Publications

Peer Reviewed Conference, Journal and Workshops

A Longitudinal Study of the Relationship Between Early Undergraduate Research and Academic Outcomes in Computer Science.  Kamen Redfield, Sukham Sidhu, Zackary Glazewski, Cynthia Lee, Diba Mirza, and Christine Alvarado. In Proceedings of the 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 1 (SIGCSE 2024). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1119–1125.  2024. https://doi.org/10.1145/3626252.3630765 

Understanding California's Computer Science Transfer Pathways. Jinya Jiang, Richa Kafle, Christa Lehr, Simone Wright, Clarissa Guitierrez-Godoy, and Christine Alvarado.  In Proceedings of the 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 1 (SIGCSE 2024). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 604–610. 2024.  https://doi.org/10.1145/3626252.3630956  

Analysis of Attrition Studies Within the Computer Sciences. George Obaido, Friday Joseph Agbo, Christine Alvarado and Solomon Sunday Oyelere. in IEEE Access, vol. 11, pp. 53736-53748, 2023, doi: 10.1109/ACCESS.2023.3280075.

Exploring Group Dynamics in a Group-Structured Computing Undergraduate Research Experience. Katherine Izhikevich, Kyeling Ong, and Christine Alvarado.  In Proceedings of the 2022 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research - Volume 1 (ICER '22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 135–148. 2022. https://doi.org/10.1145/3501385.3543959 

Scaling and Adapting a Program for Early Undergraduate Research in Computing.  Christine Alvarado, Joe Hummel, Diba Mirza, Renata Revelo, and Lisa Yan. In Proceedings of the 53rd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 1 (SIGCSE 2022). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 50–56. 2022. https://doi.org/10.1145/3478431.3499336 

Understanding Sources of Student Struggle in Early Computer Science Courses. Adrian Salguero, William G. Griswold, Christine Alvarado, and Leo Porter. Proceedings of the 17th ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 319–333. 2021. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3446871.3469755 

The Relationship Between Sense of Belonging and Student Outcomes in CS1 and Beyond.  Sophia Krause-Levy, William G. Griswold, Leo Porter, and Christine Alvarado. Proceedings of the 17th ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 29–41. 2021.  DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3446871.3469748 

Experience Report: Designing Massive Open Online Computer Science Courses for Inclusion.  Sophia Krause-Levy, Mia Minnes, Christine Alvarado, and Leo Porter. In Proceedings of the 26th ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 1 (ITiCSE '21). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 95–101. 2021. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3430665.3456340

Exploring Student Experiences in Early Computing Courses during Emergency Remote Teaching.  McKenna Lewis, Zhanchong Deng, Sophia Krause-Levy, Adrian Salguero, William G. Griswold, Leo Porter, and Christine Alvarado. In Proceedings of the 26th ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 1 (ITiCSE '21). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 88–94. 2021. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3430665.3456315

The Role of Mentoring in a Dual-Mentored Scalable CS Research Program.  Christine Alvarado, Alistair Gray, Diba Mirza, and Madeline Tjoa. In Proceedings of the 52nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE '21). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 945–951. 2021. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3408877.3432364

Investigating the Impact of Employing Multiple Interventions in a CS1 Course.  Sophia Krause-Levy, Leo Porter, Beth Simon, and Christine Alvarado. In Proceedings of the 51st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE '20). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1082–1088. 2020. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3328778.3366866

Evaluating a Scalable Program for Undergraduate CS Research. Christine Alvarado, Sergio Villazon, Burcin Tamer.  ICER '19 Proceedings of the 2019 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research, 2019

Exploring the Value of Different Data Sources for Predicting Student Performance in Multiple CS Courses. Soohyun Nam Liao, Daniel Zingaro, Christine Alvarado, William G. Griswold, Leo Porter.  SIGCSE '19 Proceedings of the 50th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, 2019.  Third Best Paper: CS Education Research Track

Podcast Highlights: Targeted Educational Videos From Repurposed Lecture-capture Footage. Mia Minnes, Christine Alvarado, Max Geislinger, Joyce Fang.  SIGCSE '19 Proceedings of the 50th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, 2019

A Robust Machine Learning Technique to Predict Low-performing Students. Soohyun Nam Liao, Daniel Zingaro, Kevin Thai, Christine Alvarado, William G. Griswold, Leo Porter.   ACM Transactions on Computing Education (TOCE), 2019

