Pedro Santacruz
Pedro Santacruz is an Associate Professor of Instruction in the Chandra Family Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. In this position, he focuses on teaching and creating innovative learning experiences for ECE students.
Previously, Pedro was a faculty member in the Department of Electrical Engineering at San Jose State University as an Assistant Professor from the Fall 2015 to Fall 2018. Before SJSU, he spent two years as a Postdoctoral Fellow at The University of Texas at Austin working under Prof. Christine Julien and Prof. Sriram Vishwanath as part of the Wireless Networking and Communications Group and the Mobile and Pervasive Computing Group. The work at UT Austin included system-wide implementation of distributed wireless algorithms using the Pharos testbed while overseeing undergraduate research projects and supporting graduate research efforts.
He received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Rice University (May 2013) working under Dr. Ashutosh Sabharwal as part of the Center for Multimedia Communications and received his Bachelor's and Master's Degrees in Electrical Engineering from The University of Texas at El Paso in 2004 and 2006, respectively.
Characterizing Complexity and Frequency of Feedback Given to Students: What Actually Helps Achieve Learning Outcomes?
This project is aimed at improving learning outcomes in programming courses at UT Austin, specifically targeting ECE312 (Software Design and Implementation I) and ECE360C (Algorithms), but that can potentially be expanded to other programming courses and beyond. The project is designed to enhance students' understanding of fundamental concepts by characterizing the complexity and frequency of feedback provided during completion of assignments.