrad Page 4

No. Year Title and Authors Publisher Category 16 1999 "The transport layer: tutorial and survey." ACM Computing Surveys, 31 (4) Journal S. Iren,.P. D. Amer , P. T. Conrad (12/1999), pp. 360–404. 17 2000 "Simple Reliable Multicast for Parallel Processing in Proceedings 25th Annual IEEE Conference Extended LANs." J. Mulik, P. Conrad, Y. Shi. Conference on Local Computer Networks (LCN2000), 11/2000, pp 437-438. 18 2001 "SCTP In Battlefield Networks." P. Conrad, Proceedings IEEE MILCOM Conference G. Heinz, A. Caro, P. Amer, J. Fiore. 2001. 10/2001 19 2001 "ReMDoR: Remote Multimedia Document Retrieval Proceedings ACM Multimedia Conference over Partial Order Transport." P. Conrad, A. Caro , P. 2001. 09/2001, pp. 169-180. Amer. 20 2004 "Evaluation of Architectures for Reliable Server IEEE JSAC Special Issue on Journal Pooling in Wired and Wireless Environments." M. U. Recent Advances in Service Uyar, J. Zheng, M. A. Fecko, S. Samtani, P. Conrad. Overlay Networks, 22 (1) (12/2004), pp. 164-175. Appointment to LPSOE – 11/1/07 21 2010 "eVoices: a website supporting outreach by attracting Conference of the Southwestern Conference target groups to computer science through culturally Region of the relevant themes. " S. Jones, A. Hernandez, P. Ortiz, Consortium for Computing G. Aldana, P. Conrad, D. Franklin. Sciences in Colleges (CCSC-SW 10) 22 2010 Animal Tlatoque: Attracting Middle School Students SIGCSE '11. pp. 453-458. Conference to Computing through Culturally-Relevant Themes. Diana Franklin, Phill Conrad, Gerardo Aldana, Sarah Hough

Internet RFCs (standards documents)

• RFC3758, R. Stewart, M. Ramalho, Q. Xie, M. Tuexen, P. Conrad. May 2004 Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) Partial Reliability Extension • RFC1693, T. Connolly , P. D. Amer, P. Conrad. An Extension to November 1994 TCP: Partial Order Service.

Phillip T. Conrad Page 5

Grants and Contracts: Funded

Years Source Title Amount Role As Assistant Professor, Temple University 06/01/2001- Army TCP Enhancements for Wireless Battlefield $62K PI 09/30/2002 Research Lab Networks. Subcontract of Collaborative Technology Alliance in Battlefield Networks (subcontract to Temple University through University of Delaware) 10/01/2002- Army Reliable on the move Sessions. Subcontract of $50K PI 09/30/2003 Research Lab Collaborative Technology Alliance in Battlefield Networks (subcontract to Temple University through Telcordia Technologies) As LPSOE at University of California, Santa Barbara 6/1/2009- Cisco Systems TCP Santa Barbara: A Rate-Based Congestion $45K Co-PI. PI: K. Almeroth 5/31/2010 Control Algorithm (UCSB CS Dept.) 04/01/2010. National BPC-DP:Animal Tlatoque: A Synergy between $533K Co-PI. PI: Diana Franklin, -03/30/2013 Science Mesoamerican Cultural History and Endangered (UCSB CS Dept.) Foundation Species to attract and retain Latina/os and Females co-PI Gerardo Aldana, in Computer Science (Award 0940491) (UCSB Dept. of Chicana/Chicano Studies) 08/01/2010- UCSB Faculty Connected Learning: Narrowing Santa Barbara's $20K Co-PI. PI: Danielle 07/31/2011 Outreach Digital Divide through the One Laptop per Child Harlow, (Gevirtz Grad. Grant Project School of Education)

Grants and Contracts (submitted, not funded)

Years Source Title Amount Role As Assistant Professor, Temple University 9/01/2002- National Classification of Router Services. Proposal to NSF, Div Of $326K PI. Co-PI: Jonathan Smith 08/31/2005 Science Advanced Networking (Univ. of Pennsylvania.) Foundation Infrastructure & Research As Assistant Professor (Continuing Non-Tenure Track) at University of Delaware 09/15/2004- National Collaborative Research: Implementing Cognitively $208K Co-PI PI: Lori Pollock 09/14-2006 Science Demanding Activities to Promote Achievement in (University of Delaware) Foundation Undergraduate Computer Science Programs (subcontract to University of Pittsburgh proposal) 09/01/2007- National BPC-DP: CiCC: Connecting Interests with Computing $600K Co-PI PI: Jaiwant Mulik 08/31/2010 Science Careers for minorities, women and students with (Delaware State Univ.) Foundation disabilities plus 3 other co-PIs 09/01/2008- National BPC-DP: CiCC: Connecting Interests with Computing $509K Co-PI PI: Jaiwant Mulik 08/31/2011 Science Careers for minorities, women and students with (Delaware State Univ.) Foundation disabilities plus 3 other co-PIs Appointment as LPSOE at University of California, Santa Barbara 08/01/10- National SHF:Small:Principles and Applications of $498K Co-PI PI: Tim Sherwood, 07/31/11 Science Hardware/Software Design From Sketch Co-PI: Diana Franklin Foundation (both UCSB CS) 06/01/12- National Design, Play Teach: Multi-model Interactive Fiction $778K Co-PI. PI: Danielle 05/31/15 Science Games for Science Teacher Education Harlow, Co-PI: John Yun Foundation (both from UCSB Gevirtz Grad. School of Education) Phillip T. Conrad Page 6

Teaching Experience: Courses Taught

Traditional Classroom Courses

Subject Course Semesters Enrollment Level Number* /Quarters** (per lecture UG UG Grad section) Lower Upper Div Div Introductory Programming (C) UD CISC105 F03, F04, F05 80 x Introductory Programming (C++) TU CIS067 F98 20 x Introductory Programming (JavaScript) UD CISC103 F04, F05, F06 30-40 x Introductory Programming (MATLAB) UD CISC106 F06 80 x Introductory Programming (MATLAB, Honors Section) UD CISC106 F07 20 x Introductory Programming (C++) TU CIS067 F98 20 x Introductory Programming (Python) UCSB CS5nm F08 50 x UCSB CS8 M09, M10, F10 50-75 x Intermediate Programming (C) UCSB CS16 F09, W10, S10 75-100 x Intermediate Programming (C++) UD CISC181 S98, S04, F04, S05, F05, S06, S07 60-80 x Intermediate Programming (Java) UCSB CS10 S09 80 x Advanced Application Programming (Java) UCSB CS56 W11, S11 50 x Discrete Mathematics for Computer Science UCSB CS40 S08 15 x Data Structures (C++) UD CISC220 F97, S98, M06 20-80 x Web Development Technologies UD CISC474 S05, S06, S07 40 x (e.g. J2EE, Servlets, Java Database Connectivity) Computer Networks (Undergrad Survey Course) TU CIS320 S99, S00, F00, S01 30 x UD CISC450 F03 40 x Computer Networks (Graduate Survey Course) TU CIS662 F98, S99, F99, S00, F00, F01, F02, S02, F03, S03 20 x Programming Languages UD CISC470/ F97 30 x x (Combined UG/Graduate Survey Course) UD CISC670 Upper Layer Protocols (Graduate Seminar) UD CISC856 F96, S97 20 x Advanced Topics in Computer Networks TU CIS667 F99 12 x (Graduate Seminar) * UD=University of Delaware, TU = Temple University, UCSB = UC Santa Barbara ** F=Fall, W=Winter, S=Spring, M=Summer UCSB College of Creative Studies Seminar Style Courses

CCS courses differ from regular courses in several ways, including: (1) small size (6-20 students), (2) ungraded (pass/no-pass) with variable units (3) emphasis on student’s responsibility for learning.

