Curriculum Vitae

Teaching Interests

Algorithms, Data Structures, Web Development, Computer Organization, Computer Architecture, Software Development, Web Development, Theory of Computation, Databases, and Discrete Mathematics.

Research Interests

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.

Education

University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA — Doctor of Philosophy, Computer Science, 2018
    Overall GPA: 4.0

Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond, Richmond, VA — Graduate coursework, 2007-2010
    Overall GPA: 3.86

College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA — Master of Science, Computer Science, 2007
    Overall GPA: 3.91. Nominated for National Chancellor's List.

College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA — Bachelor of Science, Computer Science & Mathematics, 2005
    Computer Science GPA: 4.0, Mathematics GPA: 3.97, Overall GPA: 3.91, Summa Cum Laude
    Phi Beta Kappa, National Society of Collegiate Scholars, Cissy Paterson Prize in Mathematics,
    Alpha Lambda Delta and Phi Eta Sigma.

Teaching

Department of Computer Science, University of Virginia

ECPI College of Technology

Medical Careers Institute

Department of Computer Science, The College of William and Mary

Honors

ACM@UVA Teacher of the Year, 2023-2024

UVA Center for Teaching Excellence, SoTL Scholar, 2023-2024

ACM@UVA Rising Star Faculty, 2022-2023

Education Innovation Award, School of Engineering and Applied Science, University of Virginia, 2022. With Nada Basit and Mark Floryan.

Raven Fellowship, The Raven Society at the University of Virginia, 2015

Best Paper Award, Digital Humanities Forum, 2014

Phi Beta Kappa, Alpha Chapter at the College of William and Mary, 2005

Cissy Patterson Prize in Mathematics, College of William and Mary, 2005

Publications

Peer-Reviewed Conference Publications

Nada Basit, Mark Floryan, John R. Hott, Allen Huo, Jackson Le, and Ivan Zheng. 2025. ASCI: AI-Smart Classroom Initiative. In Proceedings of the 56th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE 2025). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA. to appear

Barrett Ruth, John R. Hott. 2025. Auto-grading in Computing Education: Perceptions and Use. In Proceedings of the 56th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE 2025). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA. to appear

Alice Wanner, Ryan Lenfant, Thomas Lam, Michelle Cheng, John R. Hott, and Raymond Pettit. 2024. Office Hours and Online Forum Engagement in Introductory CS Courses. 54th Annual Frontiers in Education. Washington, DC, USA.

John R. Hott. 2024. Analyzing Student Performance with Free Late Submission Days. In Proceedings of the 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 1 (SIGCSE 2024). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.1145/3626253.3635562

John R. Hott, Mark Floryan, and Nada Basit. 2024. Towards More Efficient Office Hours for Large Courses: Using Cosine Similarity to Efficiently Construct Student Help Groups. In Proceedings of the 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 1 (SIGCSE 2024). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.1145/3626253.3635544

Ryan Lenfant, Alice Wanner, John R. Hott, and Raymond Pettit. 2023. Project-Based and Assignment-Based Courses: A Study of Piazza Engagement and Gender in Online Courses. In Proceedings of the 2023 Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 1 (ITiCSE 2023). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 138–144. https://doi.org/10.1145/3587102.3588833

John R. Hott, Nada Basit, Ziyao Gao, Ella Truslow, and Nour Goulmamine. 2023. Providing a Choice of Time Trackers on Online Assessments. In Proceedings of the 54th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 1 (SIGCSE 2023). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 715–721. https://doi.org/10.1145/3545945.3569776

Jeremiah Blanchard, John R. Hott, Vincent Berry, Rebecca Carroll, Bob Edmison, Richard Glassey, Oscar Karnalim, Brian Plancher, and Seán Russell. 2022. Stop Reinventing the Wheel! Promoting Community Software in Computing Education. In Proceedings of the 2022 Working Group Reports on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE-WGR '22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 261–292. https://doi.org/10.1145/3571785.3574129

Jeremiah Blanchard, John R. Hott, Vincent Berry, Rebecca Carroll, Bob Edmison, Richard Glassey, Oscar Karnalim, Brian Plancher, and Seán Russell. 2022. Leveraging Community Software in CS Education to Avoid Reinventing the Wheel. In Proceedings of the 27th ACM Conference on on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education Vol. 2 (ITiCSE '22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 580–581. https://doi.org/10.1145/3502717.3532169

