Research

Co-PI, Collaborating Across Boundaries to Engage Undergraduates in STEM Learning

Funder: National Science Foundation, Award #194869

  • Principal Investigator: S. Monisha Pulimood, Professor and Chair, TCNJ Department of Computer Science, Barbara Myers Pelson ’59 Chair for Faculty-Student Engagement
  • Co-PI: Diane Bates, Professor, TCNJ Professor of Sociology

Project website

ABSTRACT

This project aims to serve the national interest by studying how interdisciplinary collaborations in the classroom can improve STEM learning for all undergraduates. The increasingly interdisciplinary and complex issues facing our society requires diverse, STEM-literate experts from a range of fields who can work and solve problems in collaboration. Addressing this national need requires innovative, research-based teaching practices that retain students and improve STEM learning. This project will expand, improve, and study an innovative curricular model in which two undergraduate courses from different disciplines are taught in coordination. The instructors, goals, and outcomes of each course will be distinct, but the courses will be connected by a science-focused project that is developed through an active collaboration with a community partner. By the end of the project, 750 students will have experienced this model, allowing for a comprehensive evaluation of its effectiveness. Furthermore, over a dozen faculty members in different disciplines will be trained in using effective strategies for teaching STEM concepts. This project will contribute to educational strategies that can produce the STEM-literate workforce needed to tackle the pressing interdisciplinary problems of our time.

Related posts, publications and presentations

PI, Trenton Makes Music: Cultural Identity, Memory and Economic Development

Funders: New Jersey Council of the Humanities College Music Society

Community partners: Trenton Public Schools, Trenton Historical Society, Trenton’s Conservatory Mansion,  Laura Poll and her volunteers at Trenton Public LibraryBeyond Expectations

  • Project co-director: Teresa Marrin Nakra, Associate Professor, Music and Interactive Multimedia Departments, The College of New Jersey
  • Podcast and event host and co-producer: Sarah Dash

Project website

The goal of the Trenton Makes Music project is to document the stories of the people, places and policies that made Trenton a hidden treasure of the music world. We are collecting oral histories, mapping key locations and otherwise documenting this history as a resource for educators, city leaders and other interested stakeholders. It also serves as a test bed and springboard for prospective new education research initiatives.

Related posts, publications and presentations

Nakra, T. M. and Pearson, K. “Trenton Makes Music: The Sound of a City” (poster) SANE 2017: Speech and audio in the Northeast. October 19, 2017. New York, NY.

Related post

Pearson, K. “A personal reflection of the Trenton Makes Music project

Audio oral history interviews and edited podcasts


Co-PI, CABECT: Collaborating Across Boundaries to Engage Undergraduates in Computational Thinking, PI S. Monisha Pulimood

Funder: National Science Foundation
Award #1141170
Duration: 2012-2015
Project website

Partial abstract To adequately prepare a workforce for the changing economic and global landscape, the project is developing a model that enables students with diverse perspectives and disciplinary backgrounds to learn how to collaborate and integrate concepts from their respective fields to develop technology-based solutions for complex real-world problems. The model includes collaboration with a community partner, making it practical for the many campuses with community engaged learning curricula.

Related publications and presentations

Pulimood, S., Pearson, K., Bates, D. Encouraging CS students to compute for social good through collaborative, community-engaged projects. January 2021 ACM SIGCAS Computers and Society 49(1):21-22 DOI: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3447892.3447900

Pearson, K. Pulimood, S. Bates, D. Collaborating Across Boundaries to Engage Journalism Students in Computational Thinking, Teaching Journalism and Mass Communication, Winter, 2017

Pearson, K., Pulimood, S., Bates, D. CABECT: Collaborating Across Boundaries to Engage Undergraduates in Creating Social Media Technologies. Social Media Technology Conference, September 26, 2014, Washington, DC.

Pearson, K. Sturgis, I., Fortt, J. Write, Edit. Design. Compute! An Introduction to computational journalism. National Association of Black Journalists, July 31, 2014. Boston, Mass.

Pearson, K. Pulimood, S, Bates, D. CABECT: collaborating across boundaries to engage undergraduates in computational thinking. (Abstract only) March 2014 SIGCSE ’14: Proceedings of the 45th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education Publisher: ACM

S. Monisha Pulimood, Kim Pearson, Diane Bates. Refactoring courseware to engage undergraduates in computational thinking across boundaries January 2014. Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges , Volume 29 Issue 3 Publisher: Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges


Co-PI, Distributed Expertise in Enhancing Computing Education With Connections to the Arts – (PI Lillian Cassel, Co-PIs: Tom Way, Steve Harrison, Deborah Tatar