Course numbers may be reused for different topics depending on the quarter and instructor.

Subject Course Number* Semesters Enrollment Level /Quarters** UG UG Lower Upper Div Div Intermediate Computer Science CMPSCCS 1A F09, F10 6-10 x Software Development Projects CMPSCCS 1L F09, F10 10-21 x Research Methods in Computer Science CMPSCCS 130H W09, W10, W11 9-12 x Web Application Development CMPSCCS 130G S08 15 x CCS Admissions Webapp Competition CMPSCCS 130G W09, S09 11-13 x CCS Website Redesign CMPSCCS 140 W09, S09 4-7 x Software Development for Education CMPSCCS 130G S10 19 x Computer Science Education Methods for K-8 CMPSCCS 20 W11 6 x Projects in Computer Science Education CMPSCCS 140 S11 16 x Phillip T. Conrad Page 7

New Course and Curriculum Development University of Delaware

• CISC103: New intro programming course in JavaScript as part of Interactive Media Minor, Includes overview of HTML, XHTML and CSS, including principles of content/formatting separation. • CISC106: New intro programming course in MATLAB for Engineering Majors • CISC474: Senior elective course in Java Servlet based web development, emphasizing model-view-controller design pattern, unit testing and test-driven development, content/formatting separation, interactions with SQL databases and XML formatted data, team-based software development. Incorporated “Problem-Based Learning” into course design. UC Santa Barbara

• CS8: Developed curriculum materials for new introductory level Python programming course • CS10: Introduced Pair-Programming into Curriculum • CS16: Developed curriculum materials for new intermediate level C programming course • CS56: Developed curriculum materials for new advanced level Java programming course • CMPSCCS 1A/1L: Redesigned 1A to align with preparation needed for students to succeed in College of Engineering upper division courses, while orienting 1L towards creative projects. • CMPSCCS 130H: Developed new “Research Methods in Computer Science” course to facilitate broader participation in undergraduate research for both College of Creative Studies and College of Engineering Computer Science majors.

Student Mentoring

Temple University—MS Projects Sponsored • John Millaway, MS Student, Performance Evaluation of Technologies for Dynamic Web Content • John Jacob, MS Student, Sockets API implementation for SCTP • George Adams, MS Student, NS-2 Simulation of Multi-user Game Protocols • Marc Jasner, MS Student. BXXP application level framework. • Alvaro Arcila, MS Student. NS-2 simulation of HTTP with embedded objects • Jean Dorrian, MS student: Performance evaluation of streaming wavelet compressed video • John Fiore, MS student, Performance evaluation of out-of-sequence transport layer protocols • Ben Greenstein, MS Student: Adaptive algorithms for streaming wavelet compressed video. • Ramu Konidena, MS Student: Issues in porting experimental network software.

University of Delaware—Ph.D. Committee Service • Armando Caro (graduated 8/2005); Jana Iyengar (graduated 5/2006); Preethi Natarajan (graduated 12/2008)

University of Delaware—Undergraduate Independent Studies • Peter Steijn, Improving The Performance Of Object Pools: Non-Blocking Object Generation, (Undergraduate Thesis for Honors Degree with Distinction), Spring 2005 • Adam Christian, XML Processing of Computer Science Exam Questions, Spring 2006 • Jason Grafinger, PHP/MySQL Tutorials Development, Spring 2006 • Matt Claypotch, AJAX Tutorials Development, Spring 2006 • Matthew Fendt, Incorporating OpenGL Graphics Programming into an Introductory Honors Programming Course, Winter Session 2007. • Andrew Toy, MVC-based web application for Computer Science Exam Questions, Spring 2007. • Nick Wiker, Teaching Core Computer Science Concepts using JavaScript and MATLAB, Spring 2007.

UC Santa Barbara—Undergraduate Projects and Independent Studies • Russ McLoughlin, Dist. In Major Project (“Determining Gender from Human Faces”), Committee Member, 2009 • Kyle Klein, Aggregating Data via Web Crawlers and Proxy Servers, Independent Study, Summer 2009

UC Santa Barbara—MS Committees • Camilla Fiorese, Committee Member, 2009 • Neer Shay, Committee Member, 2010 Phillip T. Conrad Page 8

University Service

Temple University • Faculty advisor to undergrad Temple University Student ACM chapter o Membership increased from 75 to over 180; o Received ACM Student Chapter Excellence Awards in three consecutive years: Outstanding Chapter Activities, 2001-2002 (tie with USMA, West Point); Outstanding Community Service, 2000-2001; Runner up for Outstanding School Service, 1999-2000 • Coordinated orientation for graduate teaching assistants. • Committee Service: Research Committee, Undergraduate Committee

University of Delaware • Assessment Fellow—06-07 Coordinated CIS Department activities related to university-wide assessment (for accreditation) • Interactive Media Minor program committee—Coordinator, 06-07; Dept. Rep 04-07 Chair meetings of the steering committee, work with registrar’s office and dean’s office to coordinate affect of UDSIS upgrades on procedures for admitting students to the minor; process applications to the minor (about 15 per year), and senior checkout for students in the minor (about 10 per year); Coordinate upgrades to website for minor • Transfer Matrix Committee—negotiate statewide CS transfer equivalence between UD, Delaware State University, and Delaware Tech (community college) • ACM Student Chapter Advisor • Graduate Teaching Assistant Orientation • Committee Service: Undergraduate Committee UC Santa Barbara • Liaison between College of Engineering CS program and College of Creative Studies CS program. Facilitated improved process for course registration. Involved CS Dept. Chair in CCS CS new student orientation. Facilitated implementation of “mid-residency review” and processes to support underperforming students. • CS Committee Service: ABET Committee (2008-2009), Undergraduate Curriculum Committee (2008-2011), Undergraduate Affairs Committee (2008-present), Outreach and Diversity Committee (2008-2010). • CS Faculty Undergraduate Advisor: Reviews and approves petitions, meets with students for individual advising, makes quarterly presentations to groups of students, reviews transfer and study abroad course equivalences. • UCSB Recruiting: Participated in Chancellors Receptions to recruit high performing prospective students to UCSB: for CoE in San Francisco and San Jose (2008), for CCS in LA (2009), for CoE in San Jose (2011). Participated in Spring Insight by staffing table (2008, 2009), and by making a presentation to prospective students and their parents (2010, 2011). • CCS Webmaster 2008-present. Facilitated revision of CCS application for admission, and related processes.

