Stephanie Brito – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com Breaking news from the Farm since 1892 Mon, 29 May 2017 06:56:37 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://stanforddaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/cropped-DailyIcon-CardinalRed.png?w=32 Stephanie Brito – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com 32 32 204779320 Stanford to offer undergraduate major in aeronautics and astronautics https://stanforddaily.com/2017/05/28/stanford-to-offer-undergraduate-major-in-aeronautics-and-astronautics/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/05/28/stanford-to-offer-undergraduate-major-in-aeronautics-and-astronautics/#respond Mon, 29 May 2017 06:56:37 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1128632 Previously, Stanford’s aeronautics and astronautics department only offered degrees for master’s and Ph.D. students. Starting next fall, undergraduates will be able to get a degree in the field.

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In response to student demand, Stanford’s aeronautics and astronautics department will offer a new undergraduate degree in aeronautics and astronautics starting next fall.

Previously, the department only offered degrees for master’s and Ph.D. students. Stanford’s graduate program in aeronautics and astronautics is ranked no. 1 by U.S. News and World Report.

The idea of a new major was introduced to the Faculty Senate about two years ago. Following faculty approval, Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics Juan Alonso led a committee to study what the major should offer students. The committee researched effective and innovative ways to teach the major and led the effort to design the new program, which was approved this February.

“The main motivating factor is the renaissance of aerospace engineering that has been taking place over the last 10 or so years and the student demand,” Alonso said.

He explained that interest in the new major came from student groups such as Stanford Student Space Initiative (SSI) and Stanford Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Enthusiasts (SUAVE). Both groups have about 200 members each.

According to Alonso, commercialization of aeronautics has also sparked interest in drones and satellites, with students creating start-ups in the field.

Stanford to offer undergraduate major in aeronautics and astronautics
Student demand from groups like the Stanford Student Space Initiative helped spur the creation of the new major (Courtesy of Kirill Safin).

SSI member Kai Marshland ’19 echoed Alonso’s remarks on the exciting nature of the space and flight fields at the moment. As operations team lead for the SSI, Marshland created HABMC, the mission control for the group’s high-altitude balloons team, which recently set the world record for time spent aloft by a latex balloon.

“The space industry is only continuing to develop and the aero-astro major will help ensure that Stanford students remain at the forefront of that,” Marshland said, adding that, although he is a computer science student, he knows a number of freshmen who now plan to declare the new major.

“I think there is significant interest,” he said, praising Assistant Professor of Aeronautics Marco Pavone’s work in shaping the new major. “There has been for a long time.”

The goal of the new major is to expose students to different forms of aeronautics and astronautics while providing students the foundation needed to branch off into a broad range of fields. Alonso said that because the department had a “clean slate” to design the major, the department had the flexibility to create a course collection that they believed encompassed what’s best for students interested in modern aspects of the disciplines.

Additionally, Stanford will be one of few universities to offer an undergraduate course in autonomous systems, a requirement of the new major — an area typically offered exclusively for graduate students.

Alonso anticipates that the Class of 2020 will be the first to graduate students in the new major.

“We have a strong role — being the number one department in the country for aerospace engineering at the graduate level — to have as good an undergraduate department in order to train the leaders of aerospace,” Alonso said.

Contact Stephanie Brito at sbrito ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Students concerned over gentrification in Redwood City expansion https://stanforddaily.com/2017/05/04/students-concerned-over-gentrification-in-redwood-city-expansion/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/05/04/students-concerned-over-gentrification-in-redwood-city-expansion/#respond Thu, 04 May 2017 09:09:55 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1126991 As Stanford prepares for its first major expansion off the farm into Redwood City in 2019, some students have expressed concern about how the project may affect the neighborhood’s gentrification, while the University maintains that the project will have a positive impact on the surrounding community.

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Students concerned over gentrification in Redwood City expansion
Stanford employees from units that will be moving to Redwood City have begun trying out a variety of office configurations in a “Pilot Workplace.” (Courtesy of Stanford News).

As Stanford prepares for its first major expansion off The Farm into Redwood City in 2019, some students have expressed concerns about how the project may affect the neighborhood’s gentrification, while the University maintains that the project will have a positive impact on the surrounding community.

