Hi, I’m Thomas 👋
I build educational products that reimagine the way that people learn to program so they can:
- Express themselves and their values with programming.
- Build an intuitive understanding of concepts quickly.
- Benefit from cutting edge, evidence-based learning support.
$4.8M+
Grant funding to support my work
65+
Peer-reviewed papers on education innovation
5k+
Students impacted by my work
I build innovations that motivate students and support their learning as they tackle complex projects, like the examples below!
Interactive Lectures in the IDE
I developed a novel way to deliver short lectures in the student’s programming environment.
- Pause at any point and edit the code.
- Mini coding assignments embedded in the lecture.
- Comprehension questions keep students engaged.
Automated Hints and Feedback
I developed data-driven hints and feedback that support students when they get stuck, using data from prior students.
- Customized help adapts to the student’s code.
- Data-driven algorithm requires little to no instructor authoring.
- Rigorous evaluations show increased performance and learning.
Code that Explains Itself
I created a code visualization tool that directly links each line of code students write to output they see.
- Visualize iteration, even with complex nested loops.
- See how variables changes throughout execution.
- Easily debug issues in your code.
Adaptive A/B Testing to Improve Learning
My team won the $1M XPRIZE Digital Learning Challenge to modernize the use of experimentation in education.
- A/B testing reveals effective instructional design.
- Adaptive experimentation maximizes student benefit.
- Supports personalized learning at scale.
Learning Program Design
Jigsaw lets students design a function before they write code to implement it, so they can focus on learning important programming design patterns.
-
Compose solutions out of common code “patterns” like
filter. - Visualize how code executes with different inputs.
- Use your design to solve the problem with code.
I design curricula and tools that make learning programming engaging and authentic, like the examples below!
Making Games
My “Bounce!” curriculum covers all the basics of programming by making a popular casual game.
- Lessons cover loops, variables, functions and conditionals.
- Students write almost 100% of the code, so they own their work.
- Final game looks polished and professional, in just 4 lessons.
Making Simulations
I extended a popular novice programming environment with a Physics API allowing for easy simulations.
- Jump straight into exploration and skip the set-up.
- Learn how planets orbit, or make a physics-based game.
Making Music
TraceNote lets students learn to trace code intuitively by playing music.
- Learn the fundamental CS skill of code tracing.
- No numbers or math - just music!
- Build an intuitive understanding of code before a class.
Making a Difference
In my Machine Learning class, students solved a real-world problem for the NC State Climate Office to identify erroneous instrument readings.
- A real dataset with 8M+ instances and heavy class imbalance.
- Students competed on a leaderboard to build the best model.
- The winners were hired to build a production model.
Expertise
I bring core capabilities to my work to create high-impact educational content.
Full-service Problem Solving
I wear all the hats – need finding, ideation, design, prototyping, user testing, deployment and evaluation.
Evidence-based Practices
I build on research to create innovations with real, measurable learning and engagement.
Rapid Prototyping and Iteration
I go from an idea to a fully-interactive prototype quickly, and pivot when ideas don’t work.
A/B Testing and Experimentation
I use experiments to compare ideas and make data-backed design choices that work.
User Testing
I run detailed user testing to understand learners’ mental models and extract design insight.
Technical Innovation
I’ve made custom interpreters, redesigned IDEs, and built data-driven models – whatever innovation I needed to build the best learning experience.
Student Feedback
"Dr. Price was always prepared for class with a presentation, TopHat, and usually lab activity… The interactive videos for homework were very helpful, and this class is one of the few I think that truly benefit from the ‘flipped classroom’."
"Dr. Price was respectful to students throughout the course and always looking for feedback. He excelled in translating very difficult to understand topics of machine learning into easily understandable presentations even for students not of a machine learning background. His PowerPoints were extraordinarily clear and well created and care in every aspect of the course was shown."
"One of the strongest teachers I’ve ever had. He’s consistently prepared for class with in-depth knowledge about every subject we cover… If you have a system where teachers train other teachers, letting Dr. Price run that would be a great idea."
