This summer, I was accepted as a participant in the ICER2017 Doctoral Consortium. It was a fantastic experience! The ACM partially funded my trip through a travel reimbursement, so I was able to attend the ICER2017 conference in Tacoma, WA, where I had the chance to meet and exchange ideas with experts who are passionate about CS education. Here is the abstract from my submission:

Hybrid, dual-modality programming environments provide both blocks-based and text-based interfaces for programming. While previous research investigated the transition from visual to textual environments, few studies considered these hybrid environments. The purpose of this dissertation is to explore how hybrid programming environments impact computer science competency, confidence, and interest in computer science among students when moving from blocks-based environments to text-based languages. Exploring these questions will help us understand which hybrid environments are effective, in which contexts they are effective, and if they can improve on current approaches to CS instruction.

At the doctoral consortium, I had the chance to talk about the work I’ve done extending Pencil Code (by adding Python and working with others to build IDE plugins for Visual Studio and IntelliJ) and get advice from those at the forefront of the discipline. I received lots of great feedback about how to focus my research moving forward. I’m looking forward to applying this in the coming terms!