UMD Theses and Dissertations

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3

New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.

More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.

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Subject: search.filters.subject.Human computer interaction

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Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    COMPUTATIONAL THINKING IN EARLY GRADE CLASSROOMS: HOW YOUNG LEARNERS INTERACT WITH PHYSICAL DEVICES TO GROUND THEIR UNDERSTANDING OF COMPUTATIONAL THINKING
    (2024) Bih epse Fofang, Janet Shufor; Weintrop, David; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Computational thinking (CT) has been supported as an important skill every young person should possess for the 21st century, with possible implications for problem-solving, self-expression, and creativity. Numerous initiatives, both within and outside classroom settings, have been developed in response to policy mandates aiming at broadening participation for all K-12 learners to acquire CT skills. Consequently, there has been a proliferation of computational toys and tools specifically designed for young learners, including codable robots introduced into classrooms and educational environments. With the growing prevalence of computational devices in educational settings, educators, curriculum designers, and researchers must cultivate diverse teaching approaches and deepen their understanding of how young learners engage with these devices to acquire CT skills effectively within classroom contexts. In this dissertation, I present findings of how elementary-grade learners develop CT skills when they program Sphero robots in mathematics classroom activities. I specifically focused on the kinds of representations students developed, considering their perspectives (understanding) of the environment, and the practices they engaged in to accomplish given tasks.To understand how young learners acquired CT skills, I observed fourth-grade learners as they interacted with activities on the Sphero.Math curriculum to program the Sphero robot in mathematics classrooms. The Sphero.Math curriculum was developed through a collaborative effort between researchers and DCPS partners. Findings from this work revealed that representations play an important role in supporting young learners to engage in CT practices such as Pattern recognition, algorithm design, problem decomposition, and abstraction (PRADA). Findings showed that representations such as (1) concrete manipulatives, (2) language, (3) graphic, (4) symbolic and (5) embodied representations provide scaffolds for learners to gain (PRADA), CT skills through iterating, testing, debugging, abstracting, modularizing, and reusing code. Additionally, the design features of the Sphero robot and its programming environment support CT knowledge acquisition. Features such as (1) programmable LEDs provided opportunities for learners to break down tasks and create opportunities to organize and structure components to get visual feedback that helped them recognize patterns. (2) Taillight (“aim”) LED provided visual cues, that facilitated the involvement of geocentric orientation and embodied practices that empowered students to establish sensorimotor references. (3) Sphero’s virtual protractor supported students through the CT component of abstraction to address the geocentric aspects of the Sphero robot. (4) block-based environment/language, that involves the use of shapes and colors as effective visual aids and abstraction tools, to support the learners’ construct to algorithms. This research can serve as a resource for researchers, curriculum designers, educators, and designers to answer questions about design, choice of computational tools, and their respective programming environments that can afford meaningful CT experiences. Familiarizing learners with representations within CT robotics learning environments serves as a gentle initiation into emerging topics in education such as AI, ML, and data science, given the pivotal role representations play within these fields.
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    A Human-Centric Approach to Software Vulnerability Discovery
    (2020) Votipka, Daniel Jared; Mazurek, Michelle L; Computer Science; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Software security bugs | referred to as vulnerabilities | persist as an important and costly challenge. Significant effort has been exerted toward automatic vulnerability discovery, but human intelligence generally remains required and will remain necessary for the foreseeable future. Therefore, many companies have turned to internal and external (e.g., penetration testing, bug bounties) security experts to manually analyze their code for vulnerabilities. Unfortunately, there are a limited number of qualified experts. Therefore, to improve software security, we must understand how experts search for vulnerabilities and how their processes could be made more efficient, by improving tool usability and targeting the most common vulnerabilities. Additionally, we seek to understand how to improve training to increase the number of experts. To answer these questions, I begin with an in-depth qualitative analysis of secure development competition submissions to identify common vulnerabilities developers introduce. I found developers struggle to understand and implement complex security concepts, not recognizing how nuanced development decisions could lead to vulnerabilities. Next, using a cognitive task analysis to investigate experts' and non-experts' vulnerability discovery processes, I observed