The new buildings will hold 2,700 employees in the initial stages with the purpose of uniting different offices that were previously scattered around the primary campus, according to program manager Kathleen Kavanaugh. Currently, demolition of existing buildings on the new site and pre-construction site work is in progress.

“Our objective is to allow teaching and research activities to remain concentrated at Stanford as our academic endeavors continue to grow, while providing a new unified home for a range of essential operations currently scattered both on and off campus,” President Marc Tessier-Lavigne told Stanford News.

As the project moves forward, students have raised concerns that Redwood City will become the next rapidly gentrifying city. According to research from the University of California at Berkeley and Los Angeles, an influx of affluent residents to the Bay Area has contributed to rent hikes and the resulting displacement of low-income residents in the last decade.

In Silicon Valley in particular, the expansion of tech companies has contributed further to the gentrification of surrounding suburbs, including Redwood City, much of which is undergoing moderate displacement, the research shows.

According to Kavanaugh, the issue of gentrification in Redwood City was discussed throughout the entitlement process, the procedure by which an organization is given legal approval to proceed with a project.  

Despite this dialogue between organizers, some Stanford students still believe that the site will negatively affect Redwood City residents.

Recently-elected ASSU Senator Doris Rodriguez ’20 highlighted the potential impact of the project in her campaign.

“I believe that Stanford has to remain accountable not just to students on our campus but to how we affect our surrounding communities,” Rodriguez wrote in a statement to The Daily. “I am baffled by how we can talk about gentrification of the Bay Area, Chicago and other cities, yet no one speaks about the role we play in pushing people out of their homes just miles away.”

Rodriguez said she became aware of the issues surrounding gentrification through volunteering at a high school in Redwood City, when she heard students discussing the rapid rate at which rent was increasing. She plans to explore proposals to present to University administrators to minimize the expansion’s adverse effects.

“The project is set to launch in 2019; the least the school could do is allocate legal resources to help set rent limits,” Rodriguez wrote.

The administrators involved with the project maintain that the expansion provides an opportunity to participate constructively in the development of Redwood City. University spokesperson Ernest Miranda, senior director of University media relations, said that the University believes the new campus will have a positive impact on the Redwood City community.

“Stanford and Redwood City government and community leaders have worked very closely on the plan for the Stanford Redwood City campus,” he said. “We’re pleased to be part of Redwood City’s future, and we’ve been fortunate to work with innovative and visionary partners in the city government as well as with supportive neighbors.”

Employees from multiple departments will be relocated to the Redwood City campus, including the Graduate School of Business, Office of the Vice Provost for Teaching & Learning, School of Medicine, University Libraries, Business Affairs & CFO, University Human Resources, Residential & Dining Enterprises, and the Office of Development and Land, Buildings & Real Estate.

According to Kavanaugh, the University is still considering various modes of transportation to facilitate convenient commutes for relocated employees. Possible options include free Caltrain Go passes and SamTrans Way2Go passes, Marguerite shuttle service to and from the Redwood City Caltrain station and on-site Zipcars. Similar programs already exist for employees at Stanford.

More information about the project is available online. For employees who may be relocated to the new campus, transportation information is also available at Cardinal@Work.

 

Contact Stephanie Brito at sbrito ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Classy Classes: HISTORY 272D teaches high schoolers Mexican-American history https://stanforddaily.com/2017/04/12/classy-classes-history-272d-teaches-high-schoolers-mexican-american-history/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/04/12/classy-classes-history-272d-teaches-high-schoolers-mexican-american-history/#respond Thu, 13 Apr 2017 04:44:52 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1125821 Offered for the first time this spring quarter, HISTORY 272D: “Teaching Mexican American History in High School” teaches Stanford students about Mexican American history and prepares them to mentor high school students through a history project at Luis Valdez Leadership Academy (LVLA) in San Jose.

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Classy Classes: HISTORY 272D teaches high schoolers Mexican-American history
Albert Camarillo founded HISTORY 272D, which aims to connect at-risk high school students with Stanford mentors through Mexican-American history (Courtesy of Albert Camarillo).

Offered for the first time this spring quarter, HISTORY 272D: “Teaching Mexican American History in High School” teaches Stanford students about Mexican-American history and prepares them to mentor high school students through a history project at Luis Valdez Leadership Academy (LVLA) in San Jose.