Professional Service

• Reviewer, ACM TOCE 2011 • Reviewer, IEEE INFOCOM 2001, 1996 • Reviewer, Addison-Wesley: Data Structures and Problem Solving Using C++, 2nd edition, Mark. A. Weiss 2000 • Reviewer, NSF Proposal Review Panel 1997 • Reviewer, ACM SIGCOMM 1995

Affiliations/Memberships

• Association of Computing Machinery, IEEE

Teaching Statement—Phillip T. Conrad Prepared for review for promotion to LSOE—08/11/2011 Teaching Philosophy

My teaching philosophy can be expressed in a simple statement: the most important factor in what a student learns is what the student does, not what the teacher does.

Therefore, my approach to teaching is to give primary attention to the activities the students can engage in that will best help them achieve the course goals and outcomes, rather than what I as the teacher will do. My focus is on choosing what reading, what homework assignments, and what projects will present them with opportunities to learn. Lectures play an important, but secondary role—that of preparing students with knowledge, skills, and motivation to be able to complete those activities. It may be a cliché, but it is true—the most important learning takes place outside the classroom.

I believe that the first step towards effective teaching is to recognize that we cannot directly cause learning to take place—rather, we can only create favorable conditions for learning. To put it another way, I see my main teaching goal as doing everything in my power to make it more likely that students will choose to spend more time on, pay more attention to, and give more energy to the learning activities I've offered to them, versus the many other ways in which they may choose to spend their time.

In this battle for the attention of our students, we have two types of tools we can employ: extrinsic and intrinsic motivators—and I use both. The extrinsic motivators include grades and/or units, or showing how learning the material may lead to productive employment or financial gain. Intrinsic motivators include encouraging passion for the material, and showing how the material can be intellectually satisfying, or even, in some cases—fun!

My appointment—and my teaching load—is divided 50/50 between two very different contexts: (1) lower division courses in the College of Engineering where class sizes typically are between 60-100, and where the course objectives are fixed as part of an ABET accredited curriculum (2) a variety of lower and upper division seminar-style courses in the College of Creative Studies, where course objectives are often more flexible, and may vary according to the individual abilities, interests, and goals of the enrolled students. Therefore, the next two sections address each of the contexts separately. I conclude with a section describing the integration of teaching and research in both contexts.

Facilitating Learning in College of Engineering Courses

Two limiting factors on whether a student learns in a course are: (1) does the student read the textbook (and/or other assigned readings), and (2) does the student attend the course meetings (lectures and discussion sections). Both of these provide the necessary foundation for students to be able to complete the assignments and projects where most of their significant learning will take place.

In my College of Engineering lower division courses I try to promote both behaviors by (1) ensuring that every reading assignment is given simultaneously with a specific homework assignment tied to that reading assignment, (2) requiring that all homework assignments be submitted in person during class meetings, (3) assigning homework that must be turned in at nearly every class meeting.

It is not enough, however, to simply achieve attendance in lectures, if students are not engaged—that is, paying attention and participating. Therefore, I do my best to make lectures as interactive and engaging as possible. Here, I employ several techniques, including (1) Learning students' names—even in large classes such as the 109-student CS16 section. Students seem to be more willing to participate when I've made it clear to them that I "know" them. (2) Asking for a student from the "third row" or the "fifth row" (for example) to answer a question. This avoids putting individual students on the spot—the pressure is diffused among a group of five or more students—but it does keep everyone more "on their toes". (3) Asking for volunteers to solve problems on the computer in lecture. I frequently do live coding in class with my laptop hooked up to the projector. I've noticed, however, that if rather than coding myself, I have a student volunteer do the coding, there seems to be a higher degree of interest on the part of the other students. So, I now employ this technique frequently.

Engaging Assignments

To increase the amount attention, time and energy put into project work, I strive to design assignments that engage students’ creativity. One example is the use of individualized graphics assignments, where each student must write two functions (in Python, C, or Java, for example) that "draw" a particular simple item—this could be a pencil, a desk, a football, a basketball court, the logo of a sports team. The students enjoy picking out something that matches their interests. The crucial rule, however, is that what each student draws must be different from what every other student in the course is drawing. (I use an online forum in UCSB’s course management system (Gauchospace) where students register their drawings to enforce this.) This assignment seems to tap into a reservoir of creative energy that is not present with more conventional programming assignments. What is particularly rewarding also is that students often take on challenges far more difficult than I would have assigned to them, and end up—voluntarily—exploring aspects of computer science that go beyond stated course objectives.

I have now used this approach for assignments in three different languages: Python (CS5NM, CS8), Java (CS10, CS56), and C (CS16). C presents a special challenge: while Python and Java have built in graphics capabilities that are easy enough for novice programmers to grasp, most existing graphics libraries for C require advanced programming concepts that are not appropriate for a course such as CS16. To address this, building on an idea developed by Tobias Höllerer for his CS60 class, I collaborated with undergraduate students from both CoE and CCS Computer Science (through the framework of my CS1L class from Fall 2009) to develop a library of simple 2D graphics primitives that requires no knowledge of C that is beyond the scope of CS16. The project covers the concepts of developing functions, arrays, structs, and file I/O—and especially the concepts of generalization and function decomposition, while providing a very satisfying and rewarding creative experience. Some of the student work produced can be seen at the website for the course: ( http://www.cs.ucsb.edu/~pconrad/cs16/drawings .)

This type of assignment also helps to address the issue of improper collaboration, and/or outright plagiarism (direct copying of code), since each student’s code must be different (since each is drawing a different object.) When subsequent assignments incorporate these individualized drawing routines, it becomes impossible to simply "copy" code from another student. This does not necessarily completely eliminate improper collaboration, but it does raise the difficulty level, and may be a useful way of nudging students towards better choices.

Pair Programming

Together with my LSOE colleague Diana Franklin, I helped to facilitate the introduction of pair-programming in lower division courses at UCSB, starting with CS10 in Spring 2009, and CS8 in Summer 2009. Since then, pair-programming has become a standard practice in the lower division curriculum at UCSB, and I have used it in every programming course I taught during the 09-10, and 10-11 academic years. There is considerable research about the use of pair programming in introductory CS courses that suggests it is useful for improving learning. College of Creative Studies Teaching Statement

Specific contributions during this review period

In Fall 2009 and 2010 I had the opportunity to take on the CCS CS1A/CS1L courses—which, along with CCS CS2, a course in Discrete Math as applied to Computer Science, constitute the first quarter of the CCS CS lower division curriculum.

