Reflections on Summer 2024: Symposium
On August 13-14, The Learning Partnership hosted the closing activities for the 2024 Summer Research Fellows. As part of the closing activities, the fellows participated in the CAFÉCS research symposium where they presented the results of their summer research. In this blog, the fellows share their reflections on the overall summer fellowship experience.
Anna Truong, junior, Northwestern University
What was your most significant accomplishment this summer?
Definitely all the research I did and actually finishing it. Coding took a long time but, finally getting to the analyses and being able to show others what we found was very meaningful to me. I was able to synthesize ten weeks’ worth of work into a presentation and I’m very proud of that.
What did you learn?
I learned how important it is for students to have access to education that helps them figure out what they want to do with their life. At first, I didn’t understand why there were discussions to increase access to AP CSP and computer science courses. I understood generally why people want students to have access to it but I didn’t understand why. But even though I’m not in computer science, I can relate. For me, in high school, I didn’t know I’d like psychology but when I took it, I found out I was really good at it. And now it’s where I’m headed. So I can totally see how that applies to other courses. Some students are really talented or it’s a passion they have. So, if they don’t have that course in high school, or in their education, they might not even go down that route because they didn’t realize it. So, I’m glad that this organization is focusing on computer science because it’s very much needed for the future we’re living in. And there’s so much potential, especially in this school district (CPS), that we need to tap into.
How do you feel about the Symposium overall?
I thought the symposium was amazing. I didn’t really know what the other fellows were doing. To see the different aspects of how you can work towards equitable STEM education and equitable computer science education was awesome. It was really nice to see that there’s different ways to approach it, and just thinking about how there’s so many different perspectives. The next day, I enjoyed diving deeper to talk about the methodology we used. I was really proud that I was able to use my data science minor to assist with our analysis. It helped reaffirm to me that my work is meaningful and a lot of people are interested in what I’m doing. I like talking, so it was great to be able to share what we learned with other people. I had a good time.
Hamin You, junior, Northwestern University
What was your most significant accomplishment this summer?
Getting through the raw amount of data and creating a code scheme from the bookmarks.
What did you learn this summer?
The biggest thing I learned this summer was the whole research project process. In my labs at school, I don’t really handle my own projects or anything. I discovered this is what it’s like to do the research myself, look at the data myself, do the analysis myself, and also write the report myself with a partner, of course.
How do you feel about the Symposium overall?
Presenting at the symposium was different. It was my first time giving a research presentation to a lot of really smart, highly-qualified people in the field of CS and education. It was a nice environment. And then the next day, I thought it was cool that people could express their ideas, concerns, and what they like about the research. In presenting after the symposium, I feel like people actually gave me feedback and let me know what’s going to happen with my research. So I think that’s what’s cool about both of the experiences.
Onur Ramazan, graduate student, Washington State University
What was your most significant accomplishment this summer?
The first thing is I was able to complete the report. That was the most significant accomplishment, because I really valued the project, and then made some practical suggestions for the people in the classroom and those who are making the policies for Chicago Public Schools and elsewhere. Having insight for better practices in Chicago Public Schools was pretty significant. Steven and I were also able to submit an AERA proposal. Which, as you recall, was a big goal of mine for the summer and we did it. So I’m very proud of that.
What did you learn this summer?
How to work with the school district. I usually use the publicly available international data sets, and this was a different experience for me. Working with the local data, I had to learn logisitically how that works because some of the data was not ready until later on in the summer. The second part is the framework that we used, the CAPE framework. It was really neat. CAPE stands for: Capacity, Access, Participation, and Experience. It was recommended by the Chicago Public Schools. I learned it and designed and organized the models and report based on this framework. I will definitely be using it in the future in my research because it was really helpful.
How do you feel about the Symposium overall?
It was perfect, honestly. I received a lot of great feedback as many were excited to talk about it more on the second day. The preparation was perfect, Randi helped make my presentation beautiful and helped me convey what I wanted to say to my audience so they understood it. The next day, I really appreciated that they took the time to ask questions because it feels like our research is worth something, because they are real stakeholders. They are from CPS. They wanted to discuss almost every single point that I expressed in my research. I was told at the symposium that our research helps CPS get this point. In general, this fellowship, The Learning Partnership, and, other institutions, help provide insights for improvements to CPS. That is one of the best things that you can hear as a researcher.
Ruiping Huang, graduate student, University of Illinois Chicago
What was your most significant accomplishment this summer?
This summer, my research focused on exploring the moderating effect of implementing the Skyline curriculum, and its relationship with the performance of students who took ECS (Exploring Computer Science) in their science classes (biology, physics, chemistry). My most significant accomplishment was discovering, through Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM), that the more the Skyline units were implemented by teachers, the more significant positive effect on the science performance of students who had taken the ECS course.
What did you learn this summer?
Previously, my research relied on standardized clean data, but this time, I had the opportunity to work with empirical data. I learned a lot from data cleaning, merging datasets, organizing files, and conducting analysis. Additionally, I gained valuable experience using STATA for data cleaning and HLM for analyzing CPS (Chicago Public Schools) data, which helped me further develop my skills and become more comfortable working with empirical datasets. I also made some new friends among my colleagues and had the chance to practice my spoken English!
How do you feel about the Symposium overall?
I feel like my presentation went well. I didn’t have a lot of time to prepare my presentation but I practiced when I could and checked in with Steven about what was most important to share with my audience. The next day I think went even better. I was able to show the model I ran for my research. My research showed that ECS improves biology and chemistry grades but not physics. I received great feedback.
Wesley Jeffrey, recent doctoral graduate, University of California Irvine
What was your most significant accomplishment this summer?
Being able to answer the questions that we were supposed to answer. We were interested in studying the link between high school course-taking and CS degree attainment, and I think being able to get the data, figure out what model to run, actually do the analysis, and feel at least good about what we’ve been able to do I think was an accomplishment.
What did you learn this summer?
I think what I learned the most was the complexity of all the different stakeholders that are involved. You have a lot of moving parts, a lot of different people, a lot of different people have different experiences, different perspectives, different opinions, and interests. How do you navigate all of that in a constructive way is something that I observed from the outside. Understanding we all come from different perspectives, figuring out the best way for us to work together and make it work.
Yaurie Hwang, recent graduate from Northwestern University
What was your most significant accomplishment this summer?
Finishing up what I’ve been working on. I was running into a lot of random bugs and technical difficulties with the model. I have my mentor, but figuring stuff out on my own is always kind of a challenge. So figuring that out, being able to finally print out all the predictions for the student responses was a really great feeling. I’ve been working on this for three months and I’m finally completing everything and seeing the results. I think that was a really great moment.
What did you learn this summer?
I’ve been exploring different ways to cluster student responses together, and there’s a lot of different ways to do that in the computer science realm. I think learning all of those and learning how to implement them has been pretty cool. I don’t know how I would be able to do that without the internet and Stack Overflow.
How do you feel about the Symposium overall?
It was great. I loved being able to show other people what I’ve been working on, and also, see what my colleagues have been doing, because we all work on separate projects and separate data sets. I know they’re working on something, but, I didn’t know what specifically. Seeing what they’ve been able to accomplish and what insights they have has been really cool. The next day I was able to give a very high level explanation of what machine learning is, so I felt like I was able to explain a little bit more. I think what I did was pretty cool and wanted to tell people all about it.