About Me

I am a learning scientist and human-computer interaction researcher who focuses on enabling student collaboration in the classroom when it will be productive. Currently, I am a PhD candidate in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University working with Vincent Aleven and Nikol Rummel.

My research combines learning science research and findings with human-computer interaction methodologies. Within my research I have developed intelligent tutoring systems to support student collaboration for elementary school students. Using these tutors, I have investigated when it is beneficial for students to work collaboratively and when it is beneficial for them to work individually and how these social planes can be combined. I am currently working to develop a prototype of a tool that would allow researchers and teachers to better integrate the adaptive switching of collaborative and individual learning into the learning process.

In October 2016, I proposed my thesis topic of how to support the adaptive switching of collaborative and individual learning within the classroom. On my committee is:

• Vincent Aleven, CMU
• Nikol Rummel, RUB & CMU
• John Zimmerman, CMU
• Pierre Dillenbourg, EPFL

Projects

Education

Orchestration Tools

To support productive learning in the classroom, it is important to support learning on multiple social planes (i.e., individual, group, class). To have technology be integrated into the classroom, it needs to support the orchestration between the different social planes. This can be especially difficult in an individual paced environment where students may be at different points of the learning at different times, such as when working on an intelligent tutoring system. We are working to develop an orchestration tool that can support the switch points between individual and collaborative learning in an individual paced environment.

Collaborative and Individual Fractions Tutors

Different studies have shown collaborative and individual learning to be more beneficial for student learning. Within this project, we explored how collaborative and individual learning may have complemnetary strengths. In addition, we explored how a combination of collaborative and individual learning may be stronger than either alone.

Modeling

For intelligent tutoring systems, student models can help support the learning process both online and offline. Currently most models are designed for individual learning and do not take into account the aspects of a collaborative environment that can impact learning. For this project, we extended the Additive Factors Model to include features of collaboration to better fit the data from collaborative sessions of learning.

Algebra Learning

As an undergraduate student, I worked with Julie Booth to assess student errors when solving algebra problems. We conducted a think aloud analysis with students to better understand the misconceptions that they have when solving both algebraic equations and word problems.

Human-Computer Interaction

Postcard Project

With changing technology, people are collecting large numbers of virtual possessions. It is not yet clear how we can design systems to help people in finding meaning within these possessions, especially since early research has indicated that virtual possessions are valued less than material. To investigate if changing the form would impact the percieved value, we used a technology probe where we sent participants snippets of their emails in the form of postcards.

Privacy

As an undergraduate student, I worked with Lori Kramer on a project assessing how people view privacy across their devices within their home. We explored privacy from the viewpoint of device, file type, location, and relationship of the person trying to view the files.

Cognitive Science

Color Cognition

As an undergraduat student, for my senior honors thesis, I worked with Roberta Klazky on how color can effect cognition. We used two different experiments to test the hypothesis that different colors can create different motivations when working, specifically the avoidance motivation and the approach motivation.

Teaching

Mentor for the LearnLab Summer School

For the summers from 2014-2016 I was a mentor for the Intelligent Tutoring Systems track for the LearnLab Summer School. The summer school is a week long activity where participants can come to learn a educationally-related technology skill. As a mentor, i worked closely with one or two groups each summer to help them build out a project and learn the skills to build an intelligent tutoring system within the week.

Recitation Instructor for Programming Usable Interfaces (PUI)

In the fall of 2015, I was a recitation instructor for PUI, which consisted of a mix of graduate and undergratudate students. This entailed editing the previous syllabus, lecture slides, and homework assignments as well as holding office hours, lecturing, and grading. The class was primarily new programmers with limited experience. For the first half of the semester, we worked primarily in Adobe Flash Builder to learn programming concepts related to rapid prototyping, debugging, algorithms, and data structures. the secnd half of the semester, we explored other prototyping tools while continuing to explore rapid prototyping through paper protoyping, PowerPoint, Balsamiq, POP, and InVision.

Recitation Instructor for User Centered Research and Design (UCRE)

In the fall of 2014, I was a recitation instructor for UCRE, which consisted of a mix of graduate and undergraduate students. Along with co-instructors for other sections, I created a syllabus, lecture slides, and homework assignments. Each week I also lectured, graded, and held office hours. The class material focused on teaching contextual inquiry along with other evaluation methods such as A/B testing, heuristic evaluations, think alouds, and data analytics.

Big Ideas for Teaching

Early in my PhD, I took a class, Educational Goals, Assessment, and Evaluation. The class was a research-based class for designing curriculum. Within the class, we had a "Big Ideas" project that linked the readings done in the class with practical teaching recommendations.

Personal

During my free time, I enjoy baking and running. I enjoy making everything from cakes and cookies to breads and mini frittatas. Last year I ran at least one race ech month. The races varied from a marathon to a 5K.

CV

You can find my CV here. Feel free to contact me if there is anything you would like to discuss more.