Barbara Ericson

Barbara Ericson is a research scientist and the Director of Computing Outreach for the College of Computing at Georgia Tech. She has been working on improving introductory computing education for over 5 years. She enjoys the diversity of the types of problems she has worked on over the years in computing including computer graphics, artificial intelligence, medicine, and object-oriented programming.

Mark Guzdial is a Professor in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech.  An award-winning teacher and active researcher in computing education, he holds a joint Ph.D. In Education and Computer Science from the University of Michigan. Dr. Guzdial directs Project “Georgia Computes!” which is an NSF funded alliance to improve computing education from pre-teen years to undergraduates.  He is a member of the ACM Education Board and is a frequent contributor to the ACM SIGCSE (Computer Science Education) Symposium.

Barbara Ericson and Mark Guzdial, are recipients of the 2010 Karl V. Karlstom Outstanding Educator Award for their contributions to broadening participation in computing. They created the Media Computation (MediaComp) approach, which motivates students to write programs that manipulate and create digital media, such as pictures, sounds, and videos. Now in use in nearly 200 schools around the world, this contextualized approach to introductory Computer Science attracts students not motivated by classical algorithmic problems addressed in traditional computer science education. They also lead “Georgia Computes!” an NSF-funded statewide alliance to increase the number and diversity of students in computing education across all of Georgia.  Barbara Ericson directs the Institute for Computing Education at Georgia Tech. Mark Guzdial is director of the Contextualized Support for Learning at Georgia Tech.  Together they have written three textbooks using the MediaComp approach to engage and inspire student learning in computing. The Karlstrom Award recognizes educators who advanced new teaching methodologies; effected new curriculum development in Computer Science and Engineering; or contributed to ACM’s educational mission.