CS Academy Provides Free Coding Curriculum, Aiding Transition to Online Learning

"Remote learning takes more energy than I expected," said Daryl Detrick, who teaches high schoolers how to code in New Jersey, and, like thousands of his peers, is working from home due to the novel coronavirus. But CMU CS Academy is easing his transition to the virtual classroom. CS Academy is a free, online, interactive computer science curriculum that includes teacher training and online technical support. Detrick enrolled in the program earlier this year. He wanted to introduce the programming language Python into his coding classes, but "was having trouble finding time to develop a curriculum from scratch and couldn't find an existing curriculum I was comfortable with," he said. He noted a further challenge is that many coding teachers don't have a background in computer science. Program Manager Erin Cawley said CS Academy has recently seen a spike in use. "Typically, we would see about 50 new teachers a week sign up for the course," she said. "In the past week we've seen nearly 300." That brings the total number of active daily teachers to about 750, serving more than 10,000 students. To help educators get up to speed, CS Academy has begun offering daily webinars. Morning sessions serve as an overview of the program and how to get started. "One of the biggest hurdles to transitioning from textbooks to remote learning is getting familiar with a new tool," Cawley said. Afternoon webinars provide an in-depth look at each course CS Academy offers. CS1 is a yearlong high school course used by educators that includes 120 hours of instruction and introduces Python programming through graphics and animation. CS0 is a light version intended for middle schoolers, as an extracurricular program or for home schoolers. Cawley said additional supports have also been added to the teacher portal to make remote life easier. These resources provide more granular data, help track student progress, and make it simpler to see the amount of time spent on work and to view recently completed tasks. "It's nice to be able to help out in a time of need," said Cawley, who's been fielding kind feedback from CS Academy teachers, including Detrick. "At first it took a little adjustment, as it was a different way of teaching," Detrick said, "but the students could do much of the learning on their own, with my role being to support and encourage them, while filling in gaps as needed. The students really enjoy the creativity that CS Academy allows them and it's great for students of all levels." Detrick's students were already familiar with working on the program at home, which has assisted in the transition to online-only classes. "Remote learning is hard!" said Mark Sidarous, who teaches STEM to students from pre-K to eighth grade in Chicago. He's used both CS0 and CS1 since last fall, and said that it can be difficult to get everything up and running in a virtual classroom without advance notice. "CS Academy has been a real boon in this area. It works on any computer because it's cloud-based. I wouldn't be able to do this if I was trying to coach seventh graders on how to install and set up GIT and FTP, for example. We've been trying to get Chromebooks to students, and I'm pleased to say it works great on them. It's not ideal, but it even works on mobile devices. I have a few students plonking away on a parent's Android phone." Sidarous is recording instructional videos of himself to supplement the program. "In my mind, the tools and supports that are built into CS Academy make it an ideal platform for remote learning, when supplemented with direct instruction and lots of virtual support. I've even had students do screen sharing to coach them through a particularly difficult coding exercise," he said. CS Academy cofounder and Associate Teaching Professor David Kosbie said despite these uncertain times, the program remains committed to its mission of helping to bridge gaps and ensuring that every high school student in the world has access to a world-class computer science education. "We are also fully committed to remaining entirely free — free content, free training, free support, everything completely free — so as to reach even the most disadvantaged students," he said. CMU undergraduate students provide ongoing support to the teachers using CS Academy materials. They continue to work remotely, assisting teachers, building other curricula and translating the entire program into Spanish, which will launch next year. Cawley said the team has the capacity to maintain more growth. "We just want people to know that we're here for them," she said. As for Detrick, he encourages others to follow his lead. "Any dedicated teacher who is willing to try something new can teach a quality CS class using CS Academy," he said.

COVID-19 Should Be Wake-Up Call for Robotics Research

Pandemic Response Requires "Dull, Dirty, Dangerous" Jobs Suited For Robots

Robots could perform some of the "dull, dirty and dangerous" jobs associated with combating the COVID-19 pandemic, but that would require many new capabilities not currently being funded or developed, an editorial in the journal Science Robotics argues. The editorial, published today and signed by leading academic researchers including Carnegie Mellon University's Howie Choset, said robots conceivably could perform such tasks as disinfecting surfaces, taking temperatures of people in public areas or at ports of entry, providing social support for quarantined patients, collecting nasal and throat samples for testing, and enabling people to virtually attend conferences and exhibitions. In each case, the use of robots could reduce human exposure to pathogens — which will become increasingly important as epidemics escalate. "The experiences with the (2015) Ebola outbreak identified a broad spectrum of use cases, but funding for multidisciplinary research, in partnership with agencies and industry, to meet these use cases remains expensive, rare and directed to other applications," the researchers noted in the editorial. "Without a sustainable approach to research, history will repeat itself, and robots will not be ready for the next incident," they added. In addition to Choset, a professor in CMU's Robotics Institute and one of the founding editors of Science Robotics, the authors of the editorial include Marcia McNutt, president of the National Academy of Science; Robin Murphy of Texas A&M University; Henrik Christensen of the University of California, San Diego; and former CMU faculty member Steven Collins, now at Stanford University. Choset stressed that the idea behind the editorial wasn't solely to prescribe how robots might be used in a pandemic. "Rather, we hope to inspire others in the community to conceive of solutions to what is a very complicated problem," he explained. Choset also emphasized that, like robots, artificial intelligence could help in responding to epidemics and pandemics. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon, for instance, are performing research to address humanitarian aid and disaster response. For that task, they envision a combination of AI and robotics technologies, such as drones. Human-robot interaction, automated monitoring of social media, edge computing and ad hoc computer networks are among the technologies they are developing.

