Prof. Kristin Stephens-Martinez

In my post, "How I track my to-do-list" , I linked to my publically accessible Trello project templates . That Trello board has my "Creating an Exam" card list. This list has cards referring to how I test my exam, but I didn't elaborate on that process. So I thought given the season (of exams) I'll write a post about it. First, I want to acknowledge Jan Plane  at the University of MD, College Park, where I want to undergrad. I served as her undergraduate TA and, as her TA, I learned her process of testing exams. The bulk of my system I learned from her with some adaptations to serve my purposes. Two Rounds of Testing I have two rounds of testing that basically look identical. I have two of my TAs, usually from my head staff (head undergrad TAs and grad TAs) that take the exam with a timer. They note: How long each coding problem (or problem set if they are quick questions) takes them to read and answer. Any typos, confusing wording, etc. After e...

I just submitted a grant proposal to NSF CRII . This is a solo grant, which means I wrote the proposal all by myself. I submitted a CRII proposal last year that wasn't accepted. However, I got a lot of good feedback on it. This year's proposal is on a completely different project. However, I was still able to use some of that feedback, which hopefully made this year's proposal stronger. Before too much time has passed, I wanted to reflect on what I did while working on this proposal and how I could do better next time. First, I want to celebrate that I at least got it done and submitted. While it may not feel like a victory, logically, I know that it is a victory. A lot of effort went into writing the proposal, and seeing the effort completed by submitting the proposal is a win in itself. Second, I want to thank everyone that gave me feedback. You are all on a list of names that I plan to notify whether I got the proposal as soon as I find out. In this reflection, I...

A term I made up and have been using for a while is "GPS syndrome." And it turns out that enough people have picked up this term that I feel like I need to post an "official" definition. I most commonly use the metaphor when talking about and with teaching assistants (TAs) that overhelp students. So this blog post is mostly from a google doc I wrote for new TAs for one of their training sessions. Definition " Scaffolding refers to a variety of instructional techniques used to move students progressively toward stronger understanding and, ultimately, greater independence in the learning process. The term itself offers the relevant descriptive metaphor: teachers provide successive levels of temporary support that help students reach higher levels of comprehension and skill acquisition that they would not be able to achieve without assistance. Like physical scaffolding, the supportive strategies are incrementally removed when they are no longer needed, and the...

This is also on medium . I use Trello  to track all the things I need to do. Trello, at its core, is just a to-do list management tool. It is versatile to many organization strategies and is great for a single person or a team to organize the tasks that need doing. However, this versatility can be very daunting as a novice because you are just starting to figure out a system to keep track of what you need to do. And a novice rarely does well in an environment where there are many ways to do the same thing, a.k.a. a versatile system. A beginner does not have enough experience to determine what technique is better than another. Moreover, a novice finds it challenging to keep track of the many ways to do the same thing. So, if you are a novice, here are my suggestions for how to use Trello to track your personal to-do list (how I use it to organize my research team(s) and teaching team(s) I'll leave for a different blog post). First, I'll go over the fundamental way I use Tre...

I went to a workshop the week of 7/15 and tried out my new travel routines that I articulated in my post "Conference Reflection: SIGCSE 2019 - " What I will do next time" (Part 3 of 3) ". I thought it would be appropriate to reflect on how my plan compared to reality, as Helmuth von Moltke the Elder  said, "No plan survives contact with the enemy." Though in this case, the enemy is my present self when trying to execute the plan made by my well-intentioned past self. This post specifically reflects on my morning and night routines. And I'm posting this reflection now because next week I'm going to ICER , where my new travel routine will really get tested. This workshop had the best circumstances for my travel routine to succeed. It was close enough for me to drive, which meant I could bring whatever I wanted instead of what I was willing to lug through an airport. Therefore, I brought my foam roller that I use for physical therapy back exercises....

So given what did and did not go well, this section outlines three things that will hopefully make things better next time. The first is an overarching career task that will help me articulate my priorities, which will help me make decisions more quickly. The second is my first attempt at a travel routine that will hopefully help me better sustain myself both during and after an event. And the third is my plan on how to prepare for conferences, so I get the most out of them. Articulate my "Professor Platform" To help me prioritize and quickly assess an opportunity, I want to think on my "Professor Platform." I got this idea from "The Professor is In: The Essential Guide To Turning Your Ph.D. Into a Job" by Karen Kelsky . I read this book when I was job hunting. It describes the need to create a "Campaign Platform" to help frame how to present yourself to search committees. Moreover, it helps you have a set of "things about you" you c...

While my first post may have implied I had no idea why I was going to SIGCSE nor what I would do when there, I actually did have some of both. It was just not enough. So the main idea of what went well was "at least I had something instead of nothing." And having nothing would have been far worse. One straightforward thing I did to prepare was to look through the table of contents of the proceedings and bookmark interesting papers to read. However, I don't think bookmarking papers was sufficient. I should have actually looked through the papers before the conference and tried to connect with the authors if I found a paper really interesting. I had goals, but they were unclear While I said I did not have clear goals, I did have at least an idea of what I wanted my goals to be. These ideas centered around my podcast , research, and searching for people to fill my mentoring needs. Podcast For my podcast, I knew I wanted to promote it and find guest speakers. Unfortu...

SIGCSE is a fantastic conference with something for everyone. It has presentations on Computer Science (CS) learning papers and experiential reports. It is a great place to network both formally and informally. Participants discuss a vast range of topics. SIGCSE also hosts many workshops and seminars on specific tools and techniques. At my latest trip to SIGCSE, things went both well and not well. This blog post sequence is to help me unpack what happened and think through how to make things better for future conferences. To my readers, depending on what you want to get out of this, I suggest the following: If you want the long, fully-nuanced story, read everything. If you want ideas on how to get the most out of conferences by looking at mine, read, " What I will do next time ." If you want a structured way to reflect on your own latest conference, read the section headers and their intro paragraphs. The subsection headers may be useful examples to get you thinking....

Hello and welcome to my blog! It's a place I write about computer science education and what it's like to be a professor. My name is Kristin Stephens-Martinez, and I am an Assistant Professor of the Practice at Duke University  in the Computer Science Department . I received my Ph.D. in Computer Science at UC Berkeley . My Master's research work, also at UC Berkeley , is in computer networking with Vern Paxson . My research interest lies at the intersection of education and computer science focusing on using data available in large classrooms (both local and MOOCs), and I was advised by Armando Fox . I used to sit in the Berkeley institute of design (BiD) lab . My specific research interest is on inspecting data from classrooms to find interpretable data-driven insights that help instructors find ways to improve their course material. My most recent work was a qualitative analysis on constructed response wrong answers from "What would Python display?" question ...