User:Pmoras

Week 1 (5/29-6/1)

5/30-31: Started conducting research on Education in the field of Computer Science. Began by reading through Dr. Brylow's own research on the subject, found at http://www.mscs.mu.edu/~brylow/. Papers of interest included "Equal Outcomes 4 All: A Study of Student Learning in ECS"[1] and "CS4Impact: measuring computational thinking concepts present in CS4HS participant lesson plans"[2].

6/1: Part of the goals of this projects requires the transcription of multiple teacher interviews. To expedite the transcription process, research into various transcription programs and services was tabulated. Due to the long list of possible transcription services, certain choices were discarded if they were similar or inferior to an already tabulated result. the results can be found here[3]

Week 2 (6/4-6/8)

6/4: Additional transcription product research was performed, and we started performing auto-transcription testing on the highest rated results. We found that of the options, the Youtube auto-transcription service met the most criteria. If there are privacy or regulatory concerns, the second choice would be the Dragon NaturallySpeaking transcription software.

6/5: Prior scheduled medical visit prevented significant work flow for most of the day. A meeting was held to briefly list the next steps to make sure our work went in the right direction, and so we knew what needed to be done.

6/6: Most of the day was spent reading through "Stuck in the Shallow End", a book about the relation between race, education, and its relation to people who choose CS related fields of study. A full group meeting was held, where we discussed and finalized the hypothesis we wanted to test this summer. Details on the project page.

6/7: Completed the RCR training for proper research conduct. Spent the rest of the day finishing reading "Stuck in the Shallow End".

6/8: Performed miscellaneous research regarding computer science education while waiting for more in depth instructions regarding the next goal.

Week 3 (6/11-6/15)

6/11: Started compiling a list of potential extra questions to ask during the interview step of our research. The extra questions would focus on factors expected to effect CS class retention. Performed basic research on proposed questions for more in depth understanding of their expected effect. List of Proposed questions found here [4]

6/12: Wrote List of requirements and potential steps to take to ensure the interviews are performed successfully. This includes what issues to look for when performing the test interview, and how to structure the test interview itself. Documentation of information found here [5]

6/13: Most of the day was dedicated to RCR (Responsible Conduct of Research) training. Outside of work hours I conducted a test interview with a willing participant and recorded it.

6/14: Created the ECSStudy channel to hold all ECS interview audio sessions. Uploaded test interview to the channel to make sure machine transcription works correctly. After transcription of audio completed (took an hour for about 20 minutes of audio to get transcripted), I timed how long it took to manually edit the transcript to fix errors. This took --- minutes.

6/15: Timed the interval needed to edit and fix the default transcript from the test interview. While time consuming, doing this provided ample experience using Youtube's transcription editing program, which was surprisingly useful. I finished editing my interpretation of what questions we should ask during the interview, and made a short list of teachers I would choose to contact for interviews. I also created a short script to use when calling teachers to schedule interviews.

Week 4 (6/18-6/22)

6/18: Tabulated a more complete list of prospective teachers to contact. Finalized the script that we expect to use when initially contact a person of interest. Scripted a method to help keep track of individual teacher contact status. Basically did everything I could think of to prepare for actually contacting the teachers of interest without actually contacting them.

6/19:Due to Spark and a long doctor visit, I accomplished very little today, other than communicating with colleagues about further instructions.

6/20:Most of the day was spent making minor adjustments to already existing documents to be more explicit. At the end of the day, my colleagues and I discussed the next steps in concrete detail and came up with a well defined plan.

6/21:Researched articles specific to my new research topic, in order to determine if similar work has already been done. Revised my topic to ask a more specific question that hasn't been answered in relevant research. Additional research essays of interest found below.

6/22:Finished researching data on the topic of teacher mobility through local schools, and on the retention of teachers based on their community of practice. Wrote questions for the interview that would provide answers for my topic question.

Week 5 (6/25-6/29)

6/25:Held a group meeting with Darren and Tina to go over in more detail how the next steps of the plan should be carried out. Focused on defining the questions we would like to ask, along with altering my hypothesis to better fit with current research.

6/26: Refined the list of questions, separated them out by overarching theme they related to. Held another group meeting to hone in on how to go about the next steps of the project, and how to properly form a hypothesis.

6/27: Completed what should be my working hypothesis for the rest of the project. Completed the list of questions needed for the IRB. Worked on my project presentation but had to leave early to head to the hospital.

6/28: Project presentations were presented by all REU students. This took up most of the day. I went home early after presentations were done, partially due to exhaustion from the medical procedure yesterday.

6/29: The day was spend looking up related research to my hypothesis to help confirm its validity as a question.

Week 5 (7/2-7/6)

7/2: Finalized list of potential contacts to interview. Listed them in the combined spreadsheet for everyone to use. Updated email we will be sending to contacts to reflect changes in IRB. Added email variation for cases where the point of contact and the person we want to interview are different.

Miscellaneous

Current list of my papers of interest are found here [6]