Welcome to the TRAILS Lab

We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn computing in a way that motivates them and supports their needs. We use approaches from human-computer interaction and computing education to understand learners’ goals and experiences, build educational interventions inspired by learning theory, and evaluate the effectiveness of these new approaches.

We want all computing learners to achieve their goals (and perhaps aim for goals they previously thought impossible). We respect that different learners want to reach different endpoints with their computing knowledge, and meeting the needs of all learners will require deeply understanding the learning process and building a variety of pathways to computing education.

News

13 August 2024

Katie, Jina, and Arif are attending ICER 2024 in Melbourne, Australia! Jina and Arif present on Wednesday after lunch.

14 July 2024

Katie and Arif are attending EDM 2024/L@S 2024 in Atlanta, GA! Arif is presenting on Wednesday (1.30pm). You can also read the blog post here and check the video here.

05 June 2024

Jina’s paper exploring conversational programmer and end-user programmer learning goals and attitudes was accepted at ICER 2024!

05 June 2024

Arif’s paper investigating the cognitive validity of CS1 programming plans using learning curve analysis was accepted at ICER 2024!

01 May 2024

Yoshee won a grant from the Honors College to perform research on supporting domain-specific programming plan identification!

12 April 2024

Arif’s paper replicating learning curve analysis with syntax-based concepts (with surprising results) was accepted at EDM 2024!

See older news