Hamid Nadir
University of North Carolina at Greensboro, NC·Education Research
Young children often find biology hard to engage with when it is taught as one-way instruction without a meaningful context. Computational thinking (CT), the problem-solving skills behind programming, is also hard to bring into elementary classrooms because many schools lack affordable tools.
- Fields
Education Research
Computer Science
Engineering
- Topics
embodied robotics
educational robotics
computational thinking
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2028
What they work on
- Identify challenges and opportunities in current elementary curricula and co-design a combined Biology and Computer Science (Bio+CS) curriculum with local teachers and students.
- Develop a low-cost embodied robot that moves across a student's body, displays bio-signals on the body, gives visual and tangible feedback, and supports programming, refined through iterative human-centered testing.
- Examine how elementary students from diverse backgrounds interact with the Bio+CS curriculum using design-based implementation research, to identify effective strategies for teaching complex science concepts.
More about the research
This project asks whether low-cost robots that children program and use on their own bodies can teach both subjects together.
Why it matters
Elementary teachers and schools with limited resources could gain an affordable way to teach biology and computational thinking together. Hands-on robots and a culturally responsive curriculum may help students from diverse backgrounds engage with STEM early, which could broaden participation in science and computing.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Kevin Leach
Vanderbilt University, TN·Education Research
Develop a 9-week modular middle school curriculum covering computing fundamentals, block-based programming, network communication, introductory cybersecurity concepts, and cooperative cybersecurity challenges.
Maya Israel
University of Florida, FL·Education Research
Identify the needs, barriers and strategies that general and special education teachers face when teaching K-8 computer science to all students, through a research-practice partnership in Broward County, Chicago and a national teacher community.
Haijun Xia
University of California-San Diego, CA·Computer Science
Analyze diagrams that programmers produce themselves to identify what qualities make graphics effective and directly manipulable for understanding and changing code.
The school
University of North Carolina at Greensboro: 3 labs on PI Pages, $77M a year on research, 145 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
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