An important consideration for both the College of Engineering CS Department and the CCS Computer Science program in creating the faculty position I now occupy was this: to help create a better working relationship between the two programs. And, one of the key issues in that relationship was a perception that some CCS CS students were arriving in upper-division courses in CS with inadequate foundations and preparation.

The challenge for me in taking on CS1A/1L was to address this concern about fundamentals, while still preserving the sine qua non of a CCS education—namely giving students opportunities for creative exploration of their chosen field, limited only by their imagination and willingness to work. My approach has been to take the two courses CS1A and CS1L, which had previously been tightly coupled, and de-couple them into separate courses with separate foci.

The new "prime directive" of CS1A is to ensure that students either have mastered the essential content of CS8, 16, 24, 32, 48, and 561 that they need in order to succeed in upper division courses such as CS130A—or failing that, they are aware of the specific skills and knowledge they still need to acquire before they are ready for upper-division work, and are directed to complete that preparation in CS1B, through independent study, or by enrolling in CoE lower division courses. Thus, the course proceeds at a fast pace through the essential content of all of those courses, with the intention of finding the students "growing edges", and challenging them just at the point where they can learn something new.

CS1L, by contrast is a course where I offer as much freedom as possible, within a "learning community" that supports one another. The only requirement is to have a software development project that one is working on, to make incremental weekly progress, and to provide both a written and oral report each week on progress made, and goals for the coming week.

My General Philosophy of CCS CS teaching

The key philosophical difference between a CCS education and a more traditional undergraduate education is there is an emphasis on what students create—that is, students should not be passive recipients of art and science that already exists, but rather engaged in the act of creating new art and science.

My understanding is that, although creativity is valued—and necessary for creating new art and science—the emphasis in CCS on the act of creating something new, rather than a philosophy of creativity. In the context of Computer Science, then, creative activity in CCS can mean the act of creating software—and at a certain level in a student's development, this is an appropriate interpretation of creative activity. Once we fully embrace the role of a science discipline in CCS, we should point our students more in the direction of research in Computer Science—that is, contributing to the body of knowledge about Computing in some way—a direction I've tried to emphasize in all my activities in CCS Computer Science.

This emphasis on creative activity fits in very well with my philosophy of teaching that it is what the student does that most affects learning outcomes.

1 CS40 material is covered in CCS CS2, and CS64 material is covered in CCS CS1B. In the context of CCS, I see my role as a teacher as one of guiding students towards creative activities that will enhance their learning—first in the area of software development, to enhance their programming skills, but ultimately towards participation in undergraduate research in collaboration with faculty.

Integration of Teaching and Research

One of my teaching goals is help CS undergraduates in both CCS and CoE take full advantage of the opportunities afforded them by the fact that they are pursuing their undergraduate degree at a first-rate research university.

While this is an important goal for both CoE and CCS, it is especially critical for CCS, since the key philosophical difference between a CCS education and a more traditional undergraduate education is there is an emphasis on what students create. One of the reasons that CCS calls itself a “graduate school for undergrads” is that CCS students are expected not only to study and master art and science that already exists, but also engage in the act of creating new art and science.

To this end, I designed a new upper division course (CMPSCCS 130H) called “Research Methods in Computer Science” that gives students an opportunity to hear lectures by ladder faculty about their research, as well as learning about the process of doing research in Computer Science. Each of the times I’ve offered this course (W09, W10, W11) both CCS and CoE CS students have participated, and each time it has led to undergraduate students establishing research relationships with CoE faculty.

In addition, I’ve offered an upper division course called “Software Development for Education” (CMPSCCS 130G) that has offered both CCS and CoE students opportunities to develop software and skills that are related to the Animal Tlatoque project (supported by an NSF grant) and the Design/Play/Teach project (for which I have applied for funding, in collaboration with two faculty from UCSB’s Gevirtz Graduate School of Education.) Three of the students from the Software Development for Education course in Spring 2011 did end up being hired as paid staff for the Animal Tlatoque project during Summer 2011, and are currently participating in research that will offer co-authorship opportunities on publications.

Research Statement—Phillip T. Conrad Prepared for review for promotion to LSOE—08/11/2011

Overview

From 1992 to 2004, my research, grant and publishing activity was in the area of on Computer Networking and Communication. My focus was transport protocols—in particular, flexible transport protocols that could provide a middle ground between reliable ordered service (e.g. TCP), and unordered, unreliable service (e.g. UDP), and the application of those protocols to streaming multimedia service.

I came to understand that my true passion was in the area of undergraduate teaching and learning, and in 2003, I accepted an appointment as an “Assistant Professor (Continuing, non-tenure track) at the University of Delaware, with an four course per semester teaching load. The expectation of this position was that I would focus nearly 100% on undergraduate teaching, with limited release time for service related to the undergraduate program.

In 2008, I accepted an appointment as a Lecturer with Potential Security of Employment at UC Santa Barbara, which offered an opportunity to not only focus on excellence in teaching, but also to make contributions into two areas that comprise my current research focus: innovations in teaching computer science and the role of computation in teaching and learning. This allows me to pursue my passion for teaching and learning in my courses, but also to engage in critical reflection and scientific inquiry about what techniques and approaches are most successful in helping students learn.

I currently work on three main projects:

• Animal Tlatoque: a demonstration project supported by a 3-year $533K NSF “Broadening Participation in Computing” grant on which I am a co-PI (with Diana Franklin from UCSB’s CS Department, and Gerardo Aldana from UCSB’s Dept. of Chicana/Chicano Studies.) The main goal of this project is to investigate how culturally-relevant themes may be used to attract more middle-school female and Latina/Latino students to Computer Science. So far this project has led to a workshop paper, and a SIGCSE conference paper, both of which included undergraduate co-authors.

• Design Play Teach: a project to develop software to support K-12 teachers in learning and applying inquiry-based science instruction. This is a collaboration with Danielle Harlow from the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education at UC Santa Barbara. Prof. Harlow and I recently submitted an NSF proposal for this work—while it was not funded, the reviews were encouraging, and we plan to rework and resubmit the proposal.

• Investigation of Studio-Based Learning: a project supported by an NSF CPATH-II grant. This project is led by PIs from Auburn University, University of Hawaii, and Washington State University, who have recruited faculty from 15 institutions to run versions of CS courses using a “traditional approach” and a “studio-based learning” approach, collect data in each, and compare the results. I am a participating faculty member, and will run a comparison on CS56 (Advanced Applications Programming), a course I designed as part of UCSB’s restructuring of its lower division curriculum.

Next, I will describe each of these projects in more detail.