Program founder Albert Camarillo, Leon Sloss Jr. Memorial Professor Emeritus, has collaborated with LVLA for the past two years to create a course on Mexican-American history for ninth- and 10th-grade students. He previously worked in a similar setting with East Palo Alto Academy to create a bridge program for Stanford students and high schoolers.

The course on Mexican-American history is taught by Marilyn Travis ’16 M.A. ’17 and Rafael Silva M.A. ’17, who are students in the Stanford Teacher Education Program at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, as well as LVLA Dean of Students Irene Castillon.

“[This course is] unique in that it’s not being done anywhere as far as I know in the state of California,” Camarillo said.

At the beginning of the quarter, Stanford students will visit LVLA to meet their high school mentees, many of whom are considered “at-risk students.” According to Camarillo, some of the students the program hopes to prepare for college are among the lowest quartile in the school district.

Students enrolled in HISTORY 272D will communicate with their mentees via email or phone as they research and prepare for their final project, which is a “TED Talk-style” presentation based on the Chicano Civil Rights Movement.

Meanwhile, the course plans to supplement the Stanford students’ history knowledge with Mexican-American history, a topic that is only briefly covered in high schools, according to Camarillo. The coursework in HISTORY 272D is thus meant to parallel that of the LVLA students’ history curriculum.

The goal of the course is for Stanford students to provide personal mentorship to the LVLA students in addition to academic support for the final presentation.

“I think that [the mentorship program] is really going to help make it the kind of classroom I want, which is one centered on human connections and relationships,” Silva said.

Almost all of the students enrolled in the course at LVLA identify as Latinx, Hispanic or Chicanx, Camarillo said. He stressed that in learning about Mexican-American history, students are inspired to “think about themselves, their community and the nation” and are motivated to see themselves as high-achieving.

Silva added that developing personal relationships with college students helps students envision a future with college in the picture.

“It’s important for the kids to see someone who is in college, somebody whom they feel they could be in their shoes one day,” Silva said. “They’re providing a real connection to an institution we hope they will be a part of one day.”

 

Contact Stephanie Brito at sbrito ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Classy Classes: PSYC 240 gets students working on mental health care https://stanforddaily.com/2017/03/27/classy-classes-new-psyc-240-teaches-students-mental-health-care/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/03/27/classy-classes-new-psyc-240-teaches-students-mental-health-care/#respond Mon, 27 Mar 2017 07:00:22 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1124850 For the first time this spring, students will be able to study mental health care delivery through PSYC 240: “Leadership and Innovation in Mental Healthcare.” Students will work in pairs with mentoring from senior faculty consultants in the field to develop solutions to mental health care issues.

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For the first time this spring, students will be able to study and create effective forms of mental health care delivery through PSYC 240: “Leadership and Innovation in Mental Healthcare.”

Led by Nina Vasan MBA ’18 and Belinda Bandstra M.D., clinical assistant professor, the course will focus on current mental health care treatment and how to improve it. Students will work in pairs with mentorship from senior faculty consultants in the field to develop solutions to mental health care issues. The focus on mental health care makes the course unique at Stanford. 

“We want to educate students simultaneously on the realities of modern mental healthcare and on best practices in leading innovation, so that they can start to solve the problems that they care so much about,” Vasan said.

Both Vasan and Bandstra have studied mental health care in national campaigns.

Vasan is a resident physician in psychiatry at Stanford Hospital and Clinics and has served as an advisor for companies such as McKinsey & Co. Vasan also served as co-leader of battleground state outreach for the Health Policy Advisory Committee of former President Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.

Bandstra serves as a clinical assistant professor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the School of Medicine.

Due to overwhelming response, PSYC 240 has been capped at 20 students who will be selected by application. Vasan said that the course will consist of an even mix of undergraduates and students from all of Stanford’s graduate school programs.

“We’re building a community for mental health innovators and entrepreneurs, and Stanford is the best place for that community to start,” Vasan said.

Vasan described the course as an “experiment” to see which methods are most effective to meet PSYC 240’s learning goals. In addition, Vasan hopes to recruit students as TAs for the next time the course is offered.

Vasan said the course’s ultimate goal is not just to teach students about mental health care, but also to take advantage of opportunities in Silicon Valley to do social good in a style similar to that of Stanford courses like CS+Social Good. Vasan hopes to bring leaders in Silicon Valley, nonprofits and government organizations into the class.