Funder: National Science Foundation
Award #0829616
Duration: 2008-2012

Award abstract: Computing Education is essential not only for Computer Science and its many sibling disciplines(Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, Information Systems, etc.) but for practically all other academic disciplines. Computers are pervasive today and many professionals develop basic programming skills as a way to express ideas, problems and solutions in computational terms within their own disciplines. It is common to find curricula in the arts (music, graphical design), business (accounting, economics), sciences (biology, chemistry, physics), and social sciences with computational courses in their curriculum. In a way, computing is becoming a requirement of most professional degrees. This project addresses both the separation between computing specialists and to widespread integration of computing concepts, not just the technology but computational thinking, in other disciplines. The project will use technologies now commonly available to permit faculty to collaborate in offering courses that extend the potential reach of experts to a broader audience, as well as a collection of recorded expert lectures. In addition, it will develop a visual, interactive interface to a common framework around which to explore similarities and differences across domains and to enable decisions about educational plan development. The teams will also host workshops to identify innovative approaches to teaching, as well as support initiation of new collaborative course experience and reflect of the utility of the courses. The opportunity computing education is to learn how motivated hands-on learning can engage students and provide opportunities to introduce computing concepts. In addition to aiming for diversity in the groups of participating faculty, the project will extend the reach of computing to disciplines not normally associated with that content and will also represent the scope of their discipline to computing students, providing a broader view of the impact of the discipline as it is applied in creative fields. This project addresses the growing conviction that inter-disciplinary approaches are crucial to revitalizing computing education and offers a solution to the need for broader reach of individual areas of expertise. If successful,

Write, Edit, Design, Compute!

Related publications and presentations

Related posts on Kimpearson.net

Related publications and presentations elsewhere

“Enterprise Journalism: Data Visualization and Mining for Stories,” National Association of Black Journalists Convention, August 5, 2011. Philadelphia, PA

Thomas Way, Lillian Cassel, Kim Pearson, Ursula Wolz, Deborah Tatar, Steve Harrison. "A Distributed Expertise Model for Teaching Computing Across Disciplines and Institutions", 09/01/2009-08/31/2010, 2010, "Conference proceedings of The 2010 International Conference on Frontiers in Education: Computer Science and Computer Engineering (FECS 2010)".

Ursula Wolz, Lillian (Boots) Cassel, Tom Way, and Kim Pearson. "Cooperative Expertise in Support of Multidisciplinary Computing Curricula", 09/01/2009-08/31/2010, "SIGCSE Technical Symposium (SIGCSE 2011)".

Thomas Way, Lillian Cassel, Kim Pearson, Ursula Wolz, Deborah Tatar, Steve Harrison. "A Distributed Expertise Model for Teaching Computing Across Disciplines and Institutions", 09/01/2010-08/31/2011, 2010, "Conference proceedings of The 2010 International Conference on Frontiers in Education: Computer Science and Computer Engineering (FECS 2010)".

Ursula Wolz, Lillian (Boots) Cassel, Tom Way, and Kim Pearson. "Cooperative Expertise in Support of Multidisciplinary Computing Curricula", 09/01/2010-08/31/2011, "SIGCSE Technical Symposium (SIGCSE 2011)".

Ursula Wolz, Lillian Cassel, Thomas Way, Kim Pearson. "Cooperative Expertise for Multidisciplinary Computing", 09/01/2010-08/31/2011, "42nd SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE 2011)", 2011, "Ursula Wolz, Lillian Cassel, Thomas Way, Kim Pearson. "Cooperative Expertise for Multidisciplinary Computing." 42nd SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE".


Co-PI, Interactive Journalism Institute for Middle Schoolers (Ursula Wolz, PI; S. Monisha Pulimood, co-PI)

The goal of this National Science Foundation - supported demonstration project, was to "develop middle school student interest in 21st century writing, media, math and computing skills to motivate and prepare them for careers in computing-rich fields." (Award #0739173 The Institute consisted of a one-week summer workshop for middle-school teachers, a second week-long workshop in which teachers collaborated with their students to produce a multimedia magazine, and an after-school program . Working with the IJIMS faculty, undergraduate tutor-counselors and volunteers, participants learned to produce text, still images, video and animations programmed in Scratch.. Two of the participating teachers obtained their own NSF Research Experience for Teachers grants to pursue action research projects involving the use of Scratch in the language arts classroom.