Ella Truslow, Nour Goulmamine, John R. Hott, and Nada Basit. 2022. Analyzing Student Experience of Time Trackers on Assessments. In Proceedings of the 53rd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 2 (SIGCSE 2022). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1113. https://doi.org/10.1145/3478432.3499121

Angela A. Siegel, Mark Zarb, Bedour Alshaigy, Jeremiah Blanchard, Tom Crick, Richard Glassey, John R. Hott, Celine Latulipe, Charles Riedesel, Mali Senapathi, Simon, and David Williams. 2022. Teaching through a Global Pandemic: Educational Landscapes Before, During and After COVID-19. In Proceedings of the 2021 Working Group Reports on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE-WGR '21). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1145/3502870.3506565

Emma Choi, Lisa Meng, and John R. Hott. 2021. Open Source Software Practices in CS2. In Proceedings of the 21st Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research (Koli Calling '21). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 18, 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1145/3488042.3488047

Carlin MacKenzie and John R. Hott. 2021. Extracting and Visualizing User Engagement on Wikipedia Talk Pages. In Proceedings of the 17th International Symposium on Open Collaboration (OpenSym '21). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 9, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1145/3479986.3479995

Angela A. Siegel, Mark Zarb, Bedour Alshaigy, Jeremiah Blanchard, Tom Crick, Richard Glassey, John R. Hott, Celine Latulipe, Charles Riedesel, Mali Senapathi, Simon, and David Williams. 2021. Educational Landscapes During and After COVID-19. In Proceedings of the 26th ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 2 (ITiCSE '21). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 597–598. https://doi.org/10.1145/3456565.3461439

Adrian Thinnyun, Ryan Lenfant, Raymond Pettit, and John R. Hott. 2021. Gender and Engagement in CS Courses on Piazza. In Proceedings of the 52nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE '21). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 438–444. https://doi.org/10.1145/3408877.3432395

Xinyue Lin, James Connors, Chang Lim, and John R. Hott. 2021. How Do Students Collaborate? Analyzing Group Choice in a Collaborative Learning Environment. In Proceedings of the 52nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE '21). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 212–218. https://doi.org/10.1145/3408877.3432389

Nathan Brunelle and John R. Hott. 2020. Ask Me Anything: Assessing Academic Dishonesty. In Proceedings of the 51st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE '20). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1375. https://doi.org/10.1145/3328778.3372658

John R. Hott, Worthy Martin, and Kathleen Flake. January 2018. Visualization of Complex Familial and Social Structures. Electronic Imaging, Burlingame, CA.

John R. Hott, Worthy Martin, and Kathleen Flake. 2016. Visualizing Dynamics of Complex Familial Structures (Poster). IEEE Information Visualization, Baltimore, MD.

John R. Hott, Worthy Martin, and Kathleen Flake. 2016. Identity Lenses in Analyzing Evolving Social Structures. Digital Humanities, Krakow, Poland.

Robert E. Noonan and John R. Hott. 2007. A course in software development. In Proceedings of the 38th SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education (SIGCSE '07). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 135–139. https://doi.org/10.1145/1227310.1227362

*Underline denotes Undergraduate co-author.

Peer-Reviewed Educational Materials

John R. Hott, Derrick Stone, Nada Basit, and Daniel Graham. 2022. Meme Magic: Project in Sprints. ACM EngageCSEdu, Online. https://doi.org/10.1145/3519933

John R. Hott, Nada Basit, Raymond Pettit, and Derrick Stone. 2020. CS2 Graphical Photo Library Project. NCWIT EngageCSEdu, Online. https://www.engage-csedu.org/find-resources/cs2-graphical-photo-library-project

Conference Proceedings

John R. Hott and Jeremiah Blanchard. 2022. Toward a Collaborative Open Source CS-focused Assessment Framework (Birds of a Feather Session). In Proceedings of the 53rd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 2 (SIGCSE 2022). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1194. https://doi.org/10.1145/3478432.3499199

Maya Ramani, Aaron Thompson, and John R. Hott. March 2021. Can Patterns in Mystery Novels Be Detected? Capital Area Celebration of Women in Computing (CAPWIC), Online.