“I created this course because as a physician, I want to see the students’ creativity and talents translated into a real, measurable impact for patients,” Vasan said. “I don’t want my students to just feel like they are making the world better through some placebo effect. I want them to know for a fact that they did.”

Contact Stephanie Brito at sbrito ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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CS department updates introductory courses https://stanforddaily.com/2017/02/28/cs-department-updates-introductory-courses/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/02/28/cs-department-updates-introductory-courses/#respond Tue, 28 Feb 2017 08:52:58 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1123921 This spring, a pilot version of CS106A, tentatively called CS106J, will be taught in Javascript instead of Java. Meanwhile, CS106S: “Programming Abstractions and Social Good” is being offered as a standalone class for the first time this winter.

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Adapting to industry shifts and student feedback, the computer science department has implemented various changes to its introductory courses, CS106 and CS107.

This spring, a pilot version of CS106A, tentatively called CS106J, will be taught in Javascript instead of Java. Meanwhile, CS106S: “Programming Abstractions and Social Good” is being offered as a standalone class for the first time this winter, encouraging students to consider the social impact their work can have. In addition, recent changes to CS107 have sought to make the course more manageable for students.

CS department updates introductory courses
Student coding in Javascript (VEDI CHAUDHRI/The Stanford Daily).

Introducing CS106J

Eric Roberts, emeritus professor of computer science and pioneer of the CS106 series, has been working on the transition to Javascript for the past five years. Roberts has written a new textbook, created assignments of the appropriate scope and trained new teaching assistants (TAs).

The computer science department has cycled through several languages over the past decades. When Roberts came to Stanford in 1990, CS106A was still taught in Pascal, a programming language he described as not “clean.” The department adopted the C language in 1992.

When Java came out in 1995, the computer science faculty was excited to transition to the new language. Roberts wrote the textbooks, worked with other faculty members to restructure the course and assignments and introduced Java at Stanford in 2002.

“Java had stabilized,” Roberts said. “It was clear that many universities were going in that direction. It’s 2017 now, and Java is showing its age.”

According to Roberts, Java was intended early on as “the language of the Internet”. But now, more than a decade after the transition to Java, Javascript has taken its place as a web language.

Roberts will come out of retirement to teach the new class this spring with Jerry Cain M.S. ’98, lecturer in the CS department. The class will be capped at 100 students and will employ TAs instead of the traditional section leaders.

Both undergraduates and grad students can still serve as TAs. However, the department will select for those more proficient in Javascript.

Continuing CS106S

After receiving positive feedback for last year’s optional CS106S section, the CS department has decided to offer it as a one-unit class this quarter.

CS106S: “Computer Science + Social Good” allows CS students to see practical applications of their coding and to “start thinking about using their skills for social good early on in their computer science careers,” according to course instructor Priya Ganesan ’17.

“Students in CS106B/X are at an ideal level for this class because they’ve gained enough skills to build complex technical projects, but also don’t necessarily have preconceived notions about fields or careers within the tech industry,” Ganesan said.

The class is currently offered as a one-unit course capped at 30 students per quarter, but additional students are allowed to audit the class. Ganesan also said that the course will be offered again during the next school year.

Revising CS107

According to student reviews on Carta, a course planning site that displays course reviews, CS107 is one of the more difficult courses offered at Stanford. “It will maybe destroy your life, but you’ll learn a lot in the destruction,” reads one review.

Responding to students’ concerns, course instructor Cynthia Lee decided to revise the syllabus to make the material less daunting to students.

“I have heard on occasion students who believe that 107 or 110 or any of the courses in our department were intended to be set up as some sort of weeder, and it’s so important to me that we let students know that that was never anyone’s intention,” Lee said.

Some of the changes implemented this fall include giving two midterms, instead of one midterm, including more aid on assignments and allowing students to use a website for debugging.

Lee, who taught CS107 in the fall and winter, will continue to teach the course in the spring with the updated syllabus.

