Voting in the United States is a constitutional right, allowing citizens to voice concerns involv... more Voting in the United States is a constitutional right, allowing citizens to voice concerns involving policies and laws. It is an essential civil liberty, in which the modification of voter laws can affect over 206 million eligible voters. Since 2008, more than half of the States in the U.S.A. have or are in the process of implementing voter ID laws. These laws have introduced many problems associated with identification credentials, including non-photo voter IDs and photo IDs that are required to vote. If all these new laws are passed, it is predicted that millions of Americans will be disenfranchised, making it more difficult for eligible voters to cast ballots. This paper introduces an identity verification method called video verification (vSquared). vSquared is a tool that uses a video of a person stating their name and address to verify identify claims. In this experiment, the identity verification methods included the use of a person presenting a voter ID card (without photo), a photo ID card, and using vSquared. Each of these three methods had a real condition where the person and matching ID were all legitimate and also a fraudulent condition where impersonation was involved. Each participant had to verify the identity of three different individuals, where some of the individuals represented real conditions while others were impersonating someone else. Participants in the study played the role analogous to a poll worker and had to say if they thought the condition was real or fraudulent. This is similar to the scenario where a poll worker would have to verify an individual's identity prior to voting in an election. The experiment aimed to identify the major differences in recognition rates, if any, for the current verification methods (voter ID and photo ID) against each other and also vSquared. Based on this research, vSquared detected fraud at least 70% more accurately than a non-photo voter ID or photo ID. Although, both the photo ID and vSquared identifying methods were proficient when identifying conditions that were considered to be legitimate IDs, 72% of participants preferred vSquared as a more accurate method for identity verification.
2020 Research on Equity and Sustained Participation in Engineering, Computing, and Technology (RESPECT), 2020
There have been many discussions on the significant lack of representation of minorities in compu... more There have been many discussions on the significant lack of representation of minorities in computing. Research suggests that an attributing factor to this deficit is a lack of exposure to computing, computing careers, and underrepresented role models. Introducing underrepresented minority students to hands-on computer science activities at an early age is believed to improve students' attitudes in computing. Increasing students' computing attitudes may help encourage participation and minimize deficiencies in retaining underrepresented minority computing students. An interactive summer program was implemented to teach computing to middle-school-aged underrepresented minority students through a unique curriculum using Sphero robotic balls and math and science concepts. Students were assessed to determine the programs' effectiveness in increasing computing attitudes and academic performance of math and science. Results showed that the intervention significantly improved students' academic performances and their confidence in deciding a future career path. Further evaluation is needed to explore longitudinal effects of the varying levels of math, science, and computing rigor used within this intervention. Findings from this study provide recommendations for how to implement computing practices within the existing math and science curriculum in prospective initiatives.
While delivering snacks, Snackbot’s need to actively engage in conversation with the customers an... more While delivering snacks, Snackbot’s need to actively engage in conversation with the customers and other individuals, provides an approach for verbal interaction. This paper addresses the verbal human robot interaction between humans and robots using a speech recognizer named Sphinx 4. Sphinx 4, written entirely in Java is capable of recognizing predetermined words and sentences. Thereby, allowing robots to actively engage in conversations using spoken language.
Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Southeast Conference, 2020
Black students, especially at the high school level, show a high interest in learning computer sc... more Black students, especially at the high school level, show a high interest in learning computer science; however, they only represent a small population of computer science full-time professionals in the industry. A few aspects that contribute to this are 1) the lack of early exposure to CS, 2) the absence of programs and resources at the high school level, and 3) the retention of Black students in the computer science major. Historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) have a lower number of the Black undergraduate population with only 8.4% of Black students, yet they award 15.4% of STEM bachelor's degrees. It is important to investigate the current needs, challenges, mindsets, and effective methods used in computing education at HBCUs to improve the current state of CS departments for Black students. Focus groups of Black computing student participants (n=21) were conducted during a workshop to learn the current needs of HBCU students pursuing a computing degree and of ...