Online Misinformation About COVID-19 Can Take Many Forms

CMU Researchers Offer Advice for Filtering Misleading Facts About the Pandemic

Can spraying chlorine on your body prevent you from contracting the novel coronavirus? Is COVID-19 only as severe as the common flu? A number of stories containing inaccurate or misleading information about COVID-19 have appeared on social media, making it difficult for people to discern the truth. "Inaccurate information is rampant on the internet and in every social media. It is being spread by bots and by people who don't know it is inaccurate," said Kathleen M. Carley, a professor in the School of Computer Science's Institute for Software Research and director of the Center for Informed Democracy and Social Cybersecurity (IDeaS). The multidisciplinary IDeaS studies how disinformation is spread through online channels, such as social media, and addresses how to counter its effects to preserve and build an informed citizenry. Carley said to deter the spread of false information online, it's important to keep two things in mind. First, for accurate information visit the websites of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO). Second, just because a story about a cure or a prevention technique is trending, or appears to be frequently liked, retweeted or mentioned, doesn't mean it is true. Carley's research team has found that the types of inaccurate or misleading stories about COVID-19 fall into at least three categories: inaccurate information about cures or preventative measures, inaccurate information about the nature of the virus, and inaccurate information about the weaponization and bioengineering of the virus. False stories about cures and prevention are among the most widespread, and have included a range of concepts from gargling with bleach to taking steroids. But some of those stories weren't meant to be taken seriously in the first place. "It is easy to confuse satire with disinformation," Carley said. "The same story, 'drink bleach to cure coronavirus,' may be viewed as funny and obvious satire by one person and as truth by another. Spreading such satire because you think it is funny can be as destructive as spreading inaccurate information that you think is true." Carley said that misinformation appears in every disaster or crisis situation. But it's also true that in many cases these stories are short-lived and have little impact. However, their spread can increase if they are rebroadcast by celebrities or news agencies. Carley encourages everyone to think critically about what media they consume and share, and how they engage with stories online. "Calling a piece of disinformation out may help stop its spread," she said.

Keenan Crane Receives NSF CAREER Award

Research Will Help Software Users Make Use of 3D Data

Keenan Crane, an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department and Robotics Institute, has been awarded a four-year, $519,000 Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award, the National Science Foundation's most prestigious award for young faculty members. The award will sponsor his development of methods that allow software users to take advantage of the rapidly growing volume of 3D geometric data. This fundamental work promises to enable a wide variety of applications, such as searching large databases to find 3D shapes, predicting whether a shape will stand up or fall down when created in a 3D printer, and more reliably detecting anomalies in CT or MRI scans. Technologies for acquiring digital 3D data, medical imaging and digital manufacturing are creating a glut of 3D data, Crane said. But this data is often underutilized in science, engineering and medicine because it is structured in ways that "break" algorithms. So Crane has proposed developing an interface between bad 3D data and good algorithms — a black box that will help both expert and nonexpert users to ignore the problems related to data structure and focus instead on applications goals. Crane notes that the project harkens back to radical mathematical ideas of the 19th century. "Basically, mathematicians realized that you could think about shape not from a human perspective, but from the perspective of a small bug crawling around a surface," he explained. This "intrinsic" point of view, which Crane will explore with his NSF support, hasn't really been taken all the way to its natural conclusion when it comes to computational/algorithmic problems, he added. Crane joined the CMU faculty in 2015. He earned a Ph.D. in computer science at Caltech and previously completed an NSF Mathematical Sciences Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Columbia University's Department of Computer Science.

EarthTime Focuses on the COVID-19 Threat

What Can Cities, Businesses and Civic Groups Do About Pandemics?

Political scientist and urban specialist Robert Muggah has worked with the Robotics Institute's CREATE Lab to use their EarthTime platform to examine the threat of pandemics such as COVID-19 and ponder how governments and other groups can respond.The presentation displays time-lapse images of the spread of pandemics and the interactions of governments and urban areas around the world.EarthTime is a map-based platform that displays time-lapse visualizations of data. The new production, "COVID-19: The Pandemic and the City," shows how pandemics of the past have spread and the growth and interaction of urban areas around the world. An interactive version, suitable for use with a desktop or laptop computer, enables the user to zoom in and out of each visualization.Muggah, co-founder of the Igarapé Institute and the SecDev Foundation, produced the pandemic presentation with Paul Dille, senior software developer for the CREATE Lab. An online lecture by Muggah, using the EarthTime story, is available on YouTube.EarthTime is a partnership between the CREATE Lab and the World Economic Forum (WEF), and has become a fixture at the WEF's annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland.

