alexandra milliken , phd
User Experience Researcher at Horizon3.ai
user experience researcher
Horizon3.ai
https://www.linkedin.com/company/horizon3ai
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User Experience Researcher
NC State University Games2Learn Lab
Working under Dr. Tiffany Barnes in a research lab focusing on broadening participation of computer science. Some of my research projects can be found in the projects portion of my profile, though I will supply a short summary of each here.

GradeSnap is a webtool to help non-computing teachers more effectively teach and evaluate their student progress on block-based programming projects. I ideated, designed, and led development teams creating this tool to make it less tedious for teachers to to grade their students work.

Creative Planner is a webtool to help novice programmers plan programming projects before diving in to start programming. I've worked with clients to understand what the user should experience when using this tool to be meet the needs of the users.

Beauty and Joy of Computing: I work first hand with many teachers and second hand with hundreds of teachers across America, training teachers how to teach computer science to their High and Middle School classrooms during the summers. Throughout the year, I assist with planning summer professional developments, meet with those created the curriculum, and schedule supportive meetings with teachers for all their inquiries.
Games2Learn Lab :: Center for Educational Informatics
Graduate Research Assistant
Xavier University of Cincinnati
Far from a teacher, I try and support all of the students I tutor with confidence to help make them more independent in the subject they are learning. Although Xavier has some classes, sometimes students do not learn the same way as the professor teaches, which is fine since it is challenging to teach to every learning style at once! As a tutoring community, we consider the way each individual tutee learns by having the students take a VARK learning style test prior to the first meeting. We can then use this information to suggest study and learning habits for each student. 

For myself, I enjoy seeing the lightbulb click in their heads when a concept finally makes sense after so much (or only a little) frustration.
Learning Assistance Center: Xavier University
CS and Math Tutor
North Carolina State University
During a summer research experience I worked with a serious educational game, BOTS (bots.game2learn.com - developed by Drew Hicks aghicks@ncsu.edu), for the computer that introduced the basics of programming to the players. The game entails of levels for the users to program a red robot to move onto a switch. They move the robot by coding with code blocks. 

Although the game is aimed to be able to introduce middle schoolers to computer science, the game encourages all ages. 

Throughout the summer I focused on figuring out how to get the BOTS'​ players to recognize patterns so they can therefore use loops in their code. I decided a problem could form from the fact that players look at a level and see the first thing they need to make their robot do. However, to make code efficient, or have the least amount of command blocks in the game, the player must detect the patterns to therefore use the patterns. 

To fix this slight problem, I developed planning exercises. Generally, a player plans out their movements of their solution to solve a level prior to actually coding the level. 

