Seven members of SRL, six graduates and one undergraduate presented posters at the IAP Competition. Many of the judges later commented on how impressed they were with the work and presentations of the SRL members.
The hard work that everyone put into their presentations was reflected at the awards ceremony later that evening, with Seth Polsley winning second place and Stephanie Valentine tying for first place in the IAP poster competition!
Additionally, Trevor Nelligan won the Undergraduate Research Award, Stephanie Valentine won the Mentorship Excellence Award, and Rafael (Rafa) Moreno won the Undergraduate Leadership Award at the CSE banquet! Congratulations to everyone!!
Rafa Moreno, who recently joined SRL as an undergraduate researcher working on Smart Strokes with Raniero Lara Garduno, stated, "It feels pretty good to win the award, not for the award itself, but the fact that someone agrees with you on the impact of what you are doing, and how many people it is positively affecting."
Outside of the lab, Moreno is interested in machine learning and computer vision as it relates to artificial intelligence. He is also the president of TAMUHack and helps the organization and growth of the "hackathon".
SRL MS Student Seth Polsley, one of six graduate students who presented in the poster competition, won second place for his research with Mechanix.
Polsley's poster focused on the trends regarding student interaction with the problems given to them in Mechanix. For example, how many times have students tried to correctly answer specific problems? At what point in an assignment did a concept throw students off and caused them to struggle?
Everyone has experienced the stress and frustration that occurs when a problem can’t be solved immediately or even after a few tries. The more frustration that builds up, the harder and more irritating the problem becomes. However, sometimes the best solution is to let it go. Relax. Coming back to a problem an hour or a day later can sometimes make it easier to think logically and solve it.
“Sometimes you need a break,” Polsley stated about struggling with a question. “Maybe we can add something in Mechanix that pops up after a certain number of attempts on a question. It may just be something like ‘go ahead and continue and come back later.’”
Like Polsley, Nelligan's research and studies have focused on Mechanix this semester. Trevor Nelligan won the Undergraduate Research Excellence Award for his presentation for the IAP competition.
Mechanix is an innovative and digital learning area for beginners. The program itself allows for instructors to create practice problems for students. Users can then sketch images into the program and add force and force direction to solve the problems and produce formulas.
Once a problem is worked out by a student, they can submit it for instant feedback and correction. This is particularly helpful in a large class where handwritten assignments are necessary – for example, an engineering or mathematics class. While it would take time for an instructor to grade and comment on every student’s assignment, Mechanix allows for students to be automatically evaluated and given feedback to help students understand what was missed in the problem.
Mechanix is an innovative and digital learning area for beginners. The program itself allows for instructors to create practice problems for students. Users can then sketch images into the program and add force and force direction to solve the problems and produce formulas.
Once a problem is worked out by a student, they can submit it for instant feedback and correction. This is particularly helpful in a large class where handwritten assignments are necessary – for example, an engineering or mathematics class. While it would take time for an instructor to grade and comment on every student’s assignment, Mechanix allows for students to be automatically evaluated and given feedback to help students understand what was missed in the problem.
SRL PhD Candidate Stephanie Valentine also presented at the IAP Competition and won first place for her research covering her work with KidGab. Valentine’s colorful poster resembled a screenshot of a social media site with the flair of her own touch.
Along with her poster, Valentine set up a tablet in her presentation that constantly showed a looped video about how sketches on KidGab can become videos of the drawing being created, pen stroke by pen stroke. While this is currently a fun, leisure application found in KidGab, it can be used in an educational setting to make videos about concepts learned in class – for example, a sketch about how to solve a problem using long division.
In her presentation, Valentine gave a brief rundown on her social network for kids aged 7 to 12. Her goal of educating children on how to be safe online and have a responsible digital self were a driving force behind her speech. She also touched on how KidGab is used by children that she has worked with during Digital Friendship workshops to identify and express themselves.
In her presentation, Valentine gave a brief rundown on her social network for kids aged 7 to 12. Her goal of educating children on how to be safe online and have a responsible digital self were a driving force behind her speech. She also touched on how KidGab is used by children that she has worked with during Digital Friendship workshops to identify and express themselves.
Congratulations to everyone who participated and to everyone who was awarded for their posters and involvement with the CSE Department!
With the stress of research competitions out of the way for the moment, SRL attended the end of the year banquet for the Computer Science and Engineering Department at Texas A&M University. The senior capstone groups – who have mentors in the SRL – had posters on display for the first half of the night.
With a beautiful layout and delicious food, the evening was a nice breather to the hectic schedule that members of the SRL usually face. In fact, it became an event for everyone to have fun, chat, and shake the stress off on the dance floor – perhaps while learning a few new steps along the way.
With the stress of research competitions out of the way for the moment, SRL attended the end of the year banquet for the Computer Science and Engineering Department at Texas A&M University. The senior capstone groups – who have mentors in the SRL – had posters on display for the first half of the night.
With a beautiful layout and delicious food, the evening was a nice breather to the hectic schedule that members of the SRL usually face. In fact, it became an event for everyone to have fun, chat, and shake the stress off on the dance floor – perhaps while learning a few new steps along the way.
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