SurfNet in Canada

Posted on | October 15, 2010 | No Comments

I just finished visiting with about a dozen researchers plus perhaps four dozen students, as part of the SurfNet annual meeting (I am on the Advisory Board). This is an NSERC sponsored strategic network in Canada, focused on different aspects of surface computing, and with strong ties to many different industry partners (e.g., Smart, TRLabs, Bedarra Research Labs).

The workshop was very impressive, largely because of the incredible range and novelty of the projects underway by the major researchers and their students. Universities involved include Calgary, Queens, Waterloo, Saskatchewan, Carleton, and UPC. An important strength is the extensive collaboration already underway among researchers within the network, their industry partners, and many other collaborators as well, including international researchers. Topics are focused on visualizations, novel interaction techniques, user experience in tabletop gaming or other applications, and lots more. Application areas include e-health, software teams, GIS, and educational games. Wow!

Designing for a hybrid class

Posted on | October 7, 2010 | No Comments

This semester I am re-engineering my graduate HCI class in Usability Engineering to be suitable for both the resident doctoral students I normally have and a more unpredictable set of remote students who are pursuing Professional Masters degrees here in IST. The challenge is to take what I normally teach in an open-ended and discussion-oriented fashion, and turn it into something that is planned out in advance, structured into manageable pieces for distance education, and that doesn’t rely on FTF interaction with me or other students in the class.

My approach is to break the HCI content up into smaller pieces, but also to plan very carefully in advance what I will initiate as “class activities” - these now must be things that a remote student can carry out in a relatively autonomous way. We will also need to rely much more on tools for online communication, e.g. forums or wikis, even when working FTF, or the students not co-present may miss out. Very hard to imagine all this in advance!

Doctoral education in an iSchool

Posted on | June 4, 2009 | No Comments

Last week I participated in an interesting workshop organized by Alison Druin, Ken Fleischman and others at Maryland’s iSchool. There were a number of talks about approaches taken and lessons learned, followed by some brainstorming about how to leap-frog current concepts. It’s hard to summarize everything that was shared, but some of the themes are ones that have been around for a while, e.g. what defines a PhD in an iSchool? Information is clearly central; so is a persistent focus on people and their context; what about technology? How central (really) is HCI? Where does a Professional PhD degree fit into this?

One of the most actionable concepts was offered by the Maryland crew. For their introductory course, individual faculty have put together 2-week modules in their areas of expertise (e.g., social networking). Each module includes a brief description, some discussion questions or issues, and some readings that are a mix of classic and state-of-the-art. The module is then “facilitated” by the instructor. Nice concept, somewhat like what we’ve done in our intro course here, but ours was somewhat less modular and/or tied to individual faculty. The UMD iSchool faculty are considering making their modules available more broadly; stay tuned.

For me the question is still very much one of balance - how to ensure that the students get and share an iSchool identity (why else are they here), but also start learning about, researching, and publishing as a member of a research community as soon as possible.

In the brainstorming we were dared to come up with things that were as removed as possible from how we now do the business of doctoral education. Many of the ideas floated were related to sharing - of students, courses, faculty, research lab apprenticeships, etc. There was also quite a bit of interest (inspired perhaps by the nice examples from Maryland) in orienting PhD students to societal impact and projects that serve the world. And somehow clouds kept showing up, though I can’t remember why!

As the summer begins…

Posted on | May 21, 2009 | No Comments

Everything always seems possible at the beginning of the summer, when the grades are in, the graduates are gone, and the high-energy summer interns arrive. Lots of excitement, lots of planning. Even the weather cooperates. So as far as I can see ahead, this looks to be my best State College summer ever! But I guess that just like the guys on Weather World, I’ll have to check back later and see how well it works out…