Seneca Valley Team Wins Second Annual High School Programming Contest

A team from Seneca Valley High School took top honors in the second annual Carnegie Mellon University High School Programming Contest, hosted by the School of Computer Science on Saturday, March 7. Twenty-six teams — almost twice as many as last year — competed for more than three hours during the contest. The competition is modeled after the International Collegiate Programming Contest and requires students to use logic, critical thinking and problem-solving skills as they attempt to solve eight programming problems. Seneca Valley solved six problems to take first place. A team from Winston Churchill High School in Potomac, Maryland — one of two Maryland schools participating this year — earned second place by solving five problems. The third-place team from Mt. Lebanon High School solved three. Teams from North Allegheny High School and the Pittsburgh Science and Technology Academy also solved three problems, but took more time.

Carnegie Mellon Extends Forecasting of Flu-Like Illness

Rise of COVID-19 Cases Prompts Request From CDC

The flu season peaked weeks ago and the Delphi Research Group at Carnegie Mellon University normally would plan to halt its national and regional forecasts of influenza-like illness by the end of May. But this is no ordinary disease season. At the request of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the CMU researchers will continue their forecasts into the summer as the nation braces for the spread of the flu-like COVID-19 illness, caused by a new strain of coronavirus officially known as SARS-2-CoV . "We likely will see another wave of influenza-like illness in the coming weeks or month," said Roni Rosenfeld, leader of the Delphi group and head of CMU's Machine Learning Department. Delphi is one of two Influenza Forecasting Centers of Excellence designated last year by the CDC. In contrast to the CDC's weekly flu surveillance reports, which are based on past visits to doctor's offices and clinics, flu forecasts attempt to estimate the current level of disease around the country and to predict how that will change in the weeks and months ahead. Rosenfeld said he and his team will use the same methods to forecast COVID-19 illness as they do for the flu: one that uses statistical machine learning to make predictions based on past patterns, and a second "wisdom of the crowd" method that bases its predictions on the aggregate judgments of human volunteers who submit weekly estimates. Both methods have proven themselves in past flu seasons, often besting those of other research groups that are part of CDC's forecasting research network. Whether either will be accurate in forecasting the spread of COVID-19 is anybody's guess at this point, Rosenfeld said. "The wisdom of the crowds method might be useful for this novel coronavirus, given that it's based on the collective wisdom of people, who are good at adapting to previously unseen circumstances," he said. But he has his doubts about the statistical method, as it depends on large amounts of data from previous seasons. Because the SARS-2-CoV virus is new to human populations, it is likely to cause a starkly different epidemic wave than seasonal flu. Rosenfeld emphasizes that it will be hard to draw any conclusions from a single season of forecasting for COVID-19 illnesses. "It will be difficult to know whether your forecasting method is reliable," he explained. "Because after this season is over, we will know whether the forecast was accurate or not, but we will not know if we were lucky or unlucky. You could be accurate because of luck, you could be inaccurate because of bad luck. You cannot draw many conclusions from a single season." The flu usually subsides by the end of May in North America, but researchers don't know whether COVID-19 will abate as the weather warms. That's why the CDC has asked researchers to continue their efforts into the summer and beyond, Rosenfeld said. The forecasting center of excellence is housed in the School of Computer Science but draws on expertise across CMU, including the Department of Statistics and Data Science and the Department of Engineering and Public Policy, as well as the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health and the Harvard School of Public Health.

CSD's Vinayak Wins NSF CAREER Award

Research Aims To Improve Efficiency of Large-Scale Data Centers

Rashmi Vinayak, an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department, has won a five-year, $650,000 Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award, the National Science Foundation’s most prestigious award for young faculty members. The award will support Vinayak's work to improve the resource and energy efficiency of large-scale data centers, which together serve as the backbone for internet-based services, cloud services and data analytics platforms. "Such large-scale systems are prone to failures and unavailability, and therefore have a high degree of redundancy built in to them to provide resilience against such events," she noted. "While redundancy provides resilience, it comes with a significant overhead in terms of resource and energy requirements. The overarching goal of this project is to design resource- and energy-efficient redundancy algorithms for data centers using tools based on information theory and coding theory." Vinayak earned her Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science at the University of California at Berkeley, where she also worked as a postdoctoral researcher before joining CSD in 2017. Her previous awards include the Eli Jury Award from Berkeley's EECS Department, a Google Faculty Research Award, a Facebook Communications and Networking Research Award, and the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research Memorial Lecture Award.