The Persistent Effect of Pre-College Computing Experience on College CS Course Grades. Christine Alvarado, Gustavo Umbelino, Mia Minnes. SIGCSE '18 Proceedings of the 49th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, 2018.  Best Paper: CS Education Research Track

Lightweight Techniques to Support Students in Large Classes. Mia Minnes, Christine Alvarado, Leo Porter.  SIGCSE '18 Proceedings of the 49th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, 2018

Formal Research Experiences for First Year Students: A Key to Greater Diversity in Computing? Jane G. Stout, N. Burçin Tamer, Christine J. Alvarado.  SIGCSE '18 Proceedings of the 49th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, 2018

Supporting undergraduates to make the most of conferences Janet Davis, Christine Alvarado. ACM Inroads, 2017

Micro-Classes: A Structure for Improving Student Experience in Large Classes.  Christine Alvarado, Mia Minnes, Leo Porter.  SIGCSE '17 Proceedings of the 2017 ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, 2017

Gender Differences in Students' Behaviors in CS Classes throughout the CS Major.  Christine Alvarado, Yingjun Cao, Mia Minnes.  SIGCSE '17 Proceedings of the 2017 ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, 2017

ERSP: A Structured CS Research Program for Early-College Students.  Michael Barrow, Shelby Thomas, Christine Alvarado.  ITiCSE '16 Proceedings of the 2016 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education, 2016

New CS1 pedagogies and curriculum, the same success factors? Christine Alvarado, Cynthia Bailey Lee, Gary Gillespie.  SIGCSE '14 Proceedings of the 45th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education, 2014

Using targeted conferences to recruit women into computer scienceChristine Alvarado, Eugene Judson.  Communications of the ACM, 2014

LogiSketch: A Free Sketch Digital Circuit Design and SimulationSystem. Christine Alvarado, Andy Kearney, Alexa Keizur, Calvin Loncaric, Miranda Parker, Jessica Peck, Kiley Sobel, Fiona Tay.    In Proceedings of the Workshop on the Impact of Pen and Touch Technologies in Education (WIPTTE ’13). 2013.

Increasing women's participation in computing at Harvey Mudd CollegeChristine Alvarado, Zachary Dodds, Ran Libeskind-Hadas

ACM Inroads, 2012

The Effect of Task on Classification Accuracy: Using Gesture Recognition Techniques in Free-Sketch Recognition.  Martin Field, Sam Gordon, Eric Peterson, Raquel Robinson, Thomas Stahovich, Christine Alvarado.    Computers and Graphics, Special Issue on Sketch-Based Interfaces and Modeling. 34(5) October 2010. (Extended version of the conference paper linked below).

Grouping Strokes into Shapes in Hand-Drawn Diagrams.  Eric Peterson, Thomas Stahovich, Eric Doi, Christine Alvarado.    In Proceedings of AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI).  July 2010.

Women in CS: An Evaluation of Three Promising Practices. Christine Alvarado and Zachary Dodds.  In Proceedings of SIGCSE 2010. March 10–13, 2010, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  © ACM, 2010. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in SIGCSE'10. 

The Effect of Task on Classification Accuracy: Using Gesture Recognition Techniques in Free-Sketch Recognition. Martin Field, Sam Gordon, Eric Peterson, Raquel Robinson, Tom Stahovich, and Christine Alvarado.  In Proc. of Eurographics Workshop on Sketch-Based Interfaces and Modeling (SBIM). New Orleans, LA. 2009.

Evaluating a Breadth-First CS 1 for Scientists. Zach Dodds, Ran Libeskind-Hadas, Christine Alvarado, Geoff Kuenning. In Proceedings of SIGCSE 2008.

A Pen-based Tool for Efficient Labeling of 2D Sketches. Aaron Wolin, Devin Smith and Christine Alvarado. In Proc. of Eurographics Workshop on Sketch-Based Interfaces and Modeling (SBIM). Riverside, CA. 2007.

Designing a Sketch Recognition Front-End: User Perception of Interface Elements. Paul Wais, Aaron Wolin and Christine Alvarado. In Proc. of Eurographics Workshop on Sketch-Based Interfaces and Modeling (SBIM). Riverside, CA. 2007.

Properties of Real World Digital Logic Diagrams Alvarado, Christine and Lazzareschi, Michael.   Proceedings of 1st International Workshop on Pen-based Learning Technologies.  2007.

Breadth-first CS 1 for Scientists: Curriculum and Assessment, Zach Dodds, Christine Alvarado, Geoff Kuenning, Ran Libeskind-Hadas.  In Proc. of the 12th Annual Conference on Innovation in Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE 2007). 2007.