Animal Tlatoque: Attracting Middle School Students to Computing through Culturally-Relevant Themes

The Animal Tlatoque project aims to motivate students from the targeted groups to excel in school, attend college, and choose computing as a career. We have chosen two themes, Mesoamerican culture and conservation of endangered species, which are particularly attractive to Latina/os and females and their families. These themes are intentionally not directly related to computing, for to truly broaden participation in computing, it is necessary to target students that are not already interested in computing. In both Summer 2010 and Summer 2011 we offered a 2-week summer camp integrating two themes, animal conservation and Mayan/Aztec culture. Scratch programming was used to engage students in creating animations about animals and Mesoamerican culture, allowing them an interdisciplinary experience that combined programming, culture, art, and storytelling. Our recruiting efforts resulted in an application pool that was 73% female and 67% Latina/o, with only 6.5% in neither group. We had 34 students complete the program. Pre and post- surveys showed that: • The number of students citing computer science as their top career choice doubled • Interest in computer science as a career tripled. On the ﬁrst day of camp, each pair of students is assigned an endangered animal from the Mesoamerican geographical region. They then research basic information about that animal. All of the projects for the rest of the camp are in the context of their animal. The Mesoamerican culture, art, animal conservation and Scratch programming components are integrated, allowing animations to be created that directly related to the art and Mayan culture lessons. We have funding to continue the camp for at least one more summer (2012). For more information, visit discover.cs.ucsb.edu/animaltlatoque Funding for Animal Tlatoque is provided by the National Science Foundation under BPC award CNS-0940491

Design/Play/Teach: Multi-modal Interactive Fiction Games for Science Teacher Education

In order to develop into creative scientists, students need to learn to think like scientists, understand how scientists develop new ideas, and how these ideas are supported, revised, and used to further our collective knowledge. To accomplish this, national policy-guiding documents recommend teaching science in ways that align with authentic scientific inquiry. Unfortunately, such practices are rarely integrated into school science. In part, this is because many teachers have inadequate opportunities to develop sophisticated understandings of the roles that explanatory models play in science and how models are developed.

We propose to develop and test an easy to use web-based tool for collaborative authoring and individual playback of interactive branching stories, and tailor this tool to the creation of stories related to inquiry-based instruction. This tool will allow novice computer users to collaboratively develop interactive branching story scenarios using video, text, or images in each scene. While there are existing tools that can create interactive branching stories, those tools can present a steep learning curve, particularly for novice users. Other barriers to using existing tools are that the tools may run only on specific computer platforms may be prohibitively expensive, or cannot be installed on computers in classrooms for administrative or technical reasons.

Experienced science teachers will use the authoring tool to develop branching stories that are partially constructed from video footage of their own classrooms. These scenarios will illustrate the many instructional decisions a teacher makes during an inquiry-based lesson and the potential instructional outcomes of different decisions. Pre-service teachers will use these games to practice making instructional decisions in a simulated classroom environment.

This project has the potential to transform the way we educate teachers by 1) developing a virtual platform for simulated classroom interactions and 2) creating and fostering a model for how experienced teachers can be involved in the teacher education process. This program will also impact computer science and education students. In addition, the platform created through this project will be open source and distributed through a creative commons license. This will allow for repurposing the platform in unanticipated ways.

I am currently collaborating with Danielle Harlow from the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education to put together a team to design and build a prototype of such as system. We are also actively seeking funding for further development of such a system, as well as for the evaluation of the effectiveness of the system at promoting the actual practice of inquiry-based science instruction among K-12 classroom teachers.

Studio-Based Learning

Studio-Based Learning (SBL) is a form of learning that is common practice in Art and Architecture schools, in which experts and/or peers (under an expert’s guidance) provide feedback that is used for formative assessment—i.e. critiques of “work in progress”—and that feedback is used to improve the finished product. A team from Auburn University, University of Hawaii and Washington State University were successful during a first round of NSF funding in demonstrating the promise of applying SBL to Computer Science courses at various levels, and were successful in obtaining a second round of funding to scale up the study. The study now underway involves fifteen (15) institutions and twenty-five (25) courses in seven (7) states.

The research team meets annually to discuss the research goals, design, and results so far. One of the outcomes of the most recent meeting was an adjustment of the way we are gathering data in an attempt to measure not only the effect of SBL on learning course content, but also whether one of the outcomes of SBL is that students learn how to more successfully critique solutions and provide constructive and helpful feedback—a skill that we argue is important in “later life” whether students pursue industry or further academic study. I gathered data on a “traditional offering” of CS56 in Spring 2011 and was scheduled to do an “SBL-based” offering in Winter 2012—however, based on this adjustment in our assessment methodologies (i.e. in the design of our pre- and post-test), I am currently planning to gather data again on a “traditional” offering of CS56 in Winter 2012, and gather data on an SBL offering of CS56 in Spring 2012.

While the lead PIs have the right to publish the initial papers on the overall study, all study participants have the right to use the data for more focused publications that are based on experiences in specific courses or categories of courses. In addition to the use of SBL, I am also using “issue tracking software” (Mantis) in ways that may be of interest to the SIGCSE community. Therefore, I am hopeful that there will be sufficient interesting data to publish a paper specifically on the results of this study from CS56. Animal Tlatoque: Attracting Middle School Students to Computing through Culturally-Relevant Themes ∗

Diana Franklin Gerardo Aldana Sarah Hough Phillip Conrad Chicana/o Studies Dept. Gevirtz Graduate School of Computer Science Dept. UC Santa Barbara Education UC Santa Barbara [email protected] UC Santa Barbara franklin,[email protected] [email protected]