they use the same process, but dier in the variety of security experiences which inform their searches. Together, these results suggest exposure to an in-depth understanding of potential vulnerabilities as essential for vulnerability discovery. As a first step to leverage both experts and non-experts, I pursued two lines of work: education to support experience development and vulnerability discovery automation interaction improvements. To improve vulnerability discovery tool interaction, I conducted observational interviews of experts' reverse engineering process, an essential and time-consuming component of vulnerability discovery. From this, I provide guidelines for more usable interaction design. For security education, I began with a pedagogical review of security exercises to identify their current strengths and weaknesses. I also developed a psychometric measure for secure software development self-efficacy to support comparisons between educational interventions.
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    DATA-DRIVEN STORYTELLING FOR CASUAL USERS
    (2019) Zhao, Zhenpeng; Elmqvist, Niklas; Computer Science; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Today’s overwhelming volume of data has made effective analysis virtually inaccessible for the general public. The emerging practice of data-driven storytelling is addressing this by framing data using familiar mechanisms such as slideshows, videos, and comics to make even highly complex phenomena understandable. However, current data stories still do not utilize the full potential of the storytelling domain. One reason for this is that current data-driven storytelling practice does not leverage the full repertoire of media that can be used for storytelling, such as speech, e-learning, and video games. In this dissertation, we propose a taxonomy focused specifically on media types for the purpose of widening the purview of data-driven storytelling by putting more tools in the hands of designers. We expand the idea of data-driven storytelling into the group of casual users, who are the consumers of information and non-professionals with limited time, skills, and motivation , to bridge the data gap between the advanced data analytics tools and everyday internet users. To prove the effectiveness and the wide acceptance of our taxonomy and data-driven storytelling among the casual users, we have collected examples for data-driven storytelling by finding, reviewing, and classifying ninety-one examples. Using our taxonomy as a generative tool, we also explored two novel storytelling mechanisms, including live-streaming analytics videos—DataTV—and sequential art (comics) that dynamically incorporates visual representations—Data Comics. Meanwhile, we widened the genres we explored to fill the gaps in the literature. We also evaluated Data Comics and DataTV with user studies and expert reviews. The results show that Data Comics facilitates data-driven storytelling in terms of inviting reading, aiding memory, and viewing as a story. The results also show that an integrated system as DataTV encourages authors to create and present data stories.
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    COLLABORATIVE SCIENCE ACROSS THE GLOBE: THE INFLUENCE OF MOTIVATION AND CULTURE ON VOLUNTEERS IN THE UNITED STATES, INDIA, AND COSTA RICA.
    (2013) Rotman, Dana; Preece, Jennifer J; Library & Information Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Reliance on volunteer participation for collaborative scientific projects has become extremely popular in the past decade. Cutting across disciplines, locations, and participation practices, hundreds of thousands of people all over the world are now involved in these studies, and are advancing tasks that scientists cannot accomplish alone. Although existing projects have demonstrated the value of involving volunteers to collect data, few projects have been successful in maintaining volunteer involvement over long periods of time. Therefore, it is important to understand the unique motivations of volunteers and their effect on participation practices, so that effective partnerships between volunteers and scientists can be established. This study provides a first look into the relationship between motivation and culture in the context of ecology-focused collaborative scientific projects around the world. Projects in three distinct cultures - the United States, India, and Costa Rica - were examined by triangulating qualitative and quantitative methods followed by a cross-cultural comparison. The findings reveal a temporal process of participation that is highly dependent on motivation and culture. Initial participation stems in most cases from self-directed motivations. However, as time progresses, the motivational process becomes more complex and includes both self-directed motivations and collaborative motivations. In addition, motivation is strongly modulated by local cultural norms, expectations, and practices. Collaborative and scientific cultures also have an impact throughout the course of the volunteers' participation. This research provides theoretical and practical contributions: its findings extend current understanding of theories of motivation by showing the connection between culture and motivation, and demonstrate how cultural effects lie at the core of motivation and participation practices in volunteer-based collaborative scientific projects. These findings will also inform scientists, project leaders, educators, administrators, and designers on ways to entice and maintain long-term volunteer participation in collaborative scientific projects that are situated in different cultures.