2018 Research on Equity and Sustained Participation in Engineering, Computing, and Technology (RESPECT)
A sense of belonging is key to pursuing and persisting in computing. It is also one of the reason... more A sense of belonging is key to pursuing and persisting in computing. It is also one of the reasons for the low representation of women and Black people in computing. Research has attempted to understand why these underrepresented groups feel like they do not belong in computing. These initiatives tend to analyze race and gender separately as if people experience these aspects of identity separately. For Black women who are seeking to belong in computing, these sorts of analyses are problematic. Black women are not just “women plus color, or Black plus gender” [1]. Intersections of their race and gender yield unique experiences for them. Thus, analyses that only focus on women’s experiences or Blacks’ experiences leaves out the many nuances that result from one being both a woman and Black. This paper is an exploration of “what it means to belong” in computing. By analyzing Black womens multiple identities through an intersectional lens, we show that most research for Black people or women is not inclusive of Black womens unique perspectives. We make visible a gap in computing education research that does not address intersectionality.
This paper aims to contribute to the literature by presenting a user-centered design research met... more This paper aims to contribute to the literature by presenting a user-centered design research methodology for the design of police-community tools and by introducing the Virtual Traffic Stop mobile system. Though traffic stops may be an irregular occurrence to the everyday driver, when the driving population is looked at as a whole, they are, in fact, a frequent affair. Traffic stops make up the most common type of contact civilians have with the police. In recent years, media footage of traffic stops has shown how dangerous these encounters can be. Researchers conducted unstructured group interviews and participated in ride-along drives with local law enforcement officials. From this method, four user requirements are presented to the community at large: the system does not impair the safety of officers, the system allows for community engagement, the system should serve as a de-escalation tool, and the system should be cost-effective and easily adaptable for agencies and citizens ...
Ontologies are recognized as a promising approach to support the reusability and interoperability... more Ontologies are recognized as a promising approach to support the reusability and interoperability of learners' preferences; which is useful for the optimization and flexibility of data and resources. However, little to no research on adaptive learning systems or semantic technologies explore personalized experiences based on the various out-of-school experiences and activities of the users. This research investigates the design, development, and evaluation of an ontology-based framework for students' interests in a math word problem generator that may be applied to various other learning systems and possibly other domains. The cohesiveness of the problems in addition to the usability, usefulness, and the short-term effectiveness of the derived technology will be investigated by comparing the generated questions to numerical and traditional Algebra I problems. We aim to better understand students' interests to identify the role that their interests can play in semantic te...
Twenty Fifth International Flairs Conference, May 16, 2012
Abstract While delivering snacks, Snackbot's need to actively engage in conversation... more Abstract While delivering snacks, Snackbot's need to actively engage in conversation with the customers and other individuals, provides an approach for verbal interaction. This paper addresses the verbal human robot interaction between humans and robots using a speech recognizer named Sphinx 4. Sphinx 4, written entirely in Java is capable of recognizing predetermined words and sentences. Thereby, allowing robots to actively engage in conversations using spoken language.
Voting in the United States is a constitutional right, allowing citizens to voice concerns involv... more Voting in the United States is a constitutional right, allowing citizens to voice concerns involving policies and laws. It is an essential civil liberty, in which the modification of voter laws can affect over 206 million eligible voters. Since 2008, more than half of the States in the U.S.A. have or are in the process of implementing voter ID laws. These laws have introduced many problems associated with identification credentials, including non-photo voter IDs and photo IDs that are required to vote. If all these new laws are passed, it is predicted that millions of Americans will be disenfranchised, making it more difficult for eligible voters to cast ballots. This paper introduces an identity verification method called video verification (vSquared). vSquared is a tool that uses a video of a person stating their name and address to verify identify claims. In this experiment, the identity verification methods included the use of a person presenting a voter ID card (without photo), a photo ID card, and using vSquared. Each of these three methods had a real condition where the person and matching ID were all legitimate and also a fraudulent condition where impersonation was involved. Each participant had to verify the identity of three different individuals, where some of the individuals represented real conditions while others were impersonating someone else. Participants in the study played the role analogous to a poll worker and had to say if they thought the condition was real or fraudulent. This is similar to the scenario where a poll worker would have to verify an individual’s identity prior to voting in an election. The experiment aimed to identify the major differences in recognition rates, if any, for the current verification methods (voter ID and photo ID) against each other and also vSquared. Based on this research, vSquared detected fraud at least 70% more accurately than a non-photo voter ID or photo ID. Although, both the photo ID and vSquared identifying methods were proficient when identifying conditions that were considered to be legitimate IDs, 72% of participants preferred vSquared as a more accurate method for identity verification.
