This study investigated middle school students' Artificial Intelligence (AI) literacy, focusing on cognitive and affective dimensions with regard to learning about AI. Fourteen middle school students participated in a five-day summer camp. They engaged in a project-based AI literacy program with hands-on activities, data collection and modeling,…

This dissertation investigates how collective process-oriented documentation tools, combined with Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques, can enhance knowledge construction in hands-on, open-ended learning environments, such as makerspaces. Through a three-year design-based research, the study developed and tested a collective documentation…

Defenses against adversarial attacks are essential to ensure the reliability of machine learning models as their applications are expanding in different domains. Existing ML defense techniques have several limitations in practical use. I proposed a trustworthy framework that employs an adaptive strategy to inspect both inputs and decisions. In…

The purpose of this study was to explore faculty members' lived experiences with student resistance in a gateway STEM classroom. A comparative investigation was done of the case study population to evaluate differences in experiences in active learning classes that use LAs (LAF) and classes that use more passive methods without LAs (NLA). The…

This dissertation describes a practitioner's design-based development of a prototype chatbot to guide students in learning biological concepts of genetic mutations and protein synthesis. This chatbot's architecture provides learning activities, feedback, and support throughout a series of short, connected lessons. The chatbot is designed to…

Civil discourse is our most basic form of civic engagement. In a democracy, it is our best tool for collectively answering a society's most fundamental question: "What shall we do?" While most of us have no doubt participated in political discussions, engaging in civil discourse that is productive (i.e., dialogue that "fosters…

Simulation based training (SBT) has allowed for improvement of clinical skills by providing practical experience of performing surgical procedures without the risk of harming patients. Performance assessment of learners during SBT has proved to be effective in improving psycho-motor skills, encouraging active learning and in-turn increasing…

The concept of precision medicine aims to provide additional context to patient data for healthcare providers. Precision medicine overlays three additional layers of patient data on top of standard patient information: environmental exposure, personal lifestyle and behavior patterns, and information gleaned from their genome. While precision…