"Education Technology Interfaces for Better Social Learning & Instructor Decision-Making" presented by Iris Howley, Stanford University

Abstract:

Designing educational technology to best support student engagement and learning is an open and highly critical research question that will shape the future of human learning with computers. However, education is a unique context in which standard human-computer interaction (HCI) methodologies need to be adapted to support the goals of instructors. In this talk, I provide an overview of my prior work generating design recommendations to improve the learning and help seeking experience in online course discussion boards by applying educational and psychological theory. I then extend this understanding to proposed future work on the design of data visualizations for other educational technology contexts. The presentation includes discussion of various avenues through which students and faculty have collaborated on my research, and the identi cation of future opportunities for participation.

Bio:

Iris Howley is a human-computer interaction researcher and learning scientist focusing on enabling students to overcome obstacles to effective participation in their learning process. She received her B.S. in Computer Science from Drexel University and her M.S. and Ph.D. in Human-Computer Interaction from Carnegie Mellon University. Currently, she is a postdoctoral research fellow in Stanford, California working with the LINK Research Lab at the University of Texas Arlington and the Lytics Lab at Stanford University. Her PhD dissertation examined the impact of reputation systems on student help seeking in online course discussion forums. Her current and future work is at the intersection of user-centered research & design and education technology, examining the design of interfaces for social interaction among students and ways of scaffolding learning analytics dashboards to support instructor decision-making.