Research

wConnect: A Developmental Community for Women in IST

In this NSF-sponsored action research project, we are building and studying a community of young women at different levels of development - high school, university, and professional as they support each other in their education and career goals related to computer and information sciences.

Wireless State College

This community informatics project is sponsored by Intel and The Knight Foundation; it is exploring a variety of community engagement activities that can be supported by the WiFi network currently managed by Get Wireless. For example, we are collaborating with statecollege.com on a mobile information system for the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts, a traditional local event that takes place each summer in State College.

End-User Web Development

We are continuing prior work on end-user web development, but shifting attention to the prospects and tools for end users to collect and combine the wealth of information available on the web. Our current focus is on end users who have integrated web information and activities into many areas of their lives.

Informal CMC for Interaction and Social Connection in Communities

We are studying different mechanisms for users to communicate short messages in more or less public channels, assessing the factors that increase participation or change its character, as well as the consequences of such messaging for social relationships and feelings of community.

Process and Content Common Ground in Collaborative Sense-Making

This ONR-sponsored project has been underway for several years; we have used systematic laboratory studies to track the development of common ground as new teams solve complex problems together. An important distinction is between shared content or information and shared strategies or tactics for how to manage the sharing and decision-making process.

Former (less active) projects

My PhD student Jochen Rode built and evaluated CLICK, an end-user development tool for building simple interactive web applications.

While still at Virginia Tech, I worked with Jack Carroll and others to build MOOsburg, a place-based community network, and related projects like TeacherBridge, an environment for knowledge development and sharing among public school teachers. A general outcome of these and other projects is the Bridgetools software architecture and tool suite that provides seamless support and interleaving of synchronous and asynchronous interaction.

The CommunitySims project was carried out over the last few years I was at Virginia Tech; we studied development of a cross-generational learning community (middle school students and senior citizens) who collaborate on Stagecast Creator visual simulation projects that explored a range of community issues.

For many years I studied and built tools for people learning and using Smalltalk, an object-oriented language and environment. One set of tools I built was called the Scenario Browser, an approach to middle-out development organized around user scenarios.