The Colleges of Computing and Engineering invite the campus community to a lecture by faculty candidate Briana Bettin on Monday, March 16, 2020, at 3:00 p.m. The title of Bettin’s talk is, “Understanding and Enhancing Novice Mental Models of Computing.”
The lecture will be presented online through a Zoom meeting. Link here to join the Zoom meeting.
Bettin is a PhD candidate and King-Chavez-Parks Future Faculty Fellowship recipient in Michigan Tech’s Department of Computer Science. Her research blends user experience methodologies with education research to better understand programming students and the impacts of the classroom environment.
Bettin’s research interests span education, experiential design, and human factors. She has a B.S. in computer science from Michigan Tech and an M.S. in human-computer interaction from Iowa State University.
The need for computer science coursework has exploded worldwide, and now more than ever students need coding and problem solving skills for the future. Students in the computing classroom come from a variety of majors, and students within the major are increasingly diverse in background and career interests.
Bettin’s presentation explores how students acquire and understand programming concepts, and how their development of foundational knowledge can be better facilitated. Her talk discusses work from several studies exploring questions such as, How can we relate topical material to such a wide variety of students? How are they interpreting these concepts and retaining them? And How does the classroom environment impact our students’ learning?
