This week I had conducted my last pilot for the study on Monday. During the pilot we had discovered a bug with the a new feature that I had implemented on the platform, therefore I spent the first half of the week fixing the bug on the platform. During the first half of the week, I also worked on finishing up a first draft of my final report for the DREU program. After my the first draft of my final report, I had gotten some feedback from Dr. Battle regarding a couple of section in the report. I have submitted all other parts of the fourth milestone, and I have been working on feedback that I recieved on the report. The only items that remain are handing in the finished final report and the integrating the new demo video of the platform after the bug was fixed.

The only piece of the platform that remains is recording a new demo video for the Voyager platform intro after the last few bugs were fixed. Which I intend to record before turning in my final report.

During a meeting last week, we decided not to submit to CHI and focus on gathering quality data due to this study being experimental. Given that decision, I will most likely resume conducting the study a week or two after the CHI deadline with Hannah’s help. We plan on conducting some analysis with the pilot study data prior to recruting for the full study. We aim to finish this project before the end of this year.

This was my last week conducting research in Dr. Battle’s lab with the DREU program. I have really enjoyed my experience during the summer, and it has helped solidify my interest in research even more than I had expected it to. I know for a fact that I will be pursuing a masters in CS and I am much more confident in my decidion to pursue a doctorate degree after that I finish my masters. I have learned a lot through this process, but I have realized that I need more time to explore the field of Computer Science as I had finished my bachelor’s degree so fast.

I am excited to be able to visit my mentor’s institution this following spring. That experience will allow me to be able to work on my scientific communication skills like presenting and participating in more theoretical computer science discussions. Overall, this program has been great dispite being online.