This experience was everything I could've wanted, convincing me research is my next step.
Raleigh, North Carolina
IIM-REU Student
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)
Focusing on the User Experience and Interactions with Computer Science Education masterials
Computer Science
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North Carolina State University
https://www.linkedin.com/school/north-carolina-state-university/
Bachelor of Science (BS)
Computer Science
Xavier University
Association for Computing Machinery
-
Many  K-12  CS  education  instructors  are  new  to teaching  computing  and  use  block-based  programming  (BBP),allowing  them  and  their  students  to  learn  computing  concepts with  less  frustration.  Based  on  prior  work  with  instructors,  we found that they need assistance with grading student projects as they are new to coding and developing corresponding assessments.Existing  methods  are  either  not  intuitive  and  too  restrictive  for custom assignments, or tediously unnecessary. Additionally, providing a grading support tool will help increase adoption of ourAdvanced  Placement  Computer  Science  Principles  curriculum.Therefore,  we  began  developing  a  tool  to  assist  teachers  with grading  BBP  projects.  This  paper  reports  on  a  modified  UserExperience  Research  method,  which  we  used  to  determine  the critical and necessary features needed for the tool to allow teachers  to  successfully  and  efficiently  assess  BBP  student  artifacts.
Poster: Designing GradeSnap for Block-Based Code
VLHCC, IEEE
The Advanced Placement Computer Science Principles (AP CSP)course has been fully active for 2 years, garnering a large group of diverse students [2], and flaming the need for highly trained CSP teachers, especially in effective practices for diversity and equity. We have conducted summer professional development (PD) work-shops from 2012-2018 which have prepared 748 teachers to teachAP CSP using the Beauty and Joy of Computing (BJC) curriculum.To improve equity and readiness for teaching, we have refined ourPD by: shortening the PD from 6 weeks to 1 week; developing new, highly scaffolded pre-PD work; and modifying the in-person schedule to incorporate more pedagogy and teaching experiences, while continuing to provide in-depth, hands-on support for teachers to learn the basics of programming. The most recent revisions to our PD schedule resulted in improved post-PD survey results, with teachers from the 2018 cohort planning to adopt more of theBJC curriculum than in past years. From 2017 to 2018, planned adoption rates increased by 13%, resulting in 73% of the 2018 PD participants planning to adopt more than 60% of the BJC curriculum and 58% planning to adopt 80-100% of the BJC curriculum in their classrooms in 2018-2019. In this paper, we discuss the most recentBJC PD implementation and provide evidence of increased teacher self-efficacy in areas including fostering interest in computing for under represented populations.
Effective Computer Science Teacher Professional Development: Beauty and Joy of Computing 2018
ACM
The Beauty and Joy of Computing (BJC) is a CS Principles (CSP) course developed at UC Berkeley, intended for high school juniors through university non-majors. It was twice chosen as a CSP pilot, and both the College Board and code. org have endorsed it. Since 2011, we have offered professional development to over 400 high school teachers. BJC covers the big ideas and computational thinking practices required in the AP CSP curriculum framework, using an easy-to-learn blocks-based programming language called Snap!(based on Scratch). During this workshop, we will provide an overview of the BJC curriculum, share our experiences as instructors of the course at the university and high school levels, and share details of potential summer professional development opportunities. Attendees should be prepared to program a BJC project in the Snap! environment. Please bring laptops with the Chrome
AP CS Principles and The Beauty and Joy of Computing Curriculum
ACM
https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3162375
"The National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) is the country’s oldest fellowship program that directly supports graduate students in various STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) fields." 

More information on the nsf-grfp can be found at the following link:
https://www.nsfgrfp.org/general_resources/about
NSF
Honorable Mention - NSF GRFP
This scholarship is award to one person in Computer Science. 

The service award is given to an individual who does a lot of local service hours, such as outreach to the surrounding community of my college.
Xavier University
Computer Science Service Award
This scholarship is awarded to three female students in the sciences, 

"Xavier leads more women to graduate school and science careers by encouraging women to participate in Xavier’s culture of undergraduate research and by continuing its program for first-year female science majors to learn about research from upperclass women, as well as a program that brings alumni to discuss non-medical science career paths."

Source: http://www.xavier.edu/news/Xavier-University-Awards-Second-Round-of-Clare-Boothe-Luce-Scholarships.cfm?grp_id=319#.UwAhivldWzt on the date 2/15/2014
Dr. Janice B. Walker
Clare Boothe Luce Scholarship
This was an award or scholarship given to me because of how well I did in high school.
Xavier University
Deans Award
Algorithms
CSC 505
Artificial Intelligence
CSC 520
Game Based Learning
CSC 591
HCI
CSC 554
Logic
CSC 503
OperatingSystems
CSC 501
Social Computing
CSC 791
User Experience
CSC 591
Computer Science I
CSCI 170
Computer Science II
CSCI 180
Data Structures & Algorithms
CSCI 220
Databases
CSCI 335
Intro to Stats and Probability
MATH 255
Languages & Automata
CSCI 250
Machine Organization & Assembly Language
CSCI 210
Making
MAKE 101
Networking
CSCI 340
Operating Systems
CSCI 320
Programming Languages
CSCI 300
Software Engineering
CSCI 260
Many novice programmers may skip planning when developing a new programming project. Some skip this crucial part of project development because they do not know how or what to plan. In order to help novice programmers I am working on a team to investigate how to improve students code through planning. Currently this project in used at NC State University in the CSC110 course; a non-major computing course.
Creative Planner
To overcome the challenge of grading block-based languages faced by many (cs and non-cs) teachers integrating computing or teaching computer science in their classroom, we developed an idea to grade block-based languages and tested the ux sprint-prototypes, which were created from participatory design. Currently, we are collaborating with four computer science seniors at NC State who took the prototype plans and are developing GradeSnap!. GradeSnap! is a web-based tool that can be used to assist in grading students' computer science projects without a technical background.

