2021 Teaching and Learning Summit Poster Session Abstracts

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Poster Session - Friday, October 22, 10:45-11:45am ET

1. A Scalable Service Learning Model in Information Systems: Focusing on the People Dimension

Joe Mertz, Information Systems; Sara Moussawi, Information Systems; Julia Poepping, Information Systems

Over more than 15 years, the junior capstone consulting course in Information Systems (IS) at Carnegie Mellon University has evolved while maintaining two core goals: training IS consultants and serving the Pittsburgh community. Today, the course presents a replicable model for service learning in IS. In this research project, we present the course model and explain its advantages over other models. We collect data from students (pre- and post-survey), clients (mid- and end-of-semester survey), and advisors (through proposal and project rubrics). Our data analysis reveals positive outcomes for community partners and student gains on subjective (i.e. self-efficacy) and objective levels (i.e. pre- and post- case scenarios). Our results show evidence of improvement in students' consulting skills (e.g. problem scoping skills, project management skills, client relationship management skills, communication skills). We present our findings in a multi-layered fashion highlighting the benefits to various stakeholders. We then discuss the scalability of the model and how it worked with remote community partners across the country (e.g. Alaska, California, North Dakota, Virginia and Texas).

Additional authors: Heimann, Larry; Pottmeyer, Laura; Melville, Michael; Barrett, Marty; Quesenberry, Jeria; Sooriamurthi, Raja; Divakaran, Lal; Kowalsky, Chris; Gongora-Svartzman, Gaby; Veliz, Oscar

2. Infusion of Research into Teaching in the Undergraduate Information Systems Curriculum: The Case of Two Elective IS Courses

Savanid Vatanasakdakul, Information Systems (CMUQ); Sara Moussawi, Information Systems

In information systems (IS), opportunities available to undergraduate students are mostly limited to honor theses and independent projects. Integrating research components in the IS curriculum will ensure a consistent and sustainable research engagement model for IS students. This study aims to explore the different components of two undergraduate research courses in IS, how these components align to various research and teaching approaches, and whether these components can be integrated into other courses. We use a multiple-case study design and investigate components of two IS elective courses that aim to provide research experiences for undergraduate students. The courses are full-semester length offered in US and Qatar CMU campuses. We analyze the case studies drawing on Healey and Jenkins’ model (2009) of teaching and research alignment and map course components to four categories: research-led, research-oriented, research-based or research-tutored. Our discussion highlights a cross-case analysis between the two cases and recommended integration into several courses. 

3. Laboratory Research as a Course

Natalie McGuier, Biological Sciences

In the spring 2021 semester I launched a mini lab course with the goal of engaging students in scientific research. Pedagogical research shows there are numerous barriers to undergraduates conducting research even though students who participate in research projects are more likely to take STEM courses and follow a science-oriented career path. I partnered with a local brewery to identify the microbe responsible for a “wild fermentation” beer. The project has real-world applications (the data informing the brewery) and occurs over multiple semesters. Importantly, participating in the project is “low-stakes” for the students. Pre- and post-surveys were conducted to assess student interest in taking STEM courses and seeking research opportunities, however due to COVID restrictions led to very low enrollment, and this data is not yet meaningful. Students in future iterations of the course will be similarly surveyed to assess the role low-stakes research plays in their STEM trajectories. 

4. Fine-Grained Models of Student Performance

Matt Gormley, Machine Learning; Pat Virtue, Computer Science Department; Zach Mineroff, Eberly Center

When teaching a large number of students, the instructor is faced with a common problem of scale: how can fine-grained, actionable feedback be provided to each student? We observe that instructors are more deeply aware of the latent aspects of the problems they pose to students. As such, we begin by tagging questions from homework assignments and exams with fine-grained tags ranging from question types (e.g. drawing, proof), background material needed (e.g. calculus, geometry), and core topics (e.g. decision trees, neural networks). Then, given a record of graded student assignments, we learn student specific capacities for each tag. These capacities are then presented to students in order to help them identify the areas they are doing well, and places that may require additional study. Further, we use our model to identify a student-specific subset of practice questions to reinforce concepts on which the student could use the most practice. In preliminary human subject experiments (N=388), we evaluate the effectiveness of this approach.

