Education Commons^™

Reading Robot, Gillian Watts, Andrew Myers, Sabrinna Tan, Taylor Klein, Omeed Djassemi

General Engineering

Presently, there is an insufficient availability of human experts to assist students in reading competency and comprehension. Our team’s goal was to create an improved socially assistive robot for use by therapists, teachers, and parents to help children and adults develop reading skills while they do not have access to specialists. HAPI is a socially assistive robot that we created with the goal of helping students practice their reading comprehension skills. HAPI enables a student to improve their reading skills without an educator present, while enabling educators to review the student's performance remotely. Design constraints included: physical size, weight, duration …

Evaluating Creative Choice In K-12 Computer Science Curriculum, Kirsten L. Mork

Master's Theses

Computer Science is an increasingly important topic in K-12 education. Ever since the "computing crisis" of the early 2000s, where enrollment in CS dropped by over half in a five year span, increasing research has gone into improving and broadening enrollment in CS courses. Research shows the importance of introducing CS at a young age and the need for more exposure for younger children and young adults alike in order to work towards equity in the field. While there are many reasons for disinterest in CS courses, studies found one reason young adults do not want to study CS is …

Forumsphere.Com, Nicholas Scott Gatehouse, Sam Robert Rastovich

Computer Science and Software Engineering

We live in the Age of Information & Technology where social media has become an integral part of our society. Social media platforms such as Facebook help bring people and ideas together in one place. However, currently there is no centralized hub on the internet that is geared towards individual college campuses. Our goal is to create an environment that promotes structured and productive discussion between students, alumni, and staff. A platform like ours is needed to bring a campus closer if the community is willing and able to help one another.

There are other platforms that focus on social …

Polycommit: Building Better Habits Through Gamification, Elliot Fiske

Master's Theses

Computer-assisted learning is older than Turing machines, and constantly evolves as technology improves. While some teachers are resistant to using technology in the classroom, “e-learning” techniques are becoming more common in almost every school, from K-12 to universities. As technology becomes more widespread, it becomes crucial to examine the various methodologies of computer-assisted learning and find the techniques that are most effective.

This paper explores the effectiveness of one such methodology, spaced repetition. This technique applies to homework assignments available to students online. We include an exploration of several existing apps that use this technique, and introduce our own novel …

Developing, Evaluating, And Demonstrating An Open Source Gateway And Mobile Application For The Smartfarm Decision Support System, Caleb D. Fink

Master's Theses

The purpose of this research is to design, develop, evaluate, and demonstrate an open source gateway and mobile application for the SmartFarm open source decision support system to improve agricultural stewardship, environmental conservation, and provide farmers with a system that they own. There are very limited options for an open source gateway for collecting data on the farm. The options available are: expensive, require professional maintenance, are not portable between systems, improvements are made only by the manufacturer, limited in customization options, difficult to operate, and data is owned by the company rather than the farmer. The gateway is designed …

Cyber Security Training Tools For The Nuclear Energy Sector, Vu A. Pham

STAR Program Research Presentations

Nowadays, cyber security should be a priority for everyone when they connect their laptop to the internet; however, not many internet users have sufficient knowledge about cyber security. A cyberattack on an individual’s computer could result in the loss of personal information, financial information, or other resources. The damage from a cyberattack on a nuclear facility or other critical infrastructure could have much greater consequences. The attackers could impact the confidentiality of data, the availability of key systems, or the integrity of those safety or operating systems. Therefore, the National Nuclear Security Administration has tasked Pacific Northwest National Laboratory with …

Mac's Fiesta: A Foreign Language Game For The Sifteo Platform, Karina Cordon

Computer Engineering

Mac’s Fiesta is a Spanish learning game designed on the Sifteo gaming platform for children ages four and up. The Sifteo gaming platform provides a new way of interacting with computers by giving users a set of tangible and interactive cubes. Each Sifteo cube has a clickable colored screen and can sense motion and adjacent blocks. Games on this platform are designed to encourage the development of core thinking skills. This project aims to explore how Sifteo cubes can be used for language learning as well as observe how effective they are as educational tools.