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While many online resources teach basic web development, few are designed to help novices learn the CSS concepts and design patterns experts use to implement complex visual fea- tures. Professional webpages embed these design patterns and could serve as rich learning materials, but their stylesheets are complex and difficult for novices to understand. This paper presents Ply, a CSS inspection tool that helps novices use their visual intuition to make sense of professional webpages. We introduce a new visual relevance testing technique to identify properties that have visual effects on the page, which Ply uses to hide visually irrelevant code and surface unintuitive relation- ships between properties. In user studies, Ply helped novice developers replicate complex web features 50% faster than those using Chrome Developer Tools, and allowed novices to recognize and explain unfamiliar concepts. These results show that visual inspection tools can support learning from complex professional webpages, even for novice developers.
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Decentering and interconnecting as professional skills in the preparation of new college mathematics instructors
Making progress in justice, equity, and diversity in post-secondary teaching and learning requires systemic change. The development of novice instructor professional knowledge is a critical subsystem of the undergraduate mathematics education system. Novices play key roles in instruction and have the potential to play key roles in change efforts later in their careers. Yet,there is little in the way of theory to support research and development in this area. In other fields, professional development that engages novices in building skill at self-sustaining, generative change as professionals is the ground in which agency for change is seeded and nurtured. We describe two dimensions of professional skills for interacting with ideas and people: decentering and interconnecting. In this report, we explore and illustrate the role of these dimensions in professional development for novice college mathematics instructors.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2021139
- PAR ID:
- 10451195
- Editor(s):
- Cook, S.; Katz B.; Moore-Russo D.
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the Annual Conference on Research in Undergraduate Mathematics Education
- Volume:
- 25
- ISSN:
- 2474-9346
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- The DOI is not currently available.
