EJ Alexander

EJ Alexander

Project Title: Intelligent Tutoring Systems in Computer Science

Blog:

July 28

To all future participants, remember that only YOU create your own path. You’ll be surprised how much you can do when you put your mind to it. Many challenges will come however, if you stand strong in the face of adversity you WILL overcome. This experience has been wonderful and i can not show enough gratitude to the people who allowed this to happen. I was surrounded by a group of amazing people and we all conquered our mission. Keep your head up and take advantage of the opportunity no matter what it is.

July 21

I am devastated that it is almost over. I had to take a change in pace as my research shifted to a new area for me to explore. I am happy with the shift and it exposed me to new information that will be useful in the future as blended learning continues to advance. I wish there was more time of course however school is starting around the corner. The hardest challenge i faced was building a prototype without much experience with front end web development. However, my favorite thing was honestly reading research articles due to the amount of knowledge i gained in such a short period of time compared to the larger amount of time spent developing their research paper. I also loved our visit to the Whitewater center! That was one of my most fun experiences of my life. This summer is by far the greatest one!

June 30

Coding can constantly have trial and error practices in order for someone to learn the next step. My research has completely exercised “learning from your mistakes” due to me learning as i go. This information will definitely be retained for quite sometime. Thankfully the circle of comrades I have keep me motivated as they persevere throughout their own research as well.

June 16

This week my biggest challenge is the implementation of building the website. I am still learning the structure of how it is built and adding more functionality has been challenging considering that this is a new programming language that i am working with. Although it is similar to other languages i have coded, what makes it challenging is learning the scopes and variables on the program. However i seek assistance from the graduate student I am paired with to help me along the way. I am a walking sponge when he is around so that i retain all the information I can to apply into the project and possibly other projects. If it wasn’t hard it wouldn’t be worth it.

June 9

This week i got exposed to what “Reverse Engineering” is. Truly dissecting and analyzing someone else’s code to figure out functionality and what is display truly shows me how much i have grown. This experience will cause me to be much more versatile. The fellowship with the other REU members has became stronger and we have built good repor with each other.

June 2

My week consisted of me researching the requirements needed to create a Learning Management System (LMS). I analyzed many notable LMS websites such as Canvas, Moodle, Edmodo, and many others. While i am researching i have also learned to code Javascript, jQuery, and SQL. I hope to be able to create a smaller scale LMS of my own by the end of the REU. I also expect to form a great bond with my fellow members of the REU.