Mel Chua

Georgia Institute of Technology | GT · Department of Biomedical Engineering

Point of view: I'm a contagiously enthusiastic hacker, scholar, and teacher with an industry background in Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) communities. As a teenager at the Illinois Math and Science Academy, I loved storytelling and cinematography and wanted to major in the arts. That wasn't an option for my family of immigrants, so I took up...

Over the last several years, the engineering education research community has aimed to disseminate and implement its work in engineering classrooms. Several investigations have explored reasons for and barriers to the adoption of evidence-based practices. Many of these investigations have been housed within STEM Education communities. External aven...

In this exploratory study we characterize the work of coaching using a pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) framework to make visible coaches' integrated knowledge of the how, what, and why of coaching during design reviews. We observed four patterns of coaching across three design review contexts: choreography, undergraduate industrial design, and...

The field of engineering education has initiated a focus on ensuring engineering education research is disseminated and implemented within the classroom. Numerous researchers have investigated the reasons for the adoption of evidence-based practices, or, more often, the lack thereof. The Professional and Organizational Development (POD) network com...

Spirituality and engineering education are often kept in separate compartments of our lives. They may slip out occasionally for conversations during ethics classes or service learning projects, but speaking – and living – our values of faith as engineers and engineering education researchers is still uneasy territory for many. This paper is a multi...

This paper tracks and discusses the changes in written reflections of attendees at a week-long faculty development workshop on innovation in engineering education. Reflections largely dealt with the various motivations of workshop attendees and their perceptions of the workshop experience. While some concerns (e.g. time scarcity) remained constant...

Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) has become an important segment of the computing industry and a source of innovation in software development. The open culture of FOSS projects where all project artifacts are accessible and communication is visible provides computing educators with an array of unique opportunities for student learning. However,...

Many professors are reluctant to transform their teaching practices from "sage on the stage" to "guide on the side” for understandable reasons. Facilitating student work in a potentially unfamiliar setting has a steep learning curve and requires professors to relinquish control of their classrooms without assurance their career evaluations will ben...

Involving students from a wide range of backgrounds in Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) project communities gets them a hands-on, portfolio-building experience in the creation of a real-world project while simultaneously building their institution's public profile. The Teaching Open Source (http://teachingopensource.org) community is an emergen...

Participating in free and open source (FOSS) software communities provides students with authentic learning while supplying instructors with a wide variety of educational opportunities including coding, testing, documentation, professionalism and more. However, instructors may be unfamiliar with how FOSS communities work and therefore may be reluct...

Software projects are frequently used to provide software engineering students with an understanding of the complexities of real-world software development. Free and Open Source Software projects provide a unique opportunity for student learning as projects are open and accessible and students are able to interact with an established professional c...

Student participation in Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) projects and communities offers excellent opportunities for learning and for developing student interest in computing. This workshop will be a virtual field trip for faculty wanting to know more about FOSS communities, practices, and tools so they can take advantage of this opportunity....

Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) and documentation projects provide excellent learning opportunities for students. In the context of active learning, FOSS is particularly interesting in providing transparent meritocracies that allow students to observe and contribute as part of their learning. This panel will present four different perspectives...

This panel will present several experiences in involving students in Open Source Software (OSS) projects from the perspectives of both the instructor and a member of the OSS community. OSS is growing rapidly and gaining market share in both industry (e.g., Linux and Mozilla) as well as academia (e.g, Moodle, Greenfoot, and Drupal). OSS projects hav...