SubscribeIvan Alonso is an undergraduate who has been involved in multiple facets of ongoing research thanks to his role as a peer leader in the computer science program at El Paso Community College (EPCC).
EPCC’s Developing Computational Adversarial Thinking project (National Science Foundation Award Abstract #2300378), led by Computer Science Professor Christian Servin, explores what happens when adversarial thinking is infused in three introductory computer courses. The project is also studying the impact of experiential learning opportunities on student recruitment and retention.
“Adversarial thinking is a way to think ahead or to prevent potential attacks or capabilities that can happen to your code,” Alonso explained of the combination of cybersecurity skills in software engineering courses during the student poster session at the 2024 ATE Principal Investigators’ Conference in Washington, D.C. A peer leader for one year and then leader of the peer leaders another year, Alonso’s scientific poster included displays of data from several cohorts of EPCC students.
“So we did a kind of an experiment where we had two groups of students. One group that took the courses, just normal courses without the adversarial concept, and then this group that took the courses with the adversarial-thinking concept and the statistics showed that students that took the courses with the adversarial concept implemented more secure programs,” Alonso said, pointing to graphs on his poster.
Peer-led help sessions have been used by EPCC’s computer science faculty since 2013. The Peer-Led Team Learning model started at the City University of New York and has been used in various science, technology, engineering, and math programs across the country.
EPCC faculty and others have found that students have been willing to ask questions of peer leaders that they have been shy about posing to faculty in class or during office hours. At EPCC peer leaders meet in person or online with up to 15 students at a time to work on activities that reinforce concepts taught by the instructor. Participation in these sessions counts toward 10% of students’ grades in the three introductory computer science courses.
With the ATE grant, EPCC’s computer science program has gained new industry partners who are providing information about real-world challenges. Servin, who is the project’s principal investigator, has incorporated this information in activities for the peer-led team learning sessions as well as for hackathons and workshops that are being supported by the ATE grant. (The grant pays for half of the peer leaders’ wages; half of their wages are paid by the college’s Student Technology Services program.)
Servin said he has found that experiential learning activities “can help the students to get motivated and also increase their sense of belonging.”
The Power of Peer-Led Learning
Servin became aware of the power of peer-led learning as an undergraduate student at The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) where he was employed as a peer leader. Later, along UTEP’s leadership, he co-led a peer learning a project that was funded with a grant from the National Center for Women & Information Technology between UTEP and EPCC. Servin earned his Ph.D. in computer science at UTEP.
Servin and two EPCC colleagues presented a paper (“An Authentic Peer-Led Learning Program for Community Colleges: A Recruitment, Retention, and Completion Instrument for Face-to-Face and Online Modality”) at the 54th Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education. And he continues to gather and analyze data about the impact of peer-led team learning on students and the peer leaders, who are students who have passed the course in which they serve as mentors.
“Peer leaders have demonstrated exceptional soft skills and critical thinking skills,” the paper reported about the 23 peer leaders who had participated in the program between 2013 and 2022.
All of them completed degrees at EPCC, and upon transferring to four-year institutions qualified for competitive scholarships and research-oriented career paths. “Most peer leaders were currently hired to work [in] industry, such as Microsoft, the Department of Homeland Security, research labs, and the private sector,” the paper reports.
“A Highly Motivated Student”
Alonso was not a peer leader when the paper was written, but has distinguished himself the past two years.
In addition to presenting a poster at the 2024 ATE PI Conference, he was one of four student panelists who spoke during the closing plenary session moderated by ATE Lead Program Director V. Celeste Carter.
“He’s a highly motivated student,” Servin said of Alonso, who continues to work as a peer leader at EPCC while taking courses at UTEP in a combined bachelor’s and master’s degree program.
During the panel discussion, Alonso explained his identification of the difficulties community college students have when they encounter new software tools as they begin work, and the process he initiated for students to familiarize themselves with a variety of tools.
Alonso encouraged the educators in the audience to develop hackathons and workshops—especially workshops—that give people hands-on experiences with technology. “They’re a really unique way to attract students [when] they’re not really sure on what they want to major,” he said.
Peer Leaders Receive Professional Development & Provide Feedback
Before each semester begins at EPCC, the peer leaders receive professional development on how to use the activities developed for their sessions. This week Servin will be teaching the four leaders who will be working the spring 2025 semester.
The peer leaders also meet weekly for 90 minutes with Servin as a group, and periodically with him individually.
They report on what is happening in their sessions, provide feedback on the activities, and receive guidance on pedagogy and how to address issues as they arise.
Each peer leader is expected to develop at least one new activity each semester. “This activity is then refined and implemented in the following semester, allowing for an authentic student perspective to be shared with their peers,” Servin explained in an email, noting that all the activities are reviewed by him and the group of peer leaders.
Other Experiential Learning Opportunities
During an interview Servin said that the process of having students do activities related to current, regional challenges encourages authentic learning unaided by artificial intelligence.
The other authentic learning experiences that have been enhanced with the Developing Computational Adversarial Thinking ATE project include Binational Hackathons and a workshop series. The project’s outreach activities include The Hackers’ Corner, a YouTube program that Servin has created to provide information about EPCC’s computer science program, emerging technologies, and practical, cybersecurity tips.
The Binational Hackathons held in 2023 and 2024 brought together people from El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, to collaborate on challenges in the communities along the U.S.-Mexico border.
These hackathons are open to all students and are preceded by workshops to help teams prepare for the cybersecurity competitions. In 2024, EPCC offered 13 workshops between September and November on topics ranging from Linux and Android to cryptography and chatbot creation.
The three-day Binational Hackathons have also included sessions where students hear from employers about industry trends and the skills employers seek in technicians.
El Paso Electric Company and Government Employees Credit Union (GECU) are the two regional employers that have begun hiring EPCC students as are result of partnering on the ATE grant.
“They are paying attention about how important adversarial thinking is for cybersecurity, for basic things, even for database management,” Servin said.
See More ATE Impacts
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