Research & Talks

Conference Papers
Blanchard, J., Gardner-McCune, C. and Anthony, L. 2021. Dual Modality Instruction & Programming Environments: Student Usage & Perceptions. 52nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (2021). (Accepted, 6 pages)

Blanchard, J., Gardner-McCune, C. and Anthony, L. 2020. Dual Modality Instruction and Learning: A Case Study in CS1. Proceedings of the 51st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (2020). (2nd Place, Best Paper, Research Track)

Blanchard, J., Gardner-McCune, C. and Anthony, L. 2019. Amphibian: Dual-Modality Representation in Integrated Development Environments. 2019 IEEE Blocks and Beyond Workshop (2019).

Blanchard, J., Gardner-McCune, C. and Anthony, L. 2019. Effects of Code Representation on Student Perceptions and Attitudes Toward Programming. 2019 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (2019), 127–131. (Runner up, Best Paper)

Ying, K. M., Pezzullo, L. G., Ahmed, M., Crompton, K., Blanchard, J., & Boyer, K. E. 2019. In Their Own Words: Gender Differences in Student Perceptions of Pair Programming. Proceedings of the 50st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (2019), 1053–1059.

Conference Posters
Blanchard, J. 2019. Situated Learning in Systems-Level Coursework. Proceedings of the 50th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (2019), 1255-1256.

Blanchard, J., Gardner-McCune, C. and Anthony, L. 2018. How Perceptions of Programming Differ in Children with and without Prior Experience. Proceedings of the 49th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (2018), 1099.

Blanchard, J. 2017. Hybrid Environments: A Bridge from Blocks to Text. Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research (2017), 295–296 [PDF]

Conference Presentations

Blanchard, K. 2018. Rethinking hardware-related coursework in CS classroom. STEMPowered Florida SUS Faculty Symposium (2018).

Blanchard, J., Del Rocco, J., Maamar, H. 2018. Teaching Game Dev to School Kids: What We Did, and How You Can, Too. Game Developer’s Conference (2018).

Blanchard, J., Gardner-McCune, C., and Anthony, L. 2015. Bridging Educational Programming and Production Languages. “Every Child a Coder” workshop, Position paper, ACM SIGCHI Conference on Interaction Design and Children (2015). [PDF]

Blanchard, J. 2015. Master Thesis Students in the Video Game Industry, SIGGRAPH Asia (2015).

Blanchard, J., Hayes, A. 2014. IGDA Game Education SIG: Survey of Game Industry Employers, Game Developer’s Conference (2014).

Panelist: "Avoiding Gender, Racial, & Cultural Stereotypes in the Entertainment Industry". Full Sail Hall of Fame (2015).

Panelist: "Avoiding Gender, Racial, & Cultural Stereotypes in the Entertainment Industry". Full Sail Hall of Fame (2014).

Projects

Reptilian (Operating System Distribution)
Ongoing coursework project, 2018 - Present

To serve the Operating Systems course at the University of Florida, I assembled the Reptilian OS to provide a familiar, industry-relevant platform for students to use to complete projects (including OS modification). Reptilian is a Linux-Android OS that incorporates standard command line utilities in a virtualized environment to scaffold learning of operating systems concepts.
(https://cise.ufl.edu/research/reptilian)

Amphibian Dual-Mode Plugin (Educational Programming Platform)
Research and development project at Cacti Council / University of Florida, 2016 - Present

As lead developer and researcher, I have organized and contributed to the development of “Amphibian”, a dual-mode plugin for the IntelliJ IDEA platform. Amphibian, built using Pencil Code’s Droplet editor, enables switching between blocks & text representations of programs in the IDE. https://github.com/cacticouncil/amphibian

Pencil Code (Educational Programming Platform)
Research and development project at Pencil Code Foundation / University of Florida, 2015 - Present 

I contribute Pencil Code, a dual-modality programming environment with blocks and text representations. My contributions have focused on integrating Python into the runtime and Java into the Droplet Editor.
http://www.pencilcode.net

National Flight Academy: Flight Simulation as K-12 Instructional Tool 
Research and development project at Full Sail University, 2011-2012

With the National Flight Academy and through the Full Sail Institute for Research in Entertainment, I managed the project development team to develop and test flight simulator components and training scenarios to teach middle and high school students mathematics, physics, and history. The National Flight Academy continues to use the tools and scenarios developed with Full Sail's researchers to successfully reach young people and generate interest in STEM-related fields.
www.nationalflightacademy.com.

NASA and Design Interactive: CogGauge Game-Based Cognitive Battery
Research collaboration, 2009-2010, NASA grant-funded

With Design Interactive and through the Full Sail Institute for Research in Entertainment, I served as a lead developer to create and and test an initial prototype for CogGauge, a NASA grant-funded game-based cognitive battery. This included development and delegation of programming and art-related tasks to others. CogGauge is now a successful product available from Design Interactive.
designinteractive.net/coggauge

Monkeying Around in C++ - A Beginner’s Guide
Textbook in progress, future publication; co-author

"Monkeying Around in C++" is the first in a series of textbooks intended for high school and college use. This title approaches the daunting task of learning a powerful programming language from the perspective of the learner and instructor rather than as an exhaustive reference. Care is taken to introduce key concepts in a friendly and coherent manner with plenty of examples and exercises mixed with comic illustrations that reinforce the learning process and introduce an element of fun to the often challenging elements of this commonly used development language.

Digital Libraries and Role-Based Systems 
Undergraduate research project, 2002

As an undergraduate University Scholar, I researched the integration of digital libraries and role-based systems using XML under supervision of a professor acting as an advisor. The results can be found at ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00091523/00210.