John R. Hott
Teaching Interests: Algorithms, Data Structures, Web Development, Computer Organization, Computer Architecture, Computer Game Design, Software Development, Theory of Computation, Databases, and Discrete Mathematics.
Research Areas: CS Education; Measuring and analyzing evolving networks, including application-specific graphs; Collaborations in Digital Humanities; Algorithms; Network Analysis; Theory of Computation; Data Science; and Computer Architecture.
Undergraduate Research
ASCI: AI-Smart Classroom Initiative (@UVA)
We’re working on making large classrooms better (see ASCI paper below) by combining office hour queues, smart grouping, LLMs, as well as ways to help instructors track student progress and help those who may be falling behind get the support they need.
Interesting research directions
- How has office hours usage changed?
- How can we use LLMs in this process? Especially local LLMs?
- How can we best incentivize students to engage with course resources?
Background knowledge that may be helpful
- PHP, SQL database
- React, JavaScript
- Docker
- Statistical analysis methods
Other Projects
I’m also interested in a variety of other project topics, which can be student-driven. If you have interesting ideas on connecting CS and Humanities, understanding how networks evolve, or improving CS education, please feel free to reach out! See my Research Areas page for more topics I’ve worked on with students.
Some interesting research directions
- How do students organize and work together when provided the opportunity to collaborate? Can we improve collaboration?
- How do students perceive academic integrity policies? How do LLMs factor into these policies?
- Using LLMs, NLP, and other techniques to process novels, stories?
- …