Voting in the United States is a constitutional right, allowing citizens to voice concerns involv... more Voting in the United States is a constitutional right, allowing citizens to voice concerns involving policies and laws. It is an essential civil liberty, in which the modification of voter laws can affect over 206 million eligible voters. Since 2008, more than half of the States in the U.S.A. have or are in the process of implementing voter ID laws. These laws have introduced many problems associated with identification credentials, including non-photo voter IDs and photo IDs that are required to vote. If all these new laws are passed, it is predicted that millions of Americans will be disenfranchised, making it more difficult for eligible voters to cast ballots. This paper introduces an identity verification method called video verification (vSquared). vSquared is a tool that uses a video of a person stating their name and address to verify identify claims. In this experiment, the identity verification methods included the use of a person presenting a voter ID card (without photo), a photo ID card, and using vSquared. Each of these three methods had a real condition where the person and matching ID were all legitimate and also a fraudulent condition where impersonation was involved. Each participant had to verify the identity of three different individuals, where some of the individuals represented real conditions while others were impersonating someone else. Participants in the study played the role analogous to a poll worker and had to say if they thought the condition was real or fraudulent. This is similar to the scenario where a poll worker would have to verify an individual's identity prior to voting in an election. The experiment aimed to identify the major differences in recognition rates, if any, for the current verification methods (voter ID and photo ID) against each other and also vSquared. Based on this research, vSquared detected fraud at least 70% more accurately than a non-photo voter ID or photo ID. Although, both the photo ID and vSquared identifying methods were proficient when identifying conditions that were considered to be legitimate IDs, 72% of participants preferred vSquared as a more accurate method for identity verification.
2020 Research on Equity and Sustained Participation in Engineering, Computing, and Technology (RESPECT), 2020
There have been many discussions on the significant lack of representation of minorities in compu... more There have been many discussions on the significant lack of representation of minorities in computing. Research suggests that an attributing factor to this deficit is a lack of exposure to computing, computing careers, and underrepresented role models. Introducing underrepresented minority students to hands-on computer science activities at an early age is believed to improve students' attitudes in computing. Increasing students' computing attitudes may help encourage participation and minimize deficiencies in retaining underrepresented minority computing students. An interactive summer program was implemented to teach computing to middle-school-aged underrepresented minority students through a unique curriculum using Sphero robotic balls and math and science concepts. Students were assessed to determine the programs' effectiveness in increasing computing attitudes and academic performance of math and science. Results showed that the intervention significantly improved students' academic performances and their confidence in deciding a future career path. Further evaluation is needed to explore longitudinal effects of the varying levels of math, science, and computing rigor used within this intervention. Findings from this study provide recommendations for how to implement computing practices within the existing math and science curriculum in prospective initiatives.
While delivering snacks, Snackbot’s need to actively engage in conversation with the customers an... more While delivering snacks, Snackbot’s need to actively engage in conversation with the customers and other individuals, provides an approach for verbal interaction. This paper addresses the verbal human robot interaction between humans and robots using a speech recognizer named Sphinx 4. Sphinx 4, written entirely in Java is capable of recognizing predetermined words and sentences. Thereby, allowing robots to actively engage in conversations using spoken language.
Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Southeast Conference, 2020
Black students, especially at the high school level, show a high interest in learning computer sc... more Black students, especially at the high school level, show a high interest in learning computer science; however, they only represent a small population of computer science full-time professionals in the industry. A few aspects that contribute to this are 1) the lack of early exposure to CS, 2) the absence of programs and resources at the high school level, and 3) the retention of Black students in the computer science major. Historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) have a lower number of the Black undergraduate population with only 8.4% of Black students, yet they award 15.4% of STEM bachelor's degrees. It is important to investigate the current needs, challenges, mindsets, and effective methods used in computing education at HBCUs to improve the current state of CS departments for Black students. Focus groups of Black computing student participants (n=21) were conducted during a workshop to learn the current needs of HBCU students pursuing a computing degree and of ...
