Seth Poulsen
Ph.D. student at University of Illinois Computer Science. I'm interested in Computing Education, Programming Language design and implementation, Math Education, and any interesting intersections of the above.
My current research focuses on improving the teaching and learning of mathematical proofs, specifically using the Proof Blocks tool which I created. I have also been involved in various educational data mining projects.
Previously, I was a Software Engineer at Amazon.com, working on Kindle Web Rendering and the Kindle Lite Android app.
Contact
email: sethp3@illinois.edu
Publications
Evaluating Proof Blocks as Exam Questions by Seth Poulsen, Mahesh Viswanathan, Geoffrey L. Herman, and Matthew West. International Computing Education Research conference 2021 What's in a Linked List? A Phenomenographic Study of Data Structure Diagrams by Morgan Fong, Seth Poulsen, and Geoffrey L. Herman. American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference 2021 Insights from Student Solutions to MongoDB Homework Problems by Ridha Alkhabaz, Seth Poulsen, Mei Chen, and Abdussalam Alawini. Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education 2021 A Quantitative Analysis of Student Solutions to Graph Database Problems by Mei Chen, Seth Poulsen, Ridha Alkhabaz, and Abdussalam Alawini. Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education 2021 Experiences and Lessons Learned Creating and Validating Concept Inventories for Cybersecurity by Alan T. Sherman, Geoffrey L. Herman,Linda Oliva, Peter A. H. Peterson, Enis Golaszewski, Seth Poulsen, Travis Scheponik, and Akshita Gorti National Cyber Summit (NCS) Research Track 2020 The Relationship Between Course Scheduling and Student Performance by Seth Poulsen, Carolyn J. Anderson, and Matthew West. Educational Data Mining in Computer Science Education 2020 Insights from Student Solutions to SQL Homework Problems by Seth Poulsen, Liia Butler, Abdussalam Alawini, and Geoffrey L. Herman. Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education 2020 The Effect of Additional Math in High School on College Success by Seth Poulsen. The Mathemematics Educator 2019 Difference Sets Disjoint from a Subgroup by Courtney Hoagland, Stephen Humphries, Nathan Nicholson, and Seth Poulsen. Graphs and Combinatorics 2019 Memory safety in C by abstract interpretation by Joseph Jones, James Wasson, Seth Poulsen, Sean Brown, Peter Aldous, and Eric Mercer. Java PathFinder Workshop 2018Preprints
Proof Blocks: Autogradeable Scaffolding Activities for Learning to Write Proofs by Seth Poulsen, Mahesh Viswanathan, Geoffrey L. Herman, and Matthew West. Understanding Why: Statistical Techniques to Infer Causality are Underused in Computing Education Research by Seth Poulsen, Binglin Chen, Craig Zilles, and Matthew West.- Preprint: (pdf),
Open Source
- My Contributions to PrairieLearn, a problem driven online learning system.
- (WIP) data-structures-playground, an interactive tool for helping students to learn to manipulate data structures
- The Pyret Language Extension for Visual Studio Code
- My Contributions to the Pyret Language, a functional programming language for education
- My Contributions to Pycparser, an open source parser for the full C99 spec
Teaching
- CS 173 (Discrete Mathematics) at UIUC with Madhusudan Parthasarathy, Spring 2021
- CS 173 (Discrete Mathematics) at UIUC with Mahesh Viswanathan, Fall 2020
- Math 112 (Calculus I) at BYU with Stephen Humphries, Fall 2017