Sketch Recognition for Digital Circuit Design in the Classroom. Alvarado, Christine.  In 2007 Invited Workshop on Pen-Centric Computing Research, Brown University, March 2007.

Dynamically Constructed Bayes Nets for Multi-Domain Sketch Understanding. Alvarado, Christine; and Davis, Randall.  Proceedings of the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 2005.

Alvarado, Christine. Sketch Recognition User Interfaces: Guidelines for Design and Development. AAAI Fall Symposium on Intelligent Pen-based Interfaces, 2004. [PDF]

Alvarado, Christine; and Davis, Randall. SketchREAD: A Multi-domain Sketch Recognition Engine. Proceedings of UIST 2004. [PDF] [PS ]

Oltmans, Michael; Alvarado, Christine; and Davis, Randall. ETCHA Sketches: Lessons Learned from Collecting Sketch Data. AAAI Fall Symposium on Intelligent Pen-based Interfaces, 2004. [PDF]

Teevan, Jaime; Alvarado, Christine; Ackerman, Mark S.; and Karger, David R. The Perfect Search Engine Is Not Enough: A Study of Orienteering Behavior in Directed Search. Proceedings of CHI-2004. [PDF]

Alvarado, Christine. (2003) Dynamically Constructed Bayesian Networks for Sketch Understanding. MIT Student Oxygen Workshop. [PS] [PDF]

*Awarded Best Presentation* Slides from the talk

Alvarado, Christine; Oltmans, Michael and Davis, Randall. (2002). A Framework for Multi-Domain Sketch Recognition. 2002 AAAI Spring Symposium on Sketch Understanding. [PS], [PDF] [Abstract-PS], [Abstract-PDF]

Alvarado, Christine and Davis, Randall (2001). Resolving ambiguities to create a natural sketch based interface. Proceedings of IJCAI-2001, August 2001. [PS], [PDF]

Alvarado, Christine and Davis, Randall (2001). Preserving the freedom of paper in a computer-based sketch tool. Proceedings of HCI International 2001. [PS], [PDF]

Books and Book Chapters

 CS for Scientists and Engineers. Christine Alvarado, Zach Dodds, Geoff Kuenning, Ran Libeskind-Hadas. Interactive version: www.cs.hmc.edu/csforall/

Christine Alvarado. “Multi-Domain Hierarchical Free-Sketch Recognition Using Graphical Models.” In Jorge, Joaquim; Samavati, Faramarz (Eds.), Sketch-based Interfaces and Modeling (19-54). Springer. 2011.

Technical Reports and other Publications

Best Practices for Scaling Undergraduate Research.  Christine Alvarado, Michael Hilton, Amy J. Ko, Lori Pollock, Kelly Shaw, Neil Spring.  CRA Best Practices report.  August 2020.

Wrestling with Retention in the CS Major: Report from the ACM Retention Committee.  Alison Derbenwick Miller, Christine Alvarado, Mehran Sahami, Elsa Villa, Stuart Zweben.  SIGCSE '19 Proceedings of the 50th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, 2019

Computer science faculty careers at liberal arts colleges.  Janet Davis, Jeannie Albrecht, Christine Alvarado, Tzu-Yi Chen, Amy Csizmar Dalal, Sohie Lee.  XRDS: Crossroads, The ACM Magazine for Students - Cryptography, 2015

Alvarado, Christine; Teevan, Jaime; Ackerman, Mark S.; and Karger, David. Surviving the Information Explosion: How People Find Their Electronic Information. MIT Artificial Laboratory Technical Report, April 2003. [PDF] [PS]

Alvarado, Christine; Szegin, Metin; Scott, Dana; Hammond, Tracy; Kasheff, Zardosht; Oltmans, Michael; and Davis, Randall (2001). A Framework for Multi-Domain Sketch Recognition. MIT Artificial Laboratory, Septempber 2001. [PDF] [PS]

Alvarado, Christine and Davis, Randall (2000). Intelligent mechanical engineering design environment: From sketching to simulation. MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Annual Abstract, September 2000. [PS], [PDF]

Theses

Alvarado, Christine. Multi-domain Sketch Understanding. PhD Thesis. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. September, 2004. [PDF] 

Alvarado, Christine (2000). A natural sketching environment: Bringing the computer into early stages of mechanical design. Master's thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2000.  [PDF]