Currently, GradeSnap! is in refinement and should be in beta-testing late Fall 2020!
GradeSnap!
ChartNotes provides an easy way to share medical chart information, such as your medical history, with the healthcare providers. The user would use a QR Code to share their information. ChartNotes also includes additional features, such as storing insurance cards and connecting with family, to facilitate the interaction between the patient and the healthcare providers.

We worked with Allscripts, a company that focuses on "building open, connected communities of health" (about Allscripts). Allscripts is making "for healthier patients, populations and communities" by enriching the healthcare society with more accessible health data information, all while keeping the patients and the providers in mind as the users when designing their beautiful software. ChartNotes did not stem from any of Allscripts projects - instead the Allscripts team in North Raleigh kindly worked with us as we designed our own project, attempting to resolve a problem in healthcare. We got to work with an awesome team of UX Designers and Researchers from Allscripts.
ChartNotes
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wp_NxzFRx0nHY2IcSjyDLTZtzZ9TU2zc/view?usp=sharing
Education
STARS (Students & Technology in Academia, Research, & Service)
Computer Science environment encouraging outreach and community to develop at NC State. Learn more at stars.ncsu.edu.
Co-President of STARS at NC State
Education
Super Saturday: Breakthrough Cincinnati
I taught kids, that chose the Computer Science section, how to program using Scratch. I showed them a few games, such as hangman and pong, to encourage the students to work towards something to show others. My role was to show the kids different objectives to try and then assist them in answering any questions as we let their creative minds run.

This event occurred from Oct 2013 - Mar 2015
SS: Workshop Leader
Education
Girls Advancing Technology
Xavier University hosted a Girls in Technology workshop, inviting middle school girls to come to Xavier and become more interested in subjects dealing with technology. We wanted to show the young girls that they will be supported in whatever route they choose to engage themselves in, including a male dominated subject such as Computer Science. Some of the activities taught the young girls how to think out of the box. The final activity, bringing all of the middle schoolers into the same room, required them to use a drag block coding interface, creating android apps. The creativity in designing something and then using it on a phone sparked the students interests.

This event occurred in 2013 and 2015.
GAT: Workshop Leader
Education
AWL: Breakthrough Cincinnati
Academy of World Languages (AWL) has after schools opportunities for students to be involved in. A number of students chose The Scratch and Robotics Club" to spend their extra hour after school. Within this club are two different programs the students can learn and create with. 

Scratch is a web-based program allowing users to program a sprite within a program. The programming interface includes draggable blocks, different sprites and different backgrounds. The user can make the sprite do a number of things such as make a frogger game to create a tree through recursion. 

The other option is to build a robot out of legos and then program the robot to move around. This experience is similar to Artificial Intelligence (AI)The students have be able to make the robot detect when it is dark (or the color has changed) by using light sensors provided by Xavier University. The students enjoy being able to create their own robot and later program it to do what they want.
Assistant Learning Service Coordinator
Liked by Alexandra Milliken, PhD
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What were the key factors that drove one of our customers in the Food and Beverage industry to choose NodeZero?  - Strong services expertise  -…
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Be careful using demographics + templates or you might end up with a REALLY weird product...#userresearch #research #ux #uxr #uxresearcher…
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Pen tests have their issues. Not only are they point-in-time but they’re also manual. Meanwhile, vulnerability scanners are noisy and they require a…
ACM Members
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User Experience Professionals Network
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UX / HCI Researchers
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EPIC People - Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Community
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The Official Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Group
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NSF Graduate Research Fellowship
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Greater Cincinnati AWIS - Association for Women in Science
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User Experience
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UXPA - User Experience Professionals Association International
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