5. Incorporating Gender Issues and Pop Culture in the Digitalized Language Learning Era

Sue-mei Wu, Modern Languages

Gender issues often appear implicitly and explicitly in various forms of pop culture artifacts. For language learners, topics related to gender issues in pop culture are among the most motivating and interesting. Moreover, incorporating gender issues into language teaching is a new area that is relatively unexplored. This demo will investigate gender-related issues reflected in examples of Chinese pop culture artifacts, such as pop songs and movies, and illustrate how to incorporate these artifacts into a digitalized Chinese curriculum. It will focus specifically on women’s voices: confidence, advocacy and impact. The discussion of women’s voices in relation to these pop culture artifacts will help enhance students’ cross-linguistic and cross-cultural analysis skills, as they critically examine and discuss gender issues. 

A new technology-enhanced language learning website will be demonstrated and will provide the learning materials for the exploration of gender-related issues. Student feedback and learning outcomes will also be discussed. 

6. Developing an Undergraduate Journal: An Approach to a Project-based Course

Jeffrey Squires, English (CMUQ); Kira Dreher, English (CMUQ)

In Spring 2021, we became interested in establishing a multidisciplinary undergraduate journal on CMU’s Qatar campus. We sought to involve students in the development and editorial process, so we proposed and conducted a project-based 99-520 summer course to build the journal from the ground up. The journal’s development included constructing its “mentor journal” identity, submission scope, policies, editorial team and review structures, workflow plans, and funding/future development possibilities. We partnered with CMU’s library publishing services and have since continued to develop the journal with a two-student editorial team from the summer class and a planned launch in late Fall 2021. This poster will outline this unique project-based class and present our approach to student-led writing and decision-making.

7. Using Human-Centered Design Assignments to Foster Empathy and Promote Inclusive Design Practices 

Geoff Kaufman, Human Computer Interaction

This poster presents a set of assignments created (as part of the Provost’s Inclusive Teaching Fellowship Program) for 05-499/899D Persuasive Design, a project course in the HCII focused on applying social science theory to the design of prosocial persuasive technologies. The new assignments aimed to increase students’ empathy toward target populations and to promote the use of inclusive design practices by (1) leveraging students’ creation of mind maps about voice technologies to surface differences in perspective based on identity and experience; (2) introducing students to participatory design methods that center the voices of members of target populations to get an authentic sense of their lived experiences and views about technology; and (3) utilizing future-thinking design activities to consider how implicit bias and unintentional exclusion can affect design concepts. Both student feedback and evaluation of projects demonstrated the value of these exercises for increasing students’ attention to inclusion and accessibility. 

8. How students spend their time when taking exams

Brian Railing, Computer Science Department

This work analyzes anonymized auto-save logs from a 200-level Computer Science course across multiple semesters to understand how students spend their time during an exam, as well as the relation of time spent to score for students. The following research questions will be addressed: How do student scores correlate with the time that their exam took, What benefit, if any, is there from increasing the exam time without changing its difficulty, How much time does a student spend reviewing their answers, and when should a student be considered to be reviewing their work. Initial study results will be presented on these questions showing little correlation between time and score, and open questions about what it means for a student to be reviewing their work.

9. Flipping a Course: Impact, Challenges and Outcomes

Gloria Silva, Chemistry (CMUP); Simon Faulkner, Biological Sciences (CMUQ)

Organic chemistry I is a challenging course; it is required for Biology, Chemistry, and pre-med students. Mastering the material requires lots of practice and guidance. We switched from the traditional lecture-based format to a flipped-classroom model. Video recorded lectures were made available before each class meeting. Front-loading materials outside of class freed up class time to model problem solving approaches of the concepts developed in the videos and

allowed for higher order thinking skills based on the SOLO taxonomy. Students had to complete two problem sets per week to receive feedback on their understanding of the material as well as they took a self-evaluation test at the end of each chapter. The flipped learning experience allowed for more time to be spent on students solving problems and better engagement in class. Student’s feedback has been positive, and they declared to be better prepared for exams. The poster will show the planning, impact, challenges and outcomes of the model as implemented.

