Jessica Vandenberg is a Research Scientist in the Center for Educational Informatics within the Department of Computer Science at North Carolina State University. Dr. Vandenberg earned her Ph.D. from North Carolina State University in Teacher Education and Learning Sciences, with a concentration in Educational Psychology. Her dissertation focused on the design, validation, and application of an upper elementary computer science attitudes survey.

Prior to her doctoral studies, Dr. Vandenberg worked as a classroom teacher for eleven years in public schools in North Carolina and New Jersey. During her doctoral program, she worked as a College of Education Research Fellow at the William & Ida Friday Institute for Educational Innovation at North Carolina State University. For over three years, she served as the lead education graduate student on a National Science Foundation-supported multidisciplinary project that sought to foster collaboration and programming skills in upper elementary students by developing a digital learning environment that uses virtual learning companions.

Dr. Vandenberg was a member of the 2021 Computing Innovations Fellow cohort. That project sought to create story-centric plugged and unplugged activities to support upper elementary student learning of artificial intelligence concepts as well as develop a set of self-report and multiple-choice instruments for assessing student attitudes and understanding around AI.

Dr. Vandenberg’s research focuses on computer science and computational thinking integration in upper elementary classrooms, supporting elementary and middle school students’ work with artificial intelligence, and survey design. 

Education

Ph.D., Teacher Education and Learning Sciences (2021)
North Carolina State University

M.A.T., Elementary Education (2005)
Montclair State University 

B.A., History (2000)
Pennsylvania State University

Book Chapter

Vandenberg, J., Tsan, J., Zakaria, Z., Lynch, C., Boyer, K. E., & Wiebe, E. (2021). The foundations of collaborative programming by elementary-aged children. In R. Hartshorne, L. O. Campbell, & R. DeMara (Eds.). Digitally Mediated Team Learning: Foundations and Perspectives. Springer.

Journal Articles

Vandenberg, J., Tsan, J., Boulden, D., Zakaria, Z., Lynch, C., Boyer, K., & Wiebe, E. (2020). Elementary students’ understanding of CS terms.  ACM Transactions on Computing Education (TOCE), 20(3), 1-19.

Vandenberg, J., Rachmatullah, A., Lynch, C., Boyer, K. E., & Wiebe, E. (2021). Relationship between race and gender in elementary computer science attitudes: A validation and cross-sectional study. International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction, 100293.

Zakaria, Z., Vandenberg, J., Tsan, J., Boulden, D. C., Lynch, C. F., Boyer, K. E., & Wiebe, E. N. (2021). Two-Computer Pair Programming: Exploring a Feedback Intervention to Improve Collaborative Talk in Elementary Students. Computer Science Education, 1-28.

Vandenberg, J., Zakaria, Z., Tsan, J., Iwanski, A., Lynch, C., Boyer, K. E., & Wiebe, E. (2021). Prompting collaborative and exploratory discourse: An epistemic network analysis study. International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, 1-28.

Conference Papers

Vandenberg, J., Rachmatullah, A., Lynch, C., Boyer, K. E., & Wiebe, E. (2021, June). The Relationship of CS Attitudes, Perceptions of Collaboration, and Pair Programming Strategies on Upper Elementary Students’ CS Learning. In Proceedings of the 26th ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 1 (pp. 46-52).

Tsan, J., Vandenberg, J., Lynch,  C., Wiebe, E., & Boyer, K. E. (2021, June).  Examining Collaborative Support for Block-Based Programming with Upper Elementary Students. Annual Meeting of the International Society of the Learning Sciences, 181-184.

Tsan, J., Vandenberg, J., Zakaria, Z., Boulden, D. C., Lynch, C., Wiebe, E., & Boyer, K. E. (2021, March). Collaborative Dialogue and Types of Conflict: An Analysis of Pair Programming Interactions between Upper Elementary Students. In Proceedings of the 52nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (pp. 1184-1190).

Vandenberg, J., Tsan, J., Hinckle, M., Lynch, C., Boyer, K. E., & Wiebe, E. (2020, August). Gender Differences in Upper Elementary Students’ Regulation of Learning while Pair Programming. In Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research (pp. 311-311).

Tsan, J., Vandenberg, J., Zakaria, Z., Wiggins, J. B., Webber, A. R., Bradbury, A., … & Boyer, K. E. (2020, February). A Comparison of Two Pair Programming Configurations for Upper Elementary Students. In Proceedings of the 51st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (pp. 346-352).

Bradbury, A., Wiebe, E., Vandenberg, J., Tsan, J., Lynch, C., & Boyer, K. (2019, November). The Interface Design of a Collaborative Computer Science Learning Environment for Elementary Aged Students. In Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting (Vol. 63, No. 1, pp. 493-497). Sage CA: Los Angeles, CA: SAGE Publications.

Peddycord-Liu, Z., Cateté, V., Vandenberg, J., Barnes, T., Lynch, C. F., & Rutherford, T. (2019, May). A field study of teachers using a curriculum-integrated digital game. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-12).

Presentations

Zakaria, Z., Tsan, J., Vandenberg, J., Lynch, C., Boyer, K. E., & Wiebe, E. (2021, June). Identifying productive conflict during upper elementary students’ collaborative programming. ISLS 2021, Virtual.

Vandenberg, J., Tsan, J., Hinckle, M., Lynch, C, Boyer, K E, & Wiebe, E. (2021, April). Discursive gender differences in upper elementary students’ pair programming. Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Virtual.

Zakaria, Z., Vandenberg, J., Tsan, J., Boulden, D., Lynch, C., Boyer, K. E., & Wiebe, E. (2021, April) Designing virtual pedagogical agents with a participatory design approach. Annual Meeting of American Educational Research Association, Virtual.

Vandenberg, J., Tsan, J., Zakaria, Z., Boulden, D., Boyer, K., Lynch, C., & Wiebe, E. (2020, April). Elementary learners’ regulation in computer-supported collaborative learning environments. Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, California. 

Zakaria, Z., Vandenberg, J., Boulden, D., Tsan, J., Boyer, K., Lynch, C., & Wiebe, E. (2020, April). Feedback to improve collaboration in pair programming. Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, California.