Research with Dr. Luc Paquette at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
About My Project
I assisted Dr. Luc Paquette with his research on persistence in education. We collected data from a
Minecraft server where student participants were introduced to computing concepts. The collected data focused on
each student's level of engagement as they created programs to guide the
Barrel Bot through a series
of obstacle courses. The goal of this analysis was to identify points of challenge to better understand how students
persist or fail to persist when facing educational hurdles.
5-Week Progress Report
At the midpoint of the program, I reflected on my work preparing a SQL-to-Python data pipeline, learning to query the WHIMC database,
and collaborating with the development team to support data collection and debugging.
In my final report, I detail the full scope of my DREU project, including contributions to data preparation, analysis, and tool development
for the WHIMC BarrelBot learning environment. I reflect on what I learned about educational research and the challenges of analyzing
student behavior in virtual spaces.