Headshot of Carlos Aldana Lira

Carlos Aldana Lira


Hi! I'm Carlos.

I'm curious about learners' beliefs and practices around knowledge in computing education.

I study computer science education as a 1st-year Ph.D. student at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Past work includes:

For future work, I hope to study how computing education can cultivate students' epistemic cognition and agency in and outside the classroom — especially among non‑CS major student groups. I'm interested in better understanding:

  • What obstacles do non-CS major students face when learning computing;
  • How we can design technology and pedagogy to address those obstacles;
  • And how knowing about and practicing computing can empower students in everyday life.

When thinking about these questions, I draw from prior work in computing education, science education, and the learning sciences. If you are interested in any of my prior work or current interests, please see my list of projects or email me!

Projects

A thumbnail of the timeline.
Do Your Own Research: The 2021 Capitol Riots
Spring 2025
A content proposal for an interactive timeline of the 2021 U.S. Capitol riots supporting conservative or Republican ways of knowing, informed by survey and focus group research. Includes a prototype for the timeline.
A thumbnail of a deck of fanned event cards.
Resonance: A Deck-building Game of Audience and Influence
Spring 2025
A tabletop, deck-building game about growing and engaging with online audiences as a political influencer, modeling real-world audience dynamics.
A thumbnail of the research paper.
Wordplay: Accessible, Multilingual, Interactive Typography
Spring 2025
A research paper descibing and evaluating Wordplay, an multilingual, accessible, educational programming language. Presented at the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) 2025.
A thumbnail of the undergraduate thesis.
Qualifying Novices' Conceptual Resources in Computer Science I
Fall 2024
An undegraduate honors thesis describing the conceptions novice programmers possess and use in introductory computing classrooms.
A screenshot of the Cookbook appliation running on an Android emulator. The application is displaying a recipe for "Crispy Pineapple Fritters".
Meal Manual
Fall 2023
A cookbook application to view, organize, and write recipes and related ingredients. Written in Java for Android platforms using Android Studio, SQLite, and the Spoonacular web API.
A cropped screenshot of the dungeon scene rendered on a webpage. The scene shows the corner of the dungeon from a three-point perspective. A pot, chest, table, chalice, sword, pedestal, and floating, polygonal heart can be seen.
CSCI 4250 Project 4
Fall 2023
A 3D dungeon scene with textures, lighting, and animation. Written in JavaScript, GLSL, and HTML for modern web browsers using WebGL.
A screenshot of the homepage for the website on which the essay's are hosted. The homepage lists the project's title, author, and brief description.
Irish Educational Technology: From Policy to Enterprise
Summer 2023
A series of short essays documenting and analyzing the educational technologies industry in Ireland. Integrated with spaced-repitition assessments to facilitate learning and retention.
A cropped screenshot of three client sessions and a server session on a multiplexed terminal; only two client sesions are completely visible. The two clients have sent and display messages to and from the chatroom.
Chat
Spring 2023
A terminal-based chat application with client and server implmentations leveraging thread-based concurrency and SQLite. Written in the Zig programming langauge.
A screenshot of Zig code from the Toy Huffman Encoder codebase. The code imports various files, defines many constants, and defines a "Record" structure containing a "symbol" field and a "frequency" field.
Toy Huffman Encoder
Spring 2023
A commandline file compression application using tries and canonical Huffman codes. Written in the Zig programming language.
A cropped screenshot of the 32-bit computer's circutry in Logisim. Registers, memory, value probes, and the control unit are shown and interconnected by circutry. An output register is connected to eight hexadecimal digit displays.
Relatively Simple Computer
Fall 2022
A 32-bit computer simulated in Logisim capable of running programs written in a 16-instruction assembly. Includes a program printing the Gray code representations of numbers.
A screenshot of Lua code from the Camus ECS codebase. The code defines and implements a function to delete game entities and organize game entities into component groups.
Camus ECS
Spring 2022
An entity component system for organizing game logic in the LÖVE2D graphics framework. Written in Lua for the LuaJIT runtime.
A cropped screenshot of Sokoclone gameplay. The perspective is top-down, and two instances of the player character can be seen, separated by a wall. Many boxes and storage locations are visible, as well as gameplay statistics.
Sokoclone
Fall 2021
A prototype for a sokoban videogame featuring an integrated, in-game level editor. Made in the LÖVE2D graphics framework with a prototype of Camus ECS.
A cropped screenshot of Litargie gameplay. The perspective is side-scolling, and the player character is airborne, aiming a grappling hook towards an off-screen target.
Litargie
Spring 2021
A 2D, story-based platformer videogame. Made in Godot for the "Games for Change 2021 Student Challenge Competition" game jam.
A cropped screenshot of Grapple Hike gameplay. The perspective is side-scrolling, and a man is standing by a pink flag atop a snowy hilltop.
Grapple Hike
Fall 2020
A 2D puzzle-platformer videogame. Made in Godot for the "Secret Santa Jam" game jam.
A cropped screenshot of Air's End gameplay. The perspective is top-down, and a small, green astronaut is positoined in the center of the image, surrounded by walls and bones.
Air's End
Summer 2020
A top-down, turn-based rougelike videogame. Made in Godot for the "Summer Slow James June 20202: Turn-Based Games" game jam.
A cropped screenshot of Down Down Dunegon gameplay. The perspective is side-scrolling, and the player character is air-borne, rocketing towards a line of coins.
Down Down Dungeon
Summer 2020
A 2D platformer videogame. Made in Godot for the "GMTK Game Jam 2020" game jam.

See this site's sourcehut repository to view its source code and provide feedback. This site's code is modeled after that of Amy J. Ko's faculty website. Colorscheme is Flexoki by Steph Ango.