10. Want to try a teaching strategy in your class? Explore an evidence-based process with the Eberly Center.

Eberly Center

Got an idea for your class? This poster will illustrate a process for selecting and implementing a teaching strategy you want to try as well as measuring its efficacy to inform future changes. We outline Eberly services and points of entry for you and your students to get the most out of your new or improved teaching strategies. A member from our teaching consultant and assessment team will be there to discuss various ways we can help and to answer your questions! Handouts describing specific services will also be available.

11. Creating inclusive undergraduate research opportunities in the arts

Kim Beck, Art

In the summer of 2021, I taught a course that brought together students from across the university to create individual research projects in visual art. This was not a skills-based art class, but instead asked students to consider research as an integral part of making art and redefining what an art form might be through independent research. Students learned to write proposals, create their own rubrics, develop an independent project making or writing about art, work with peers in small accountability groups, and evaluate their own work as well as others. Students’ work was framed by presentations, readings, discussions and visiting artists. In this poster session, I will share what I learned from this teaching experience, what worked and could be implemented by others too.

12. Redesigning a Communications Course Sequence for Technical Leaders

Nick Frollini, Institute for Software Research; Michael Boydos, Institute for Software Research

Communications skills are fundamental to professionals in all fields because they enable the exchange of ideas and the completion of organizational goals. In many technical professional masters programs, however, these skills may be neglected or viewed as out of scope. We present the creation of a new communications course sequence designed to equip software engineers with the ability to identify an audience, to develop clear, persuasive presentations and written documents, and to handle the complex interactions that occur in the workplace. We review the initial reception of this sequence by our students in its first year, as well as changes made to the sequence for the second year of its deployment. We also highlight an unexpected outcome: the development and initial deployment of a common communications assessment rubric for use in our traditional technical courses. Finally, we review future plans for a program-wide rollout of the rubric.

13. Virtual labs and document camera projectable demos for remote education in mechatronics

Victoria Webster-Wood, Mechanical Engineering; Jessica Harrell, Eberly Center; Zachary Mineroff, Eberly Center; Laura Pottmeyer, Eberly Center

Research has found that active learning improves student learning as compared to traditional lectures. However, active learning is difficult with the remote format due to the COVID-19 pandemic. To facilitate active learning of theoretical mechatronics concepts in remote classes, we developed a series of demonstrations and virtual labs. We identified two overall research questions: (1) To what extent does the combination of demos/virtual labs support student learning of specific content/concepts?, and (2) To what extent does student self-efficacy improve over the semester? Three concept modules were identified for intervention: Circuit Debugging, Sensor Selection, and Actuator Selection. For all modules, student performance was assessed using quizzes. Student performance on all modules improved significantly during the semester, and our findings do not demonstrate significant improvements in educational outcomes as the result of adding either demos or labs. Improvements in self-efficacy scores over the semester were comparable to pre-pandemic semesters.

14. University Libraries as a partner for data science teaching and learning

Sarah Young, University Libraries; Huajin Wang, University Libraries; Peter Freeman, Statistics & Data Science

Students need data to hone data science skills learned in class. Libraries have data from many sources, but limited time and expertise to leverage these data. Thus, libraries are well positioned to serve as "clients'' in student consulting projects as a part of capstones, research courses and research experiences. Since the Summer 2020, University Libraries (UL) have partnered with the Department of Statistics & Data Science (SDS) in their project-orientated courses providing a wide range of datasets and research questions for their data analysis projects. These projects include: understanding library usage patterns; building a funded grant exploration app with data from the Dimensions database; exploring data reuse and sharing practices with an open survey dataset, and classifying clinical trial publications from PubMed. This is an exploration of the UL’s role in the data science teaching ecosystem and can be used as a model for other course instruction and in other library settings. The poster will describe the partnership between the SDS and the UL, provide an overview of past projects and describe the types of datasets and research questions that libraries can contribute to real-world data science applications for students.

