Funded Projects

Funded Projects

 

Title: TUES: Collaborating Across Boundaries to Engage Undergraduates in Computational Thinking.
Lead PI: Monisha Pulimood (CS)
Co-PI: Kim Pearson, Journalism
Evaluator: Diane Bates, Sociology
Project URL: http://pulimood.pages.tcnj.edu/research/
Brief Description: To develop a model for students and faculty to collaborate across diverse disciplines and with a community organization to develop technology-based solutions to address complex real-world problems. As a proof-of-concept, this project will focus on collaboration between computer science and journalism faculty and students, and the Habitat for Humanity to address the problem of pollution in targeted neighborhoods of Trenton, NJ. National Science Foundation (NSF). DUE Division of Undergraduate Education. NSF Award #1141170. Academic Years 2012 – 2015.

Title: Broadening Participation in Computing via Community Journalism (externally funded)
Lead PI: Ursula Wolz Co-PIs: Kim Pearson (English) and Monisha Pulimood (CS)
Project URL: http://www.tcnj.edu/~ijims
Brief Description: JIMS is a project designed to introduce middle schoolers from underrepresented populations to opportunities in computing by following the shift of journalism onto the Web. Through the institute, middle school students and their teachers create an online magazine to learn computational thinking via digital media, interactive graphics, animation, video and database design in a collaborative setting. They gain confidence in their computational and writing skills and to share their online magazine with family, friends and teachers.

Title: Giving the Maestro a Human Heart: Fostering Creativity in a Multi-Disciplinary Undergraduate Environment (externally funded)
Lead PI: Andrea Salgian
Co-PIs: Chris Ault (IMM), Teresa Nakra (Music), Jennifer Wang (Mech. Engineering)
Project URL: http://www.tcnj.edu/~conducto/
Brief Description:The “Conducting Robots” project at The College of New Jersey is a platform for teaching interdisciplinary teamwork and creative problem solving to undergraduate students in Engineering, Interactive Multimedia, Music, and the Sciences. Students work collaboratively to design and build human-scale robots and abstract animations that conduct the TCNJ Orchestra at the end of each semester. The students develop expertise in building real-time systems that perform functions in music listening, pitch and tempo estimation, beat tracking, emotion/gesture generation, and score following. The student-designed and student-built robots interact directly with musicians and receive feedback that is then applied toward iterative design and revision of the musician-robot interaction.

Title: COMTOR: Enabling Students and Educators to Automatically Assess Software Documentation and Source Code Comments
Lead PI: Peter DePasquale
Co-PI: Miroslav (Mike) Martinovic
Project URL: http://www.comtor.org
Brief Description: COMment MenTOR (COMTOR) is a toolset for automatically assessing the quality of source code comments. Since comments possess a more free-form nature than most constructs in traditional programming languages, the process of grading this type of documentation requires a significant amount of manual effort. COMTOR will automate and reduce the effort of grading comments. At the same time, the use of COMTOR will give students a feedback process which allows them to self-assess the quality of their comments before submitting assignments for grading. A comprehensive assessment will determine whether the quantity and quality of commenting improves with the use of COMTOR as well as establishing whether advanced or introductory programming students benefit more from its use.
Use of COMTOR may lead to improvements in the frequency with which students write and modify comments, and the quality of the comments themselves. Comments and other documentation which encourage the practice of reflective design and continuous evaluation during development have the potential for a transformative effect on the software industry.