Melissa Chen

Ph.D. Student | Northwestern University

Research | Melissa Chen

My research focus is on understanding why students think they are doing poorly in common moments in the programming process, like stopping to think or looking something up on the internet. These are all things we do when we code, and certainly we expect novices to do it, so why do they think they are doing badly and how can we design to support them?

Some past work includes:

My current work builds on this to explore:

In my work, I leverage theories and methods from computing education, human-computer interaction, design research, and the learning sciences. I also leverage some technical skills from my time in software engineering and machine learning research. I am primarily a qualitative researcher, but also have familiarity with quantitative methods from previous experiences.

Papers

Understanding the Reasoning Behind Students’ Self-Assessments of Ability in Introductory Computer Science Courses

Melissa Chen, Yinmiao Li, Eleanor O'Rourke

ICER 2024 | DOI | PDF

Best Paper Award (top 1 paper / 36)

Exploring the Interplay of Metacognition, Affect, and Behaviors in an Introductory Computer Science Course for Non-Majors

Yinmiao Li, Melissa Chen, Eleanor O'Rourke

ICER 2024 | DOI | PDF

Posters

Designing a Real-Time Intervention to Address Negative Self-Assessments While Programming

Melissa Chen, Eleanor O'Rourke

ICER 2023 | DOI | PDF | Poster PDF