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Amruth Kumar

“My experience has been one of adapting to change – the college has changed dramatically, more than doubling its facilities. My discipline has changed continually, from the days of personal computers to the World Wide Web, smart phones, robots and drones. I now view teaching as a performance art – with room for lifelong improvement and change. The profile of our students changes every five to eight years, keeping us on our toes. So, even though every semester looks like any other, no two semesters are alike! Change keeps my job interesting and exciting.

I used to advise our programming contest teams – the students, Professor [Lawrence] D’Antonio and I used to drive to various conferences in the northeast over the weekend in the college van to participate in the contests. Our teams won a lot of prizes at these contests. Professor [Ben] Fine is now advising our students –and having all the fun!

Over the years, I have had several students work with me on research projects. They have presented their work or had their work presented at professional conferences in Florence, Italy; Aarhus, Denmark; Santander, Spain; Los Angeles; Oahu, Hawaii; Denver; Boston; and Pittsburgh, among others. These were prestigious events and great learning opportunities for our students.

The time students spend outside the classroom with each other and with their professors builds a sense of camaraderie, a “fellowship of learning.” We have a lab dedicated for Computer Science use, where students work on their class projects and learn from each other. In my upper-level courses, we frequently have project demonstrations in this lab after class that last several hours. I believe the time spent in this lab leaves students with fond memories long after they graduate.”

Amruth Kumar is a Professor of Computer Science and first joined Ramapo in 1993. For more information, please visit Amruth’s Faculty Profile.

School:
Theoretical and Applied Science

Recent Publications

“The Effect of Providing Motivational Support in Parsons Puzzle Tutors,” Proceedings of Artificial Intelligence in Education (AI-ED 2017), LNAI 10331, Wuhan, China, 6/25-28/2017, 528-531.

“Providing the Option to Skip Feedback in a Worked Example Tutor,” Proceedings of Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS 2016), Zagreb, Croatia, 6/6-10/2016, LNCS 9684, 101-110.

“Using Cloze Procedure Questions in Worked Examples in a Programming Tutor,” Proceedings of Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS 2016), Zagreb, Croatia, 6/6-10/2016, LNCS 9684, 416-422.

“The Effectiveness of Visualization for Learning Expression Evaluation: A Reproducibility Study,” Proceedings of Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE 2016), Arequipa, Peru, 7/11-13/2016, 192-197.

“The Effect of Using Online Tutors on the Self-Efficacy of Learners,” Proceedings of Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE 2015), El Paso, TX, 10/21-24/2015, 603-609.

“Expression Tasks for Novice Programmers, Matthias Laengrich, Joerg Schulze, Amruth N. Kumar,” Proceedings of Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE 2015), El Paso, TX, 10/21-24/2015, 300-307.

“Automated Generation of Self-Explanation Questions in Worked Examples in a Model-Based Tutor.” Proceedings of Artificial Intelligence in Education (AI-ED 2015), Madrid, Spain, 6/22-26/2015

All that glitters (in the lab) may not be gold (in the field). Proceedings of the AI-ED Workshop on “Les Contes du Mariage: Should AI Stay Married to Ed?, AI-ED 2015, Madrid, Spain, 6/22/2015.

“Solving code-tracing problems and its effect on code-writing skills pertaining to program semantics,” Proceedings of Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE 2015), Vilnius, Lithuania, 7/6-8/2015, 314-319.

“The Effectiveness of Visualization for Learning Expression Evaluation.” SIGCSE (Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education) Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, SIGCSE 2015, Kansas City, MO, 3/4-7/2015.

“A Model for Deploying Software Tutors.” IEEE 6th International Conference on Technology for Education (T4E), Amritapuri, India, 12/18-21/2014, 3-9.

“Test Anxiety and Online Testing: A Study.” Proceedings of Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE 2014). Madrid, Spain, 10/22-25/2014.

“Affective Learning with Online Software Tutors for Programming.” Proceedings of Psychology of Programming Interest Group Annual Conference (PPIG 2014), Brighton, UK, 6/25-27/2014, 89-98.

“An Evaluation of Self-Explanation in a Programming Tutor,” Proceedings of Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS 2014), Honolulu, HI, 6/5-9/2014.

“A Rule-Based Expert System for Diagnosing Student Errors in a Tutor on Counter-Controlled Loops, with S. Rosenthal,” Proceedings of The Second Workshop on AI-supported Education for Computer Science, ITS 2014, Honolulu, Hawaii, 6/6/2014.

“Programming Tutors, Practiced Concepts, and Demographics. with Lisa Kaczmarczyk.” Proceedings of Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE 2013). Oklahoma City, OK, 10/23-26/2013, Session F2C.

“A study of the influence of code-tracing problems on code-writing skills.” Proceedings of Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE 2013), Canterbury, UK, 7/1-3/2013.

“The Effect of Interleaving an Alternate Task During Tutoring and Testing.” Proceedings of Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE 2012). Seattle, WA, 10/3-6/2012, 1024-1028.

“A Study of Stereotype Threat in Computer Science,” Proceedings of Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE 2012), Haifa, Israel, 7/3-5/2012.

“Limiting the Number of Revisions While Providing Error-Flagging Support During Tests,” Proceedings of Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS 2012), Chania, Crete, Greece, 6/14-18/2012.

Awards and Accomplishments

Named Distinguished Member by The ACM (Association for Computing Machinery), the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society. ACM Distinguished Members are recognized for their individual contributions to the field of computing, and their achievements have advanced the science and education of computing in a significant way.

Principal Investigator of a new 1 million dollar grant from the National Science Foundation to provide scholarships to Computer Science students – the grant was awarded in July 2017

Education

Ph.D., Computer Science, University at Buffalo
M.S., Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India
B.E. (Bachelor of Engineering), National Institute of Technology, Srinivasanagar, India

Classes Known For

Computer Science I
Organization of Programming Languages
Artificial Intelligence

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Amruth Kumar