15. Spotlight on Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Latin/x/American Comics: Diversifying Course Materials

Felipe Gómez, Modern Languages

In the context of Hispanic Studies and Modern Languages at CMU, teaching inclusively means offering strategies to aid all students in meeting a course’s language and culture learning goals. This implies making learning about language and culture meaningful, relevant, and accessible to all types of students (Hockings, 2010). In a course aiming to teach Spanish language and culture, and basic Digital Humanities approaches for the study of Latin American Comics, one teaching challenge is dealing with fields historically dominated by (white) male voices with a tendency to reinforce cultural inequalities and hegemonies, which many students may find alienating. This presentation covers classroom strategies developed through a Provost’s Inclusive Teaching Fellowship for making learning more inclusive by diversifying course materials and curriculum, student projects and assignments, and classroom learning experiences. Specific strategies include diversifying materials and guest lectures by opening room for non-male artists and experts, and involving students in the process of diversification.  

16. Math, Mindset, and Growth: Building Quantitative Competencies in All

Ashley E. Orr, Public Policy

Mathematics is often perceived as a very challenging subject, with content and requirements which may feel unapproachable to those who did not originally see themselves as mathematicians. In this poster, I will remind the audience of the differences between growth and fixed mindsets and the advantages of a growth mindset. We will discuss how, through a quantitative summer course I taught at the Heinz College covering preparatory mathematics for masters’ students, I implemented growth mindset principles into the course design, teaching, assessment, student feedback, student communication, and teaching assistant mentoring. I will emphasize how student success in quantitative subjects is iterative and begins with growth. As an exhibit, I will present and examine how students exhibited their growth mindset and progress with respect to the course learning objectives, collaboration with their peers and the field, and engagement with their interests and goals in their term projects.

17. Promoting student autonomy improves learning and motivation

Simon Cullen, Philosophy; Danny Oppenheimer, Social & Decisions Sciences

We present ten concrete, readily implementable techniques for increasing student autonomy and motivation. For example, in place of mandatory attendance policies delivered from above, we advocate for “optional mandatory” policies that give students choice over whether attendance contributes to their grades. We describe our experiences implementing these techniques, and we present the results of a study that we conducted to measure CMU students’ attitudes towards various autonomy-enhancing practices. We find that many students substantially underestimate the benefits of autonomy-enhancing pedagogy until they experience it for themselves, and we speculate the same is true for many instructors. Finally, we report experimental results demonstrating that with each meaningful increase in autonomy granted to students’ over how they were assessed, students worked harder and learned more. The overall lesson is that giving students greater control over how they are taught and assessed can dramatically improve how they experience and learn from our classes.

18. Designing Storybooks to Improve Children’s Attention and Reading Comprehension: An Eye-Tracking Study

Cassondra Eng, Psychology; Morgan Boyd, Psychology; Karrie Godwin, Psychology (UMBC); Anna Fisher, Psychology

Attention plays an important role in later reading achievement of young children, as they must choose to attend to relevant-information on each page. In books, both the text and illustrations compete for the child’s attentional resources. This study investigates the effects of spatially separating the text from the illustrations on reading comprehension and attention allocation in beginning readers. The study used a within-subject design with children ages 6-8 (n=57;M=7.53 ±.55years). Each child read from a commercially available book in a “Standard” Condition where text was embedded within illustrations, and in a “Partial” Condition where illustrations were spatially separated from the text on each page. Reading comprehension questions were used to measure learning. An SMI RED250 eye-tracker assessed attention allocation via gaze shifts away from the text while children read in each condition. Children’s reading comprehension scores were significantly higher in the Partial Condition (M=80.1%,SD=22.8) compared to the Standard Condition (M=63.7%,SD= 21.0); t(45)=3.85, p=.0004. Results also showed that children’s comprehension was associated with attention: as mean gaze shifts away from text increased, comprehension scores decreased (r=-.34) These findings highlight how making subtle changes to storybook designs can reduce the split attention effect that diminishes comprehension in young readers.