2018 Research on Equity and Sustained Participation in Engineering, Computing, and Technology (RESPECT)
A sense of belonging is key to pursuing and persisting in computing. It is also one of the reason... more A sense of belonging is key to pursuing and persisting in computing. It is also one of the reasons for the low representation of women and Black people in computing. Research has attempted to understand why these underrepresented groups feel like they do not belong in computing. These initiatives tend to analyze race and gender separately as if people experience these aspects of identity separately. For Black women who are seeking to belong in computing, these sorts of analyses are problematic. Black women are not just “women plus color, or Black plus gender” [1]. Intersections of their race and gender yield unique experiences for them. Thus, analyses that only focus on women’s experiences or Blacks’ experiences leaves out the many nuances that result from one being both a woman and Black. This paper is an exploration of “what it means to belong” in computing. By analyzing Black womens multiple identities through an intersectional lens, we show that most research for Black people or women is not inclusive of Black womens unique perspectives. We make visible a gap in computing education research that does not address intersectionality.
This paper aims to contribute to the literature by presenting a user-centered design research met... more This paper aims to contribute to the literature by presenting a user-centered design research methodology for the design of police-community tools and by introducing the Virtual Traffic Stop mobile system. Though traffic stops may be an irregular occurrence to the everyday driver, when the driving population is looked at as a whole, they are, in fact, a frequent affair. Traffic stops make up the most common type of contact civilians have with the police. In recent years, media footage of traffic stops has shown how dangerous these encounters can be. Researchers conducted unstructured group interviews and participated in ride-along drives with local law enforcement officials. From this method, four user requirements are presented to the community at large: the system does not impair the safety of officers, the system allows for community engagement, the system should serve as a de-escalation tool, and the system should be cost-effective and easily adaptable for agencies and citizens ...
Ontologies are recognized as a promising approach to support the reusability and interoperability... more Ontologies are recognized as a promising approach to support the reusability and interoperability of learners' preferences; which is useful for the optimization and flexibility of data and resources. However, little to no research on adaptive learning systems or semantic technologies explore personalized experiences based on the various out-of-school experiences and activities of the users. This research investigates the design, development, and evaluation of an ontology-based framework for students' interests in a math word problem generator that may be applied to various other learning systems and possibly other domains. The cohesiveness of the problems in addition to the usability, usefulness, and the short-term effectiveness of the derived technology will be investigated by comparing the generated questions to numerical and traditional Algebra I problems. We aim to better understand students' interests to identify the role that their interests can play in semantic te...
Twenty Fifth International Flairs Conference, May 16, 2012
Abstract While delivering snacks, Snackbot's need to actively engage in conversation... more Abstract While delivering snacks, Snackbot's need to actively engage in conversation with the customers and other individuals, provides an approach for verbal interaction. This paper addresses the verbal human robot interaction between humans and robots using a speech recognizer named Sphinx 4. Sphinx 4, written entirely in Java is capable of recognizing predetermined words and sentences. Thereby, allowing robots to actively engage in conversations using spoken language.
Voting in the United States is a constitutional right, allowing citizens to voice concerns involv... more Voting in the United States is a constitutional right, allowing citizens to voice concerns involving policies and laws. It is an essential civil liberty, in which the modification of voter laws can affect over 206 million eligible voters. Since 2008, more than half of the States in the U.S.A. have or are in the process of implementing voter ID laws. These laws have introduced many problems associated with identification credentials, including non-photo voter IDs and photo IDs that are required to vote. If all these new laws are passed, it is predicted that millions of Americans will be disenfranchised, making it more difficult for eligible voters to cast ballots. This paper introduces an identity verification method called video verification (vSquared). vSquared is a tool that uses a video of a person stating their name and address to verify identify claims. In this experiment, the identity verification methods included the use of a person presenting a voter ID card (without photo), a photo ID card, and using vSquared. Each of these three methods had a real condition where the person and matching ID were all legitimate and also a fraudulent condition where impersonation was involved. Each participant had to verify the identity of three different individuals, where some of the individuals represented real conditions while others were impersonating someone else. Participants in the study played the role analogous to a poll worker and had to say if they thought the condition was real or fraudulent. This is similar to the scenario where a poll worker would have to verify an individual’s identity prior to voting in an election. The experiment aimed to identify the major differences in recognition rates, if any, for the current verification methods (voter ID and photo ID) against each other and also vSquared. Based on this research, vSquared detected fraud at least 70% more accurately than a non-photo voter ID or photo ID. Although, both the photo ID and vSquared identifying methods were proficient when identifying conditions that were considered to be legitimate IDs, 72% of participants preferred vSquared as a more accurate method for identity verification.
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Papers by Dekita Moon