 

Contact Stephanie Brito at sbrito ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Classy Classes: ‘POLISCI 72: Policy, Politics and the Presidency’ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/01/24/classy-classes-polisci-72-policy-politics-and-the-presidency/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/01/24/classy-classes-polisci-72-policy-politics-and-the-presidency/#respond Tue, 24 Jan 2017 10:57:05 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1121867 POLISCI 72: Policy, Politics, and the Presidency allows students to closely examine the campaign process following one of the most colorful election cycles in recent history.

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Instead of textbooks or newspapers, students can learn about the inner workings of presidential campaigns straight from the horse’s mouth.

POLISCI 72: “Policy, Politics, and the Presidency” allows students to closely examine the campaign process following one of, arguably, the most colorful election cycles in recent history. Offered this winter quarter, the class covers different aspects of a presidential campaign by inviting guest speakers who have held senior roles in multiple Democrat and Republican races, including the most recent one.

“It’s rare that students will have the opportunity to interact with some of the figures in politics that we’re going to have during the quarter,” course instructor Lanhee Chen said.

And it’s not just the guests who have experience on the campaign trail. The course is taught by lecturers and professors with extensive campaign experience.

A David and Diane Steffy Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Chen served as the policy advisor for the Romney-Ryan campaign. Lecturer Benjamin Ginsberg served as counsel on the Bush-Cheney campaigns and the Romney-Ryan campaign.

Professor, by courtesy, of political science Nathaniel Persily served as the senior research director for a bipartisan commission created by former president Barack Obama to address long lines and other problems from the 2012 election. Likewise, professor of political science Bruce Cain has devoted his career to policy research and has won multiple awards for his work.

Chen and Ginsberg took their experiences on the campaign trail and created a course about the presidential campaign process for the first time in winter of 2015. The course served as a reflection of their experiences in the 2012 election and as an early, pre-primary analysis of the 2016 election.

“The idea for the course came from Ben and me — having collaborated closely together on the Romney campaign,” Chen said. “We thought it would be great to introduce a course at Stanford that would really give students a behind-the-scenes look at what it was like to serve at the senior levels of a presidential campaign.”

Seeing the complexities of the 2016 election, the team that taught the class in 2015 thought that there would be widespread student interest in learning about the campaign process and meeting with experts from both campaigns and the media.

“I could sit in any POLISCI class and analyze Hillary Clinton’s campaign, but no matter what the class and [what] I come up with, it’s an outsider’s perspective,” said Madison Perez ’20, a prospective political science and psychology major. “Hearing from the person who ran the campaign provides insight into the process that no one else could give me.”

During the first class session, students heard from Robby Mook, the campaign manager for Hillary Clinton’s campaign. This Wednesday, students will hear from Jason Miller, communications director for the Donald Trump campaign and Kristina Schake, deputy communications director for the Clinton campaign.

Throughout the course, students will continue to hear from campaign executives along with media experts from print and broadcast news stations.

“When I saw that there would be several head campaign leaders attending Stanford for this class, I had to sign up,” Perez said. “I followed the entire 2016 election closely, but getting to hear what was going on through the campaign director’s head while everything was happening is something most people will never get to do.”

 

Contact Stephanie Brito at sbrito@stanford.edu.

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Study finds students unable to identify fake news https://stanforddaily.com/2016/12/16/study-finds-students-unable-to-identify-fake-news/ https://stanforddaily.com/2016/12/16/study-finds-students-unable-to-identify-fake-news/#respond Fri, 16 Dec 2016 20:00:08 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1120751 A study, which followed more than 7,800 students in middle school, high school and college from 12 states, finds that students were easily deceived by sponsored content and fake accounts.

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Stanford’s Graduate School of Education published a study late November on students’ inability to determine the credibility of news stories. The study, which followed more than 7,800 students from 12 states in middle school, high school and college, found that students were easily deceived by sponsored content and fake accounts.

The results of the study showed that most students cannot accurately determine the reliability of news sources, whether in identifying bias or sponsored content.

When Stanford students took part in the study, researchers found that most students could not distinguish between mainstream and fringe news sources. They could not tell social media posts from the American Academy of Pediatrics apart from those from the American College of Pediatricians, which is classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

“Overall, young people’s ability to reason about the information on the Internet can be summed up in one word: bleak,” read the study’s executive summary.

During the study, college students also evaluated the reliability of a tweet from MoveOn.org about the National Rifle Assocation. Less than a third of students acknowledged that MoveOn.org’s political agenda might impact the objectivity of the tweet.