ABSTRACT 1. INTRODUCTION A popular approach to introducing students to computer The demand for computer scientists far outweighs the science is to involve middle-school students in engaging pro- number of students pursuing computer science, and this gap gramming activities. One challenge in such a program is is projected to grow[16]. To satisfy this demand, we must attracting students who are not already positively predis- broaden participation in computer science to students who posed to computing. are not already predisposed to pursuing computing careers— In order to attract a diverse audience, we developed a and whose parents may not encourage them to choose com- summer program based on culturally-relevant themes that puter science. This poses a two-fold challenge. First, how appealed to our two target audiences, females and Latina/os. do we recruit students to an outreach activity they might This paper describes our success in developing and imple- not be interested in or aware of? Second, how do we keep menting a computing curriculum and recruiting materials their attention long enough to not only see that computer for a 2-week summer camp integrating two themes, animal science is fun, but change negative impressions they may conservation and Mayan culture. Scratch programming was have about the field? used to engage students in creating animations about ani- There has been a wealth of development of outreach ac- mals and Mayan culture, allowing them an interdisciplinary tivities designed to give students a taste of computer science experience that combined programming, culture, biology, without months of training. These range from simple pro- art, and storytelling. gramming with new programming languages like Scratch[14] Our recruiting efforts resulted in an application pool that and Alice[6], to learning about machine instructions by build- was 73% female and 67% Latina/o, with only 6.5% in neither ing LEGOs with instructions[10], to learning about differ- group. We had 34 students complete the program. Pre- ent CS concepts through non-computer-based activities in and post- surveys showed that the number of students citing CS Unplugged[5]. While these are all important pieces to computer science as their top choice for a career doubled and solving the puzzle, a single outreach event is not sufficient interest in computer science as a career more than tripled. to provide the transformative experience we want from students not already predisposed to computer science. We chose two large pools of students who are not cur- Categories and Subject Descriptors rently choosing computer science—females and Latina/os. K.3.2 [Computers and Education]: Computer and Infor- We then designed a program that appeals to the target mation Science Education; K.4.m [Computers and Soci- groups and their parents, both in recruitment and through- ety]: Miscellaneous—Diversity and Outreach out participation, similar to UC Irvine’s program[11], which is targeted at Native Americans. Culture and math have General Terms been paired in math tutoring via Wayan Outpost[4] and many projects in ethnomathematics. Design, Human Factors The Animal Tlatoque Summer Camp is a 2-week summer camp for middle school students that combines two themes Keywords with computing: animal conservation and Mayan culture. diversity, K-12 education, outreach We designed an interdisciplinary curriculum, including animals, culture, computing, art, and storytelling. Computing ∗ Tlatoque (Tlah-TOH-keh)—’speakers’—used as titles by projects were carefully chosen to gradually build skills and Aztec rulers confidence, culminating in capstone experiences of animating a story, implementing a virtual pet, and/or contributing to the simulation of a Mayan ball game. In addition, long- term academic assistance and tracking is being provided by Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for Bridges to Pathways, an existing on-campus program that personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are runs after-school study sessions, parent information sessions, not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies and college preparedness assistance. bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific As part of the National Science Foundations’s Broadening permission and/or a fee. Participation in Computing program (bpcportal.org), the SIGCSE’11, March 9–12, 2011, Dallas, Texas, USA. overarching goal of the Animal Tlatoque Summer Camp is Copyright 2011 ACM 978-1-4503-0500-6/11/03 ...$10.00.

453 to increase the number of US students pursuing computer can be used to help solve problems with high social impact. science, particularly among two underrepresented groups: In addition, young females have a strong attraction to ani- females, and Latina/os. The project employs the following mals. In Canada and the United States, women constitute strategies: approximately 80% of the veterinary college student population[13]. In fact, our theme was inspired by a current stuffed • TM Providing positive exposure to computer science animal-based web phenomenon called Webkinz ,aninter- • Increasing participants’ skills and self-confidence in com- active web environment tied to small stuffed animals that puting experienced 1.9 million unique visitors in December 2006[9]. • Increasing participants’ openness to a career in Com- puter Science. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. We begin 3. CURRICULUM with the motivation behind our themes in Section 2. We Our curriculum has five components: Mayan culture, art, describe the curriculum in Section 3. Section 4 gives some Scratch programming, CS unplugged activities, tours, and logistics in how we ran the camp. Next, we present the guest speakers. The first three areas are integrated, allow- results of our recruitment and camp implementation efforts ing animations to be created that directly related to the art in Section 5. Finally, Section 6 provides our conclusions and and Mayan culture lessons. The CS unplugged activities future directions. are used to introduce concepts of computer science that the Scratch projects do not cover, and tours and guest speak- 2. MOTIVATION ers are provided to inspire students and introduce academic Our summer camp has two specific goals: (1) to attract preparation programs. The remainder of this section pro- the target audience with themes that appeal to both par- vides more detail about each of these components. ents and children[2, 12, 15], and (2) to engage participants On the first day of class, each pair of students is assigned in activities that allow them to experience many facets of an endangered animal from the Mesoamerican geographical computer science. We have integrated two themes that are region. They then research basic information about that intended to appeal to Latina/o and female children and their animal. All of the projects for the rest of the camp are in parents: Mesoamerican cultural history1 and conservation of the context of their animal. endangered species. Attracting Parents: Studies have found that foreign- 3.1 Mayan culture born parents are concerned that their children will lose their Two principles guided the determination of the Mayan ethnic identity and culture[15, 20, 19]. In the outreach pro- cultural activities integrated into the program. First, the ac- grams we have been associated with, we have found this tivities provided material that would be used in the Scratch sentiment to be corroborated anecdotally. At UCSB out- programming activities, including drawings and narratives. reach events, the authors have often heard parents voice Second, activities highlighted STEM fields within ancient their gratitude for programs that teach their children about Mayan culture to demonstrate a relevance of science and their home countries in ways that are not taught in public technology across cultures and across time. schools. Mayan counting: Mayan numeration is vigesimal, or Santa Barbara is also an ideal test-bed for attracting parental base 20, evidenced in records of Mayan hieroglyphic writ- interest based on conservation. Some in Santa Barbara con- ing. We introduce beans, toothpicks, and shells to provide sider their community as the “birthplace of the environmen- a manipulable version of calculation using the hieroglyphic tal movement,” which gathered steam after a devastating oil bar-and-dot notation. This activity is linked to a binary disaster caused by an offshore drilling accident in January numbers CS Unplugged activity to provide students expo- 1969[8]. sure to non-decimal computation. Attracting Students: A 1996 national study on Latino Mayan glyphs: The ancient Mayan writing system is Youth found that YLA (Young Latino Americans) are “ex- hieroglyphic in which individual glyphs represent vowels or tremely interested in maintaining a connection with their syllables and are combined within glyph blocks and grids of culture; 67% agree that this is something that is important blocks to compose words and sentences. In Mayan books, to them and nearly half of YLA have the desire to form a or codices, glyphic texts often accompanied illustrations to stronger connection to their Latino culture.”[1] Again, such which they were related. Students learn to write the name opinions are borne out by current outreach programs in lo- of their animal in Mayan hieroglyphs and then imitate codex cal junior high schools. A program directed by Aldana was images in their Scratch animations. introduced into Santa Barbara Junior High School in 2008. Mayan ballgame: One version of the ancient Mayan That program combined Mayan hieroglyphic writing with ball game included elevated rings through which the ball ceramic art and the chemistry of the ceramic firing process. infrequently passed. Students learned about the ball game By the end of the calendar year, the voluntary, not-for-credit and then focused on the physics of projectile motion. The class grew from 18 students to 35. next part of this activity involved the launching of water The theme of endangered species was chosen to tap into balloons of the same weight and with the same velocity at two interests of young females—having a positive impact on different angles. Students graphed the measurements of sev- the world and working with animals. Females tend to choose eral launches. majors that have a positive impact[21, 7, 18], and we want to Mayan stories: Students participate in a “scavenger attract those females in order to show them how computing hunt” in the library to find Mesoamerican or Native North 1Mesoamerica extends from Central Mexico to parts of Hon- American myths that made reference to their animals. These duras, including Olmec, Teotihuacan, Maya, and Aztec cul- stories are summarized and transformed into storyboards as tures. the basis of their second required Scratch animation.

