Mark Sherman

Assistant Professor of Computer Science; Director, Integrated Digital & Data Sciences Initiative

Contact Information

617-732-1783

shermanm@emmanuel.edu

Office Hours

Office: Wilkens Science Center, Room 407

Office Hours: MWF 12:00-1:00 p.m.; Tues 10:00-11:00 a.m.

Education

Ph.D., M.S., B.S., University of Massachusetts Lowell

Bio

Mark Sherman is an assistant professor of computer science at Emmanuel and director of the IDDS initiative. He believes that computing is a necessary domain for every person in society to be familiar with, just like math, history, and science. Mark received his Ph.D. in computer science specializing in CS education research at UMass Lowell, and was a postdoc researcher at MIT. He has taught students of all ages and prepared teachers of all levels. His current work focuses on the empowerment of regular people employing computing to solve problems, overcome obstacles, and create change.

Mark is an Advocate for diversity in tech, mental health, LGBTQ+ rights, and Open Source. His college experience was defined by competitive ballroom dance, robots, and education research. Alumnus of the Engaging Computing Group at UMass Lowell and The MIT App Inventor Team.

What I Love About Emmanuel

I love Emmanuel's commitment to the original meaning of liberal arts- to provide every student with the knowledge and skills to be an informed member of modern society. As a result of that mission, Emmanuel has always had strong physical sciences, and is now taking the next steps to discover and demonstrate what it means to be a Liberal Arts college in the this century and the next.

Data Analytics Minor
IDDS 1000 Digital Citizenship
IDDS 1101 Introduction to Programming
IDDS 2132 Practical Machine Learning
Emmanuel College Innovation Quest

E. Brousseau and M. Sherman, "Position: The Role of Blocks Programming in Forming Computational Identity," 2019 IEEE Blocks and Beyond Workshop (B&B), Memphis, TN, USA, 2019, pp. 15-17.
Evan W. Patton, Mark Sherman, Michael Tissenbaum. (2018) Research Tools for MIT App Inventor. BLOCKS+ Workshop at ACM SPLASH 2018.
Mark A. Sherman, Mike Tissenbaum, Joshua Sheldon, Hal Abelson. (2018) Tools for Computational Action:New Features in MIT App Inventor. Tech Spotlight at Connected Learning Summit (CLS) 2018.
Tissenbaum, Sheldon, Sherman, Abelson, DiSalvo, DesPortes, Colyer, Nye, Nicoll, Soep, Richardson, Lee.(2018)Making Computing Meaningful: Computational Action for Formal and Informal Computing Education.Symposium to be presented at Connected Learning Summit (CLS) 2018.
Mike Tissenbaum, Josh Sheldon, Hal Abelson, Mark Sherman. (2018) Examining a Secondary School ComputationalAction Curriculum Using App Inventor and the Internet of Things. Int'l Conference on Computational Thinking Education (CTE2018), no. 49 (poster).
Martin, Abuah, Chakrabarty, Nguyen, Sherman, Schilder. (2018) The Tablet Game: An Embedded Assessment for Measuring Students' Programming Skill in App Inventor. P. 49th ACM Technical Symposium on Computing Science Education (SIGCSE '18), p. 1095."Detecting Student Progress During Programming Activities by Analyzing Edit Operation on their Blocks-BasedPrograms,"Dissertation, 2017.
Franklyn Turbak (chair), Jeff Gray, Caitlin Kelleher, Mark Sherman, eds. (2017) Proceedings of the 2017 IEEE Blocks and Beyond Workshop. IEEE Catalog CFP17E28-ART.
Ni, Schilder, Sherman, Martin. (2016) Computing with a Community Focus: Outcomes from an App Inventor Summer Camp for Middle School Students, J. Computing Sciences in Colleges, 31(6), 82-89.
Ni, Sherman, Schilder, Martin. (2016) Computing with a Community Focus: An App Inventor Summer Camp for Middle School Students (Abstract Only). P. 47th ACM Technical Symposium on Computing Science Education (SIGCSE '16), p. 690.
Mark Sherman and Fred Martin. (2015) The Assessment of Mobile Computational Thinking. J. Computing Sciences in Colleges, 30(6), pp. 53-59.
Martin, F. and Sherman, M. (2015) A Dual-Major Course Emphasizing Computer Science and Graphic Design. J. Computing Sciences in Colleges, 30(6), pp. 24-31.
Mark Sherman and Fred Martin. (2015) Learning analytics for the assessment of interaction with App Inventor (Position Statement). IEEE Blocks and Beyond Workshop.
Mark Sherman. (2015) Process-oriented assessment of development in App Inventor (Graduate Consortium). Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC), IEEE Symposium on, pp. 297-298.
Mark Sherman. (2014) User models of reasoning and understanding in app inventor (Doctoral Consortium). Proc. of the tenth annual conference on International computing education research (ICER '14), pp. 171-172.
Derek Walter and Mark Sherman. (2014) Learning MIT App Inventor: A Hands-On Guide to Building Your Own Android Apps. Addison-Wesley Professional.Turbak, Sherman, Martin, Wolber, Pokress. (2014) Events-First Programming in App Inventor. J. Computing Sciences in Colleges, 29(6), pp. 81-89.
Turbak, Pokress, Sherman. (2014) Mobile computational thinking with App Inventor 2 (Workshop). J. Computing Sciences in Colleges, 29(6), pp. 15-17.
Sherman, Bassil, Lipman, Tuck, Martin. Impact of Auto-Grading on and Introductory Computing Course. J. Computing Sciences in Colleges, 28(6), pp.69-75.
Sherman, Martin, Scribner-MacLean. (2011) The Role of Iteration in the Design Process of Middle School Students. In Proceedings of the 8th ACM conference on Creativity and Cognition, pp. 391-392.
Sherman. (2010) Exploration of Natural Design Tendencies of Novice Engineers (Masters Thesis). University of Massachusetts Lowell.

2017-2018 CoolThink: Developing Curricula for Computational Thinking in Hong Kong. Hong Kong Jockey Club.
2015-2017 NSF Middle School Pathways Grant No. 1433592. PI: Dr. Fred Martin, Molly Laden.
2011-2014 NSF Transforming Undergraduate Education through STEM, DUE-1225719 PI: Dr. Fred Martin
2009-2010 National Science Foundation GK-12 Fellowship. DGE-0841392 PI: Dr. Kavitha Chandra
2007-2009 National Science Foundation iTest. DRL-0624669 PI: Dr. Fred Martin
Code.org CS Ed Week and Hour of Code Advisory Committee
2017 Research Member of CS for ALL Consortium Member ACM
SIGCSEReviewer, Connected Learning Summit
2018 Co-Chair, Blocks & Beyond II Workshop at VL/HCC
2017 Special Reviewer, TOCE Special Issue on Learning Analytics
2017 Reviewer, Experience Reports and Tools for SIGCSE 2018

Computer Science Education

Empowerment through democratization of computing. Fine-grain instrumentation of student work environments to gain insights into students processes. Learning analytics. Psychology of learning, with programming focus.