High school students were shown a picture of deformed daisies on Imgur with the title “Fukushima Nuclear Flowers” and the caption, “Not much more to say, this is what happens when flowers get nuclear birth defects.” Nearly 40 percent of students said the post was convincing because it was photographic evidence.

Middle school students were asked to distinguish between advertisements and articles on Slate magazine’s homepage, and 80 percent of them identified a native advertisement with the words “sponsored content” on it as a real news story.

In addition, both high school and college students were asked about the reliability of MinimumWage.com, the website of a D.C. lobbying organization. Students were allowed to use Google to research its reliability, yet most students never left the site. Only 9 percent of high school students realized the site was a lobbying group, while only 7 percent of college students realized the same.

“Many assume that because young people are fluent in social media, they are equally savvy about what they find there. Our work shows the opposite,” the study’s executive summary writes.

The results of the study come at a time when social media sites such Facebook and Twitter are accused of distributing fake news.

 

Contact Stephanie Brito at sbrito ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Carta helps students plan Stanford pathways https://stanforddaily.com/2016/11/27/carta-helps-students-plan-stanford-pathways/ https://stanforddaily.com/2016/11/27/carta-helps-students-plan-stanford-pathways/#respond Mon, 28 Nov 2016 07:24:38 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1120416 Created by a team of three professors, a graduate student and six undergraduates, the Carta website is a running research project that combines sociology, computer science and education.

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Carta does more than just help confused freshmen plan out their class schedules. Created by a team of three professors, a graduate student and six undergraduates, the website is a running research project that combines sociology, computer science and education.

Launched in the summer of 2016, Carta is a course-planning site where users can search classes and create their schedules for each quarter. It takes data from the users and the registrar’s office on how Stanford students plan their undergraduate journey.

On course pages, users can see grade distributions, hours students spend per week on course work, number of drops, when and why students took the course and faculty evaluations.

“We know a lot about what happens before college, and we know a lot about what happens after college, but there’s not a lot of knowledge in between,” said Tum Chaturapruek, a Ph.D. student working on the project. “The goal of Carta is to [create a] link between the two.”

The Stanford registrar collects data on when students take classes, and in what order, but Carta can go further and collect data on what type of classes students are planning. By tracking the pinning feature, the website can identify which classes students are considering for each quarter.

On top of sequential data, the site also collects information on the factors behind commitment to taking a class, such as the grade curve, expected workload or professor reviews. The ultimate purpose of the research project is to analyze how previously taken classes and grades affect future course decisions.

The project is still in its preliminary stage so there is not enough data on course pathways to draw conclusions on how previously taken classes affect future decisions. The team would like to collect demographic information from its users, such as gender and socioeconomic status, and is working on gaining access to that information.

“In the future, we hope to be able to observe that there are relationships between those types of identities or status, like gender and socioeconomic status,” said Mitchell Stevens, an associate professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Education and one of the faculty researchers on the team. “We know from research that those characteristics can be influential in how students move through college.”

The site has been helpful for learning about the history of classes and the expected workload, according to a few members of the freshman class.

“I am a huge fan of the metrics that can supplement the course descriptions, such as the grade distribution and student feedback from multiple quarters,” Foster Docherty ’20 said.

One criticism of the platform is the inability to personalize the calendar on the site or see what discussion or lab sections are available.

“I don’t like that you can’t add discussions [or] sections to the schedule,” Kelsie Wysong ’20 said. “It makes it a lot harder to see how your week would actually look.”

The research team hopes to run the study over an extended period to analyze trends that relate college to career and to continue improving the user experience, according to Chaturapruek.

“There are still many directions we are thinking of going,” Chaturapruek said. “One prominent one is to collect with longitudinal data, like career. The goal is not just to understand what happens inside college, but go beyond what happens after Stanford and link it to pathways in Stanford.”

 

Contact Stephanie Brito at sbrito ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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STATS 60 tests an artificially intelligent robot TA https://stanforddaily.com/2016/11/17/stats-60-tests-an-artificially-intelligent-robot-ta/ https://stanforddaily.com/2016/11/17/stats-60-tests-an-artificially-intelligent-robot-ta/#respond Fri, 18 Nov 2016 07:23:31 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1120186 Half of the students in Stats 60 were assigned a robot TA as part of a three-week study.