454 3.2 Scratch Programming examples of their own animal’s head for use in the name Scratch programming projects are chosen to provide con- poem. crete milestones while gradually introducing more program- Drawing animal bodies: In order to expand the art- ming concepts. The first three projects involve their as- work for the animal information project, students look at signed animal (name poem, story, virtual pet), and are com- the shapes that are used to draw different types of animal pleted by all students. For the fourth project, students bodies. are offered a choice between implementing a virtual pet in Drawing landscapes: Next, students work on the back- Scratch, or helping to design a game based on the Mayan grounds of their projects, choosing appropriate habitats in Ball game. In all cases, students are encouraged to integrate which to place their animals. They look at perspectives and Mayan art and culture into their projects. culture lessons. vegetation. They can then substitute their own drawings for Name Poem: Students write a name poem for their the “stock” backgrounds chosen in their Scratch projects. animal and implemented this as a Scratch animation (an Drawing emotions: Finally, students are given 20 facial idea adapted from[22])–providing an opportunity to learn expressions of a cartoon fish and asked to identify which sequential instructions and event-driven programming. For emotion goes with each one. They analyzed how simple example,“fish”might become Friendly, Intelligent, Shy, Hair- differences in the eyebrows, eyes, and mouth make major less. When each letter is clicked, the adjective appears. In differences in the emotions. They are then given the op- addition, the fish might swim across the screen in response portunity to draw their own animal with the same facial to pressing the space bar. characteristics–this is incorporated into the various scratch Animal Information: Students completed an anima- animations. This is especially relevant to the virtual pet tion to teach others about their animal. This involves plac- project. where the animal’s expression changes to indicate ing many pictures of their animal in two different scenes, its mood. one the natural habitat and another of their choice. They record the animal’s sounds, narrated information, and add 3.4 Extras buttons to switch between scenes. All action is in response In addition to the main lessons, we schedule a CS un- to user input. This project reinforces the lessons from the plugged activity, tour, and/or guest speaker at least once a name poem and adds control flow (to control the scenes) day. The purpose is to show a broader view of computer and audio. science, to educate about careers, and to introduce students Animating a Story: Students then animate a story to academic preparation programs. about their animal. First, students are taught about Mayan CS Unplugged: Our curriculum incorporates many CS codices, the folded books in which Mayan stories were recorded. unplugged activities, including counting to 31 on one hand The students are also given an opportunity to research Mayan (binary), KidFax (pictures as numbers), Secret messages mythology and stories connected with their assigned animal. (writing with numbers), sorting weights, parallel sorting, Finally, the students are invited to animate a story about Muddy Roads (shortest path), and the Routing and Dead- their animal using the Scratch skills learned so far. These lock game (networking). animations are posted on a website to share with friends and Guest Speakers / Tours: During the 2010 camp, we family. had two guest speakers. One was a female graduate student Virtual Pet: For the virtual pet project, we teach the in electrical engineering who develops underwater sensors students how to make a finite state diagram illustrating the and communication. The second was from the UCSB pro- emotional states of their animal as well as how actions tran- gram Bridges to Pathways a program that gives students sition the pet from state to state, building on a clever virtual academic advice and invites students to participate in their pest assignment[17]. Students are then given a simple vir- academic counseling and college preparation program. The tual pet implemented in Scratch in order to demonstrate the students also went on tours of , the Allosphere[3], an immer- additional skills needed for this project. Students then re- sive interactive environment utilizing 3-d glasses that allows place the pictures with their own animal pictures and add the user to interact with touch, sound, and a video game states and transitions to the code. This is a very challeng- controller, the Santa Barbara Zoo, and the Marine Science ing project in if-else if statements because the next state Institute. depends on both the current state and the action. Mayan Ballgame: Students work with an undergradu- 4. CAMP DESIGN ate programmer to design the next steps in a Mayan ball- During Summer 2010, Animal Tlatoque was offered as a game. A skeleton program was provided, and students brain- full-day, 2-week camp with free bussing. The full fee was storm with the programmer to decide what they should add $200. Most students qualified for free or reduced school to the game. This helps to show how design decisions and lunches and had their tuition waived. All other students creativity are an important part of software development. requesting a scholarship paid $100. This included 10 days with full lunches, breakfast bar, mid-morning snack, and a 3.3 Art field trip to the zoo. The purpose of the art lessons was to directly support the Thirty-six students started the camp, and 34 finished the Scratch animation projects as well as to show that program- camp. The remainder of the statistics in this paper cover ming projects are creative not only in their design, but also the 32 students whose parents gave informed consent for in their implementation. their children’s information to be used for research purposes. Drawing animal heads: Students begin by looking at The students sometimes worked as a single group, and other the outlines of different animal heads and identifying what times were split into two groups of about 16-18 students specific shapes identify those animals. They then look at each. Each group was led by a graduate student with exper- examples of Mayan depictions of animals. Finally, they draw tise in Mayan culture and experience with outreach in the

455 Applied Participated $' ' Ethnicity Elementary Middle Elementary Middle #' ' Males "' African Am 0 0 0 0 Asian 0 0 0 0 !' Caucasian 2 1 2 0 ' Latino 5 4 4 3 ' Native Am 0 1 0 1 Females ' African Am 1 0 1 0 '

