General Information

I am a Ph.D. student in Computer Science at North Carolina State University.  My dissertation work is in the area of artificial intelligence with a research focus on tutorial dialogue systems in the domain of introductory computer science.  I also conduct research in computer science education including investigations into curriculum design and course delivery for introductory computer science, along with examining the participation of underrepresented groups in computing.  My advisors are Dr. James Lester and Dr. Mladen Vouk.

I am originally from Valdosta, Georgia.  I earned a Bachelor's degree in Mathematics and Computer Science from Valdosta State University.  I hold a Master's degree in Applied Statistics from the Industrial and Systems Engineering Department at Georgia Institute of Technology.  From 1999 until 2001, I worked for Delta Technology, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Delta Air Lines.  I was part of the Operations Research department.  I developed software for and performed statistical analyses of the baggage transfer system at Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport. From 2002 until 2005, I taught mathematics and introductory computer science as a lecturer at Valdosta State University. 

Education

Ph.D., Computer Science (anticipated May 2010)
North Carolina State University

M.S., Applied Statistics (2001)
Georgia Institute of Technology

B.S., Mathematics and Computer Science (1999)
Valdosta State University

Journal Articles

Investigating the Role of Motivation in Computer Science Education through One-on-One Tutoring .  Kristy Elizabeth Boyer, Robert Phillips, Michael D. Wallis, Mladen A. Vouk, and James C. Lester. In Computer Science Education, Vol. 19 No. 2, 2009, 111-136. 

Conference Papers

Discovering Tutorial Dialogue Strategies with Hidden Markov Models.  Kristy Elizabeth Boyer, Eun Young Ha, Michael D. Wallis, Robert Phillips, Mladen A. Vouk, and James C. Lester. To appear in Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED '09), Brighton, U.K., 2009. 

Modeling Dialogue Structure with Adjacency Pair Analysis and Hidden Markov Models. Kristy Elizabeth Boyer, Robert Phillips, Eun Young Ha, Michael D. Wallis, Mladen A. Vouk, and James C. Lester. In Proceedings of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics - Human Language Technologies Conference (NAACL HLT) Companion Volume, Boulder, Colorado, 2009, 49-52.

The Impact of Instructor Initiative on Student Learning: A Tutoring Study.  Kristy Elizabeth Boyer, Robert Phillips, Michael D. Wallis, Mladen A. Vouk, and James C. Lester. In Proceedings of the 40th SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE '09), Chattanooga, Tennessee, 2009, 14-18. 

A Development Environment for Distributed Synchronous Collaborative Programming.  Kristy Elizabeth Boyer, August A. Dwight, R. Taylor Fondren, Mladen A. Vouk, and James C. Lester.  In Proceedings of the 13th Annual Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE '08), Madrid, Spain, 2008, 158-162.

Balancing Cognitive and Motivational Scaffolding in Tutorial Dialogue.  Kristy Elizabeth Boyer, Robert Phillips, Michael Wallis, Mladen Vouk, and James Lester.  In Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS '08), Montreal, Canada, 2008, 239-249.  

The Influence of Learner Characteristics on Task-Oriented Tutorial Dialogue.  Kristy Elizabeth Boyer, Mladen A. Vouk, James C. Lester.  In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED '07), Marina Del Rey, California, 2007, 365-372.^*

A Case for Smaller Class Size with Integrated Lab in Introductory Computer Science. Kristy Elizabeth Boyer, Rachael S. Dwight, Carolyn S. Miller, C. Dianne Raubenheimer, Matthias F. Stallmann, Mladen A. Vouk.  In Proceedings of the 38th SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE '07), Covington, Kentucky, 2007, 341-345.

Workshop Papers

An Empirically Derived Question Taxonomy for Task-Oriented Tutorial Dialogue. Kristy Elizabeth Boyer, William J. Lahti, Robert Phillips, Michael D. Wallis, Mladen A. Vouk, James C. Lester. To appear in Proceedings of the Second Workshop on Question Generation, Brighton, U.K., 2009.

Inferring Tutorial Dialogue Structure with Hidden Markov Modeling. Kristy Elizabeth Boyer, Eun Young Ha, Robert Phillips, Michael D. Wallis, Mladen A. Vouk, James C. Lester. In Proceedings of the Fourth NAACL HLT Workshop on Innovative Use of NLP for Building Educational Applications (EducationNLP), Boulder, Colorado, 2009, 19-26.

Learner Characteristics and Feedback in Tutorial Dialogue.  Kristy Elizabeth Boyer, Robert Phillips, Michael D. Wallis, Mladen A. Vouk, and James C. Lester.  In Proceedings of the Third ACL Workshop on Innovative Use of NLP for Building Educational Applications, Columbus, Ohio, 2008, 53-61.

Projects

STARS:  A Southeastern Alliance for Broadening Participation in Computing. Serve as a member of the Alliance Steering Committee, as well as the NC State Academic Liaison, for the STARS Alliance (NSF grant CNS-0540523).

Women and Information Technology. Worked as a research assistant on the Women and Information Technology project (NSF grant EIA-0204222) during the 2005-2006 academic year.

Awards

^*Best Paper by a Student First Author, AIED '07, the 13th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education, Marina del Rey, California, 2007.

National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, 2007.