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As part of a three-week pilot study this quarter, half of the students in STATS 60: “Introduction to Statistical Methods” were assigned a RoboTA, an artificially intelligent robot teaching assistant (TA), to answer their questions by email. The other half of the class emailed their questions to a human TA.

(SHERIDAN REA/The Stanford Daily)
(SHERIDAN REA/The Stanford Daily)

Students emailed different addresses based on the TA they were assigned. The emails were then funneled through a program, stripped of any identifying information and relayed to Lucas Janson, the TA for the class. Janson replied to all the emails without knowing whether they were intended for the human TA or the artificial intelligence (AI) TA. This study is double-blind, so neither the students nor the experimenters have information about the other, which helps prevent bias.

Since the research team has just finished collecting data, the effectiveness of the AI TA has not been determined. However, early findings show that students did not implement a Turing test (when humans try to determine if AI is real or not). There were also technical issues with the funneling program for the emails.

Because the double-blind study concluded and the students were debriefed, the same study cannot be conducted at Stanford again. The next step in this AI TA research will need to be done at a different university, which will remain anonymous to maintain the double-blind study.

The idea for the RoboTA came to STATS 60 professor Mike Baiocchi in 2012 after a student sent him an email after a quiz with the words “I feel stupid asking this.” Baiocchi started brainstorming ideas on how to make students feel more comfortable asking him and the TAs questions about the material.

“We’re trying to understand the range of questions that they’d be willing to ask and if that changes, potentially lowering imposed barriers,” Baiocchi said.

After taking some time off from teaching to do research, Baiocchi read a study in 2016 about the interaction between veterans and Siri and how veterans were more open to talk about PTSD with non-human conversational agents. Baiocchi then met with Andreas Paepcke, who works with user interfaces in the computer science department and helped out in the veterans study because Baiocchi wanted to see if he could create a TA featuring AI.

“[Paepcke] was wondering if we poured [AI] over to an educational setting if students would be more comfortable talking about or exposing weakness in their knowledge to an artificial intelligence [robot] relative to a person,” Baiocchi said.

Before creating a full-blown program, the research team had to study how students would interact with an AI TA to create a program that would respond to those interactions. The pilot study concluded with a debriefing on Nov. 17.

 

Contact Stephanie Brito at sbrito ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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New online poverty course seeks to educate public on inequality https://stanforddaily.com/2016/10/19/new-online-poverty-course-seeks-to-educate-public-on-inequality/ https://stanforddaily.com/2016/10/19/new-online-poverty-course-seeks-to-educate-public-on-inequality/#respond Wed, 19 Oct 2016 08:52:07 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1118182 The Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality is offering a free online course on poverty and inequality in the United States.

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The Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality (CPI) is offering a free online course on poverty and inequality in the United States. The course, called America’s Poverty Course, covers the causes of poverty and inequality along with effective strategies to fight poverty.

“The motivation of this course is to allow anyone — rich and poor alike, college students or not college students alike — to have access to the most important facts about poverty and inequality,” said David Grusky, professor of sociology and director of the CPI.

The course, which is open to the public, launched Oct. 10 and is still open for enrollment. It features short five-minute lectures from top scholars, such as Stanford economics professor Raj Chetty, Stanford education professor Sean Reardon and Lindsay Owens, Georgetown sociology professor and economic policy advisor for Senator Elizabeth Warren. The different instructors discuss their own findings and their discoveries without jargon.

“What makes this course special is that we brought together the top scholars in poverty and inequality from across the country —the ones who have made defining contributions,” Grusky said.

The course covers 40 research results, including how some people in America live with under $2 a day and how gender and racial inequality may contribute to poverty. After completing the course with a grade of 70 percent or above, students can earn a Statement of Accomplishment.

Grusky emphasized that it is an important course because poverty education is often inaccessible and can be a useful tool for professionals, such as those working in non-profits targeting poverty and who may not be up-to-date on current studies.

“We’ve been really happy with the students that we’re getting,” said Stephanie Garlow, CPI communications manager. “They really seem to have a demonstrated interest in the topics.”

Currently, 2,000 students have registered for the course. The course is available online at thepovertycourse.org and will run through Dec. 15.

 

Contact Stephanie Brito at sbrito ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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