Nathan Brunelle and John R. Hott. 2020. Fix the Course, Not the Student: Positive Approaches to Cultivating Academic Integrity (Birds of a Feather Session). In Proceedings of the 51st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE '20). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1402. https://doi.org/10.1145/3328778.3372535

John R. Hott. March 2020. Using Temporal Network Analysis to Uncover Bias in Collections. code4lib, Pittsburgh, PA.

Dina Herbert, and John R. Hott. November 2019. Lettuce into the Meal; A SNAC Update. WikiConference North America, Boston, MA.

Dina Herbert and John R. Hott. October 2018. Have a SNAC Break. WikiConference North America, Columbus, OH.

John R. Hott, Worthy N, Martin, and Kathleen Flake. November 2015. Visualizing and Analyzing Identity Classes in Evolving Social Structures. Chicago Colloquium on Digital Humanitites and Computer Science, University of Chicago. Chicago, IL.

John R. Hott, Worthy N, Martin, and Kathleen Flake. February 2015. Evolving Family Structures: Representation and Visualization. Family History Technology Workshop, Brigham Young University. Provo, UT.

John R. Hott, Worthy N, Martin, and Kathleen Flake. September 2014. Evolving Social Structures: Networks with People as the Edges. Digital Humanities Forum, University of Kansas. Lawrence, KS. Best paper award.

Technical Reports

John R. Hott, Nathan Brunelle, J. Myers, J. Rassen, and abhi shelat. 2012. KD-Tree Algorithm for Propensity Score Matching With Three or More Treatment Groups. Technical Report Series. Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Boston, MA.

Invited Panels

Briana Morrison, Michelle Craig, Mark Gondree, Rita Garcia, Chris Mayfield, Helen Hu, Tzu-Yi Chen, Mikey Goldweber, and John R. Hott. March 2021. EngageCSEdu: A Collection of Engaging Assignments. Sister session of the 52nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computing Science Education (SIGCSE), Online.

Departmental Service

Computer Science Area Specialist for Cognitive Science, 2019-

Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science Committee, Member, 2018-

Computer Science Graduate Student Group Faculty Liaison, 2018-

Computing Systems Committee, Member, 2018-

Computer Science Graduate Student Group Steering Committee, 2013-2014

School and University Service

University of Virginia Engineering Research Symposium (UVERS), Reviewer, 2019-

Graduate Engineering Student Council Representative, 2014-2015

Navigating Graduate School Panelist, 2014

Professional Service

2024 ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium, Organizing Committee: Puzzles, Social, and Board Games Chair

2023 ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium, Organizing Committee: Puzzles, Social, and Board Games Chair

2023 ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium, Reviewer

2022 ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium, Organizing Committee: Puzzles, Social, and Board Games Chair

2022 ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium, Reviewer

2021 ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium, Organizing Committee: Puzzles, Social, and Board Games Chair

2021 ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium, Reviewer

2020 ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium, Reviewer

2024 ACM CAPWIC Capital Area Celebration of Women in Computing, Co-Organizer

2023 ACM CAPWIC Capital Area Celebration of Women in Computing, Organizing Committee Member

2022 ACM CAPWIC Capital Area Celebration of Women in Computing, Organizing Committee Member

2022 ACM CAPWIC Capital Area Celebration of Women in Computing, Reviewer

2021 ACM CAPWIC Capital Area Celebration of Women in Computing, Organizing Committee Member

2021 ACM CAPWIC Capital Area Celebration of Women in Computing, Reviewer

2020 ACM CAPWIC Capital Area Celebration of Women in Computing, Program Committee Member

2020 ACM CAPWIC Capital Area Celebration of Women in Computing, Reviewer

2019 ACM CAPWIC Capital Area Celebration of Women in Computing, Program Committee Member

2019 ACM CAPWIC Capital Area Celebration of Women in Computing, Reviewer

Professional Memberships

Association for Computing Machinery, 2018-

ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE), 2018-

American Society for Engineering Education, 2018-

Prior Experience

Software Engineer, Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities (IATH); Charlottesville, VA — 2015-2018

Designed and implemented a flexible, object-oriented, scalable server for the Social Networks and Archival Context (SNAC) project, in collaboration with the National Archives and California Digital Library. Developed the back-end using PHP and PostgreSQL, including a modular identity reconciliation engine utilizing Elastic Search, and a front-end client using PHP, Bootstrap, JQuery, and javascript. Implemented a unit testing and automated deployment environment using git and a local GitLab instance.

