Press n or j to go to the next uncovered block, b, p or k for the previous block.
| 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 | 1x | import BasicLayout from "main/layouts/BasicLayout/BasicLayout";
export default function AboutScaffold() {
return (
<BasicLayout>
<h1>About Scaffold</h1>
<p>
Scaffold is a web-based learning tool designed to help students
visualize the prerequisite relationships between course concepts through
an interactive knowledge graph.
</p>
<h2>What Scaffold is for</h2>
<p>
Scaffold was designed around a single overarching goal: to reduce
extraneous cognitive load for students working through homework and
practice problems, particularly introductory programming courses.
</p>
<p>
Extraneous cognitive load refers to mental effort that does not
contribute directly to learning the target material. In this context,
this is the effort of searching through course material like lecture
slides, textbook content, and prior assignments to identify which
concepts are needed to solve a given problem.
</p>
<p>
Introductory programming courses present students with a large number of
interdependent concepts in a short period of time, making it difficult
for students to identify gaps in their understanding or recognize how
foundational concepts build toward more complex ones.
</p>
<p>
Scaffold integrates with{" "}
<a href="https://www.prairielearn.com/">PrairieLearn</a>, an online
assessment platform, to display the specific concepts and subconcepts
relevant to each practice problem, allowing students to explore concept
descriptions, code examples, and prerequisite dependencies in context.
</p>
<p>
By surfacing this information directly within a structured, interactive
interface, Scaffold allows students to direct their attention toward
understanding concepts rather than locating them. The design priorities
were:
</p>
<ol>
<li>
Provide a shortcut for navigating course content when stuck on a
problem
</li>
<li>
Make prerequisite relationships between concepts explicit and
navigable, and
</li>
<li>
Display course material clearly and concisely, without extraneous
information.
</li>
</ol>
<h2>Where did Scaffold come from</h2>
<p>
The initial prototype of Scaffold, with a design and implementation of
the Concept Graph, was designed and implemented by Kate Larrick as part
of her MS project in the{" "}
<a href="https://cs.ucsb.edu">Department of Computer Science</a> at the
University of California, Santa Barbara. She was advised by{" "}
<a href="https://pconrad.github.io">Phill Conrad</a>,{" "}
<a href="https://sites.cs.ucsb.edu/~dimirza/">Diba Mirza</a> and{" "}
<a href="https://sites.cs.ucsb.edu/~sra/">Misha Sra</a> in the
completion of this project.
</p>
<p>
Phill Conrad expanded the prototype with features to add support for
multiple courses, and allow creating and editing of concept graphs. It
is open source, and the source code is available here:{" "}
<a href="https://github.com/ucsb-cs156/proj-scaffold">
https://github.com/ucsb-cs156/proj-scaffold
</a>
</p>
<p>
The ongoing maintenance of the project will be shared between Prof.
Conrad and the students of{" "}
<a href="https://ucsb-cs156.github.io">CMPSC 156</a>, a course in
applied software engineering focused on legacy code projects.
</p>
</BasicLayout>
);
}
|