AEJMC Research Poster

2010 research poster for IJIMS

Related publications and presentations

Related posts on KimPearson.net

Journal articles, blog posts and publications elsewhere

  • Ursula Wolz, Meredith Stone, Kim Pearson, Sarah Monisha Pulimood, Mary Switzer. Computational Thinking and Expository Writing in the Middle School. July 2011 Transactions on Computing Education (TOCE), Volume 11 Issue 2 Publisher: ACM
  • Pearson, K., Wolz, U., Pulimood, S.M., Stone, M. Switzer, M. "Computational journalism in the middle school, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, August 10, 2010, Denver, Colorado
  • Pearson, Kim. "Using Computer Science Education Methods to Enhance Teaching Across the Disciplines." Culturally Responsive, Teaching, Learning and Counseling Symposium, University of Colorado Colorado Springs, January 30, 2010
  • Pearson, Kim. Scratching Across the Curriculum Culturally Responsive Teaching, Learning and Counseling Symposium, University of Colorado-Colorado Springs, Jan. 25, 2010
  • Pearson, Kim. "Afterword," Black History Bulletin, v.72, 2009, p. 34.
  • Pearson, Kim. "How Computational Thinking is Changing Journalism & What's Next," Poynter.org, v.May 21, 2009, p. http://po.
  • Pearson, Kim. From Civil Rights to Computational Thinking: Thoughts on the 100th Anniversary of the NAACP" Blogher.com, v.Feb. 13, 2009
  • Pulimood, S. M., Wolz, U., Pearson, K. and Chiusano, A.. "CAFE: A Collaboration and Facilitation Environment for Engaging Students in Computer Science," In Proceedings of the 40th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (Chattanooga, TN, USA, March 04 - 07, 2009). SIGCSE '09. ACM, New York, NY, 4-8., 2009, p. 570.
  • Pearson, Kim. "The Changing Newsroom Blogher.com, v.July 22, 2008,
  • Pearson, Kim. Report From the Scratch@MIT Conference: Empowering Everyone With Technology and Media," Blogher.com, v.July 27, 2008,
  • Wolz, U., Stone, M., Pulimood, S. M., and Pearson, K.. "Computational thinking via interactive journalism in middle school.", 09/01/2010-08/31/2011, "41st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education", 2010, "Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA, March 10 - 13, 2010. SIGCSE '10. ACM, New York, NY, 239-243".

Videogame Curriculum Development

Senior Investigator: Microsoft Research, 2004. Advanced_Interdisciplinary_Game_Design_and_Architecture_Courses>Advanced Interdisciplinary Game Design and Architecture Courses. (Team lead: Ursula Wolz. Collaborators: Anita Allyn, Mike Martinovic, Robert McMahan, Jikai Li, Phillip Sanders.

Related publications and presentations

Peer-reviewed articles and presentations 1. Chris Ault, Teresa Marrin Nakra, Kim Pearson, Phillip Sanders, Ursula Wolz. Collaborative Learning via 3-D Game Development, SIGGRAPH, 2006. ACM SIGGRAPH Educators Program http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1179295.1179300 2. Ault, C., T. Nakra, K. Pearson, P. Sanders, & U. Wolz (2006). Video Game Design as a Vehicle for Multidisciplinary Collaboration. NMC Summer Conference, Cleveland, Ohio. Blog posts Posts related to game design on Kimpearson.net

Visible Knowledge Project

The Visible Knowledge Project was a multi-institutional collaboration aimed at understanding the ways of using media technologies to understand and enhance student leaning, particularly in humanities courses. According to the project website, "more than seventy faculty from twenty-two institutions participated in the Visible Knowledge Project over five years" (2000-5). The project director was Randall Bass, currently Vice-Provost and Professor of English at Georgetown University.

Related presentations and publications

I developed an action research project, "Blogging on the Beat," to test the hypothesis that blogging can be a tool for improving student reporting in the feature writing classroom. Much of the site has since been removed, including the research poster that I created. This 2004 write-up on the "Crooked Timber" blog summarizes what I learned:

Blogging on the Beat

Remember when filmstrips were going to revolutionize teaching? If we focus on the medium alone, blogging in the classroom will be just as much of a snore as the Jurassic classics that were so brilliantly lampooned on The Wonder Years. As with any teaching tool, the value of blogging in a particular class depends on the learning goals of that class. I first used blogs in my feature writing class in the fall of 2003, as part of an action reseach project with the Visible Knowledge Project — a consortium of faculty studying the impact of technology on teaching and learning. I had students use the blogs as beat reporting journals, and I hypothesized that being forced to read and reflect on news relevant to their beats would result in more richly sourced stories. You can see the initial results of that project in this online poster. In reviewing a select group of students’ portfolios and responses to a survey I disseminated at the end of the semester, I found that the success of the experiment depended on how well students understood the goals of the class, and the place of the blogging assignment in the context of those goals....

Small Murders: An investigation of journalism coverage of hate crimes

From 2002-2005, I became interested in the way news media make decisions about covering lgbt-related murders, spurred initially by criticisms by conservative media commentators about the failure to accord national media attention to the grisly 1999 murder of 13-year-old Jesse Dirkhising. I shared my thoughts about that in this 2004 blog post. Then, in the early hours of May 11, 2003, 15-year-old Sakia Gunn was stabbed to death on a Newark, New Jersey sidewalk in what would become New Jersey's first bias crime homicide prosecution. Using my blog as a reporting and knowledge management tool, I tracked the coverage of the Gunn murder up to the conviction and sentencing of her killer. This coverage eventually led to some national interviews and a chapter in the book, News and Sexuality: Media Portraits of Diversity (Sage, 2005)

Related publications and presentations

Hate crime coverage from Professor Kim's News Notes

Book Chapter

Pearson, Kim Chapter 9: Small Murders: Rethinking News Coverage of Hate Crimes against GLBT People, in News and Sexuality: Media Portraits of Diversity Laura Castañeda & Shannon Campbell, eds. Pub. date: 2006 | Online Pub. Date: May 31, 2012 | DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781452233062 | Print ISBN

CC BY-ND 4.0 Research by Kim Pearson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.