Intern Software Engineer, Commonwealth Computer Research, Inc; Charlottesville, VA — Summer 2014

Aided in development of a distributed ad hoc content-sharing package for Android devices. Added functionality to inter-device query requests, modified and created test cases for a distributed 30-node cluster of phones, reviewed testing output for concurrency and message passing problems, and developed new visualizations for understanding test harness results. Gained a deeper knowledge of the git version control system, including rebasing, rewriting history, and multiple remotes.

Intern Software Engineer, Science Applications International Corporation; Charlottesville, VA — Summer 2013

Collaborated on a big data analytics project. Translated research-level graph analysis algorithms to Apache Hadoop and Giraph to provide analytics of multi-terabyte datasets, with a focus on analyzing Twitter networks with thousands of nodes. Built interactive visualization capabilities for the system using AngularJS and D3.js.

Teaching/Research Assistant, Computer Science Department; Charlottesville, VA — 2010-2015

Co-instructed Software Development Methods course, teaching a 100-person course section and co-managing TAs for the course. Teaching assistant for Software Development Methods, Engineering Software, HCI in Software Development, and Graduate Computer Architecture (including guest lecturing). Researched algorithms and compressed data structures with advisor abhi shelat and visualization and temporal network analysis with advisor Worthy Martin. Produced visualizations and data normalization code for SNAC with IATH.

Instructor, ECPI College of Technology; Richmond, VA — 2009-2010

Instructor for Web Programming, Unix Administration, SQL Database Scripting, Web Site Management using Linux and Apache, Computer Applications including Microsoft Office, and Keyboarding courses. Instructed classes ranging from 6 to 25 students with varying levels of computer proficiency.

Freelance Photographer and Web/PHP Designer; Richmond, VA — 2008-2010

Designed webpages, Joomla and WordPress templates in PHP, and created graphics and photographs for local businesses and churches. Created Joomla templates for Westhampton Family Psychologists and the International Baptist Convention (IBC). Designed WordPress templates for Lakeside Baptist Church and Grace Fellowship. Developed custom PHP/MySQL forms for the IBC event registration, including Paypal integration, distribution of emails upon submission, and a database connection to Microsoft Access. Also designed an interactive database using PHP/MySQL for the Deeds of Love Ministries Orphanages in South Africa.

Applications Analyst, Library Information Systems, Virginia Commonwealth University; Richmond, VA — 2007-2008

Designed and maintained web applications using PHP, ColdFusion, MySQL, and Javascript including a dynamic database of library hours, a custom install of MediaWiki, and upgrading ContentDM collection management software. Redesigned the ContentDM landing page for VCU's collection. Served as backup system administrator for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 web servers and ILLiad Inter-Library Loan system.

Volunteer Experience

Short Term and Local Volunteer Experience

Volunteer judge for the Virginia Piedmont Regional Science Fair (2015-2018); Volunteer judge for the FIRST Tech Challenge (2017); webmaster, including site redesign, for First United Methodist Church Charlottesville (FirstUMC) (2014-); youth group volunteer at FirstUMC (2014-); youth group volunteer at First Baptist Chuch Richmond (2009-2015); mission trip co-leader to Liepzig and Cologne, Germany (2008); volunteer ballroom dance instructor with Williamsburg - James City County Schools (2007).

Week-long trips to Appalachia with Appalachia Service Project repairing houses (2003, 2015-2016); Camden, NJ (2006) and Wilmington, DE (2005) with Urban Promise reparing houses and helping with after school clubs; Grand Bahama Island to aid in hurricane relief efforts (2005); and Atlanta, GA to help with children's clubs (2004).

Language Consultant, Volunteers with International Students, Staff, and Scholars at UVA — 2013-2014

Held weekly discussions with international students to practice conversational English. Discussed culturally relevant differences and current news topics.

Exhibit Maintenance and Special Events Volunteer, Science Museum of Virginia — July 2009-2019

Ensured that museum exhibits were functioning by reporting problems, repairing exhibits as needed, and cleaning exhibit computers. Staffed various booths at museum special events.