Tyler Menezes

Integrating project-based learning (such as class projects, capstones, or internships) into a Computer Science degree helps students apply what they have learned in lectures and homework. Often, these projects involve group work, but ensuring all students are contributing and learning equally is a large challenge.

This experience report describes how we built and used a chatbot to collect and publish brief answers to the "standup" questions used daily in the technology industry: "What… Show more

Integrating project-based learning (such as class projects, capstones, or internships) into a Computer Science degree helps students apply what they have learned in lectures and homework. Often, these projects involve group work, but ensuring all students are contributing and learning equally is a large challenge.

This experience report describes how we built and used a chatbot to collect and publish brief answers to the "standup" questions used daily in the technology industry: "What did you do yesterday? What are you doing today? Is anything blocking you?". We share the rubric we used to grade these updates, as well as how we trained an AI tool to perform this work for us.

This tool was used by several hundred students from US-based Career and Technical Colleges (CTCs) and non-R1 universities, who were largely underrepresented in Computer Science. We found that collecting and publishing standups reduced the number of students who did not significantly contribute. We also found that scoring the standups according to a rubric helped identify and reach out to any students who were still not contributing, and improved program outcomes. Finally, we found that an AI tool can be used to evaluate student updates at scale helping under-resourced schools and over-worked faculty to implement this program in their classrooms. Show less

Community college students cite career advancement as their top reason for enrolling, with over 70% of first-year students expecting to participate in an internship as part of their college experience. However, surveys indicate only between 10% and 25% of bachelor’s degree holders participated in an internship, with Black and Latino students, women, low-income, and first-generation students having less access. With strong associations between paid internships and positive outcomes in the labor… Show more

Community college students cite career advancement as their top reason for enrolling, with over 70% of first-year students expecting to participate in an internship as part of their college experience. However, surveys indicate only between 10% and 25% of bachelor’s degree holders participated in an internship, with Black and Latino students, women, low-income, and first-generation students having less access. With strong associations between paid internships and positive outcomes in the labor market after graduation, the impact is substantial: new grads who start out underemployed are five times more likely to remain underemployed after five years.

This experience report documents a multifaceted intervention at Green River College. Partnering with Mentors in Tech provides community college baccalaureate students studying software development with structured mentorship from industry mentors who help students navigate the hiring process and landscape and bring impactful aspects of internships into capstone projects. Partnering with CodeDay provides students with accessible internships, working on open-source software. In 2022-23, this intervention reached over 90% of students in the program, consisting of 47% students of color, 28% women, 59% receiving financial aid, and 20% first-generation college students.

Initial results include a review of hiring process metrics, placement outcomes, and student reflections. Seventy-five percent of students who graduated in 2022 landed a tech role within six months of graduation. Over 90% of participating students expressed confidence in their ability to transition from student to tech professional. Ongoing work focuses on long-term sustainability and expanding opportunities for students enrolled in similar programs at comparable institutions. Show less

Many computer science students report feeling under-prepared for interviews and entry-level jobs, and colleges have been working to address this problem, but are we putting effort into teaching the right skills? This poster reports initial results from a survey of both CS professors and the industry representatives who hire and work day-to-day with our graduates. We find that, when asked what skills are most important and most lacking in today's graduates, industry and academia disagree.

Hackathon-style coding events are a popular and promising approach to broadening participation in computer science and engineering. We present a quantitative analysis of self-reported perseverance in coding after hackathon-style events for 4,703 hackathon participants run by the nonprofit organization CodeDay. Drawing from previous work on broadening participation in computing, we test hypotheses that seek to answer three questions about whether and how hackathon-style coding events support… Show more

Hackathon-style coding events are a popular and promising approach to broadening participation in computer science and engineering. We present a quantitative analysis of self-reported perseverance in coding after hackathon-style events for 4,703 hackathon participants run by the nonprofit organization CodeDay. Drawing from previous work on broadening participation in computing, we test hypotheses that seek to answer three questions about whether and how hackathon-style coding events support continued engagement in computing among young people: (1) Are participants from underrepresented groups as likely to continue to engage in coding after attending a hackathon-style event? (2) Are participants more likely to continue to code after hackathon-style events if they attend events with demographically similar peers? (3) Are participants more likely to continue to code after a hackathon-style event if they present their work? In line with many studies of broadening participation, we find that members of underrepresented groups are less likely to report continuing to engage in programming 10 weeks after hackathon-style events. However, we find that these participants are more likely to report continuing to code when a larger proportion of attendees at their event share their gender or ethnicity. We also find that membership in underrepresented groups is associated with a greater likelihood of continued engagement when participants present their work to others at the end of events. Our work contributes to the literature on both education and broadening participation in computing by outlining several conditions under which hackathon-style events may be effective in promoting continued engagement among underrepresented young people. Show less

Internships help students connect what they have learned in the classroom to the real world, and students with access to internships are more likely to graduate and secure employment. However, many students are unable to find an internship by the time they graduate. This experience report describes a program where volunteer software engineers mentor students as they work on open-source projects in the summer, offered as an alternative to a traditional internship experience. We catalog the… Show more

Internships help students connect what they have learned in the classroom to the real world, and students with access to internships are more likely to graduate and secure employment. However, many students are unable to find an internship by the time they graduate. This experience report describes a program where volunteer software engineers mentor students as they work on open-source projects in the summer, offered as an alternative to a traditional internship experience. We catalog the considerations involved in providing an experience similar to a traditional internship, describe our program's design, and provide two years' worth of participant evaluations and career outcomes as a measure of efficacy. The program served mostly undergraduates from non-R1 schools who are underrepresented in technology, and achieved similar educational outcomes to a traditional internship program. Most promisingly, mentors were willing to serve as a professional reference for 80% of students and the number of graduating seniors who secured full-time employment in technology was 7 points higher than average (despite occurring during the COVID-19 pandemic). Show less

Many colleges lack the resources to teach computer science students the skills to succeed in interviews and work on real-world products. Internships solve both problems, but are often not accessible to under-served students and colleges, adding to the under-representation of minorities in technology. This study reports the results of a program providing unpaid open-source internships with volunteer industry mentors.

Human interactive proofs (HIPs) or CAPTCHAs are a common tool to prevent automated attacks on Web services. Their prime objective is to detect whether a human is controlling the actions of a specific client. Although vulnerable to various adversarial activities, HIPs are simply a necessity when minimizing costs of running a Web service.
In this paper, we analyze the existing, widely adopted practice to assemble a HIP puzzle by warping an image that encapsulates a sequence of randomly… Show more

Human interactive proofs (HIPs) or CAPTCHAs are a common tool to prevent automated attacks on Web services. Their prime objective is to detect whether a human is controlling the actions of a specific client. Although vulnerable to various adversarial activities, HIPs are simply a necessity when minimizing costs of running a Web service.
In this paper, we analyze the existing, widely adopted practice to assemble a HIP puzzle by warping an image that encapsulates a sequence of randomly selected, printed letters. We reach the following conclusions.

First, on a large database of fonts, we showcase that various parameterization techniques such as font variability, are unlikely to maintain the efficacy of a specific HIP setting. Second, we point to the fact that it is suboptimal to use all letters of the alphabet as candidates for constructing HIPs; to that extent, we present an optimal procedure for letter selection that achieves minimal overall true positive detection rate. Finally, we point to the fact that under such circumstances humans are not necessarily always worse than computers in solving HIPs — a belief that has been promoted in related work. Show less