When executed well, project-based learning (PBL) engages students' intrinsic motivation, encourages students to learn far beyond a course's limited curriculum, and prepares students to think critically and maturely about the skills and tools at their disposal. However, educators experience mixed results when using PBL in their classrooms: some students thrive with minimal guidance and others flounder. Early evaluation of project proposals could help educators determine which students need more support, yet evaluating project proposals and student aptitude is time-consuming and difficult to scale. In this work, we design, implement, and conduct an initial user study ( n = 36) for a software system that collects project proposals and aptitude information to support educators in determining whether a student is ready to engage with PBL. We find that (1) users perceived the system as helpful for writing project proposals and identifying tools and technologies to learn more about, (2) educator ratings indicate that users with less technical experience in the project topic tend to write lower-quality project proposals, and (3) GPT-4o's ratings show agreement with educator ratings. While the prospect of using LLMs to rate the quality of students' project proposals is promising, its long-term effectiveness strongly hinges on future efforts at characterizing indicators that reliably predict students' success and motivation to learn.

When you apply for a career in tech, it often means having to decide: Am I a product manager? These roles are all clearly defined with their own sets of mostly nonoverlapping skills to help companies hire the right talent. But that's not the way we define ourselves. Most of us have a variety of skills that don't all neatly fall into one box. We collect skills across multiple dimensions over a lifetime of different experiences.

Genevieve Carlton holds a Ph.D. in history from Northwestern University. After earning her doctorate in early modern European history, Carlton worked as an assistant professor of history. Computer science majors work as software developers, security analysts, and web developers. But what if you want something a little different? The most badass jobs in computer science will push the field's boundaries and challenge you.

Girls who have seen the first season of Hyperlinked, an original series on Google's YouTube Red, are 11% more likely to be interested in computer science careers than viewers who have not watched the show, according to a new study. SAN FRANCISCO -- Google is calling on Hollywood to give equal screen time to women and minorities after a new study the Internet giant funded found that most computer scientists on television shows and in the movies are played by white men. It does not inspire underrepresented groups to pursue careers in computer science, says Daraiha Greene, Google CS in Media program manager, multicultural strategy. "We are not trying to erase that image, but we want to diversify and show other people in these roles as well," Greene said. More than three-quarters of characters engaged with computer science are men and more than two-thirds are white while 17.2% are Asian and 15.5% are from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups, according to the study from the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.