Asian 1 2 1 2 ' Caucasian 7 4 4 4 Latina 19 3 12 3 Native Am 2 0 2 0 Figure 1: Reasons for choosing Animal Tlatoque camp,brokendownbygender Table 1: Demographics of Applicants and Partici- pants. Some participants have multiple ethnicities. +#. . *#. . Latina/o community. The graduate students were assisted )#. by six undergraduates—one Chicana/o studies major and (#. five computer science majors. All of the CS majors were '#. not yet in upper-division courses; thus the camp provided an internship opportunity at a point in their academic pro- &#. gram where it is difficult for them to compete for CS-related %#. summer internships and research projects. $#. Students used pair programming for all computer-based #. projects and had individual supplies for paper-based tasks. We attempted, whenever possible, to pair students with similar academic backgrounds and ages. The least successful Figure 2: Reasons for choosing Animal Tlatoque pairings were when we were unable to do so. camp,brokendownbyethnicity Conversations between the students and the undergraduate staff indicate that the students were very satisfied with dominated by males, and interest in animals and endangered the camp. Many students asked if they could attend next species was dominated by females. Females were also much year. The next section presents our survey results. more interested in Mayan culture than in computer science. Therefore, our non-computing themes were very successful 5. RESULTS in attracting females into our program. The data showed In this section, we evaluate how well we achieved our two nearly the same level of interest in Mayan culture among specific goals: (1) attracting underrepresented minorities to the Latina/o and non-Latina/o students in our program— our camp (specifically, females and Latina/os), (2) increas- though our sample size is too small to draw any strong con- ing the chances that participants will pursue computer sci- clusions, ence as a career. 5.2 Interest in Activities 5.1 Recruiting During the camp, we polled the students as to what ac- We recruited in two ways. For 7th graders and older, tivities they had enjoyed so far. We also used pre- and post- UCSB has direct access to school records. So, to recruit surveys to measure students self-perceived learning and in- 7th graders (future 8th graders), we sent fliers to all females terest in overall camp activities. and Latina/os with GPAs of at least 3.0. For the elementary Prior to the camp, students were asked what specific camp schools, we distributed fliers to all 5th and 6th graders at activities interested them. Post camp they were asked to many elementary schools, specifically targeting those with choose what would interest them now they know what each high Latina/o populations and high percentages of students camp component entailed. Figure 3 shows the results of this who were at or above grade level in math and science. survey. We can see that before the camp, many of the ac- Table 1 shows the demographics of the participants. Some tivities were fairly evenly identified, with creating computer students are counted twice if they are of mixed heritage. Out games and learning about animals being the top activities. of 46 applicants, only 3 are outside of our target population, After the camp, the absolute level of interest increased sig- even though a large majority of the applications were dis- nificantly, and the top choices became much more even with tributed to elementary schools with students of both genders the rest. Learning about animals remained the top choice. and several ethnicities. We were happy to find that the students were even more On the application, we had an open-ended question asking satisfied with the activities after having experienced them, why the student wanted to attend our camp. Some students and that the non-game computing tasks (as well as others) cited one or more of our themes as the reason. Figures 1 became more important to the students. and 2 show the breakdown between three themes—computer On days three, five and seven of camp participants were science, animals, and Mayan culture. asked to select their two favorite and one least favorite activ- As we had expected, interest in computer science was ities from a given list. Scratch programming was a favorite

456 Question Pre-Camp Post-Camp CS possible career 7 21 CS ﬁrst choice 3 6 Not capable of being CS 3 0 CS inappropriate for girls 2 0 Boys better at CS 7 5

Girls better at CS 7 0 Table 2: CS attitudes surveys summary come computer scientists, as well as whether they themselves would be interested in becoming a computer scientist. In the pre-survey, females were less likely to think females could or should become computer scientists, as well as less likely to want to become one. Post-camp, most of these attitudes had disappeared. Table 2 summarizes the results Figure 3: Interest in camp activities, before and af- of these questions, and we give more details on the responses ter camp below. One item on the Pre and Post Animal Tlatoque Survey asked participants to select all of the careers that they had 100% considered for themselves from a list of options. Pre camp, 90% 7 (22%) of the 32 participants chose computer science as a Blank 80% possible career option from a list. Asked which was their first 70% choice from the options they selected, 3 (9%) of the partici- 60% Strongly pants selected computer science. Post camp, 21 (65%) par- Disagree 50% ticipants selected computer science as a career choice with 40% Disagree 6 (18%) of these participants choosing it as a first choice. 30% Of the 21 interested participants, 11 had originally given their reason for coming to camp as other than related to 20% Agree computers. 10% All six of the participants who chose computer science 0% Strongly as their first choice of career option expressed an interest FMFMFMFMFM Agree Camp was an I learned a lot I learned a lot I learned a lot I learned a lot in signing up for the Pathways program. Ten of the 21 overall positive about computer about endangered about Mayan about conservation participants who chose CS as a possible career choice will experience science species Culture be first-generation college graduates. All but one of these Figure 4: Student self-reported learning, broken participants had not thought of CS as an option for them down by gender before attending this camp. Another indicator of participant interest in computer sci- activity for the most participants (13), even beating out a ence was a Likert item that asked them to rate the extent water balloon slingshot activity (10). Their least favorite ac- to which they agree with the statement: I am excited about tivities were learning the binary and Maya number systems taking computer science classes in high school. Not much (10) and a linear graphing activity (3) (because they were pre-post change occurred on this variable. Pre camp 27 par- “too hard” and “too much like school”). Further examina- ticipants agreed or strongly agreed with the statement: I am tion found no correlation between their success in learning looking forward to taking computer science classes in high the Mayan and binary systems. Many students had no least school. Post camp, 3 participants changed their disagree favorite activity. to agree, and one of the participants who originally chose strongly agree changed their response to disagree. 5.3 Student Learning Finally, three of the Likert items on the Pre and Post At the end of the camp, students were asked whether the Animal Tlatoque Survey were designed to assess participant camp was an overall positive experience, as well as how much attitudes about self in relationship to computer science by they felt they learned about various subjects. Figure 4 shows indicating the extent to which they agreed with the following the results. All but two students agreed or strongly agreed statements: that the overall experience of the camp was a positive one. 1. I think that I could become a good computer scientist if Thirty-one of the participants agreed or strongly agreed that I chose that goal for myself. they learned a lot about computer science. Overall, students 2. Who do you think is better at computer science—boys, felt they learned about all of the subjects. Students felt girls, or neither? they learned they learned the least about conservation and endangered species, which were not as developed this first 3. Computer science/learning about computers is an appro- year. priate subject for both boys and girls to pursue. Pre camp, 3 female participants didn’t think that they 5.4 Career Aspirations would be able to be a computer scientist. By the end of We asked several questions on our surveys to find out stu- camp 2 of these girls had decided that they could and 1 dents’ views of whether specific groups could or should be- decided that she would become a computer scientist.

457 Pre camp, 3 boys and 4 girls believed that boys were better 9. REFERENCES than girls at computer science. Post camp, one of these [1] First national study on latino youth. HispanicVista, boys and one of these girls changed their beliefs to neither. 2006. Pre camp, 7 girls believed that girls were better than boys [2] G. Aikenhead. Students’ ease in crossing cultural at computer science. Pre camp, 2 of these girls indicated borders into school science. Science Education, that they didn’t think computer science was an appropriate 85(2):180–188, March 2001. career choice for girls. Post camp, these beliefs changed. [3] X. Amatriain et al. The allosphere: Immersive These survey questions show that the Animal Tlatoque multimedia for scientific discovery and artistic exploration. IEEE MultiMedia, 16(2):64–75, 2009. Summer Camp had a large impact on students’ views of [4] I. Arroyo et al. Effects of web-based tutoring software computer science. 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8. ADDITIONAL AUTHORS Additional authors: Natalie Avalos Cisneros (Department of Religious Studies), Felicia Lopez, Angelina Gonzalez(Chicano Studies Institute), Alejandro Hernandez, Sarah Jones, Joni Rae Lopez, Cindy Lu, Nataly Moreno, Pablo Ortiz, Mar- tin Rochin, Stephanie Smith (Department of Computer Sci- ence.)

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