Matthew KamAssistant Professor
Carnegie Mellon University
mattkam AT cs DOT cmu DOT edu
@matthewkamTo change the world, that change has to begin within ourselves. My research group investigates how we can integrate the latest education research into the design of e-learning applications that impact literacy and language learning among underserved communities throughout the world. We adopt a participatory approach in which we work with end-users to understand their needs, attitudes, sociocultural practices and political environments. Despite being technology innovators, we maintain a healthy skepticism about technology, using numerous feasibility studies and field trials as our reality check.
Research interests: computer-assisted language learning, educational games, literacy technologies, mobile learning, technology in the developing world
Tel: +1 (412) 268-6162 / Fax: +1 (412) 268-1266
jobodnar AT cs DOT cmu DOT edu
Office hours (Spring 2010): By appointment
Travel Schedule
ISLS ICLS 2010 conference
June 28-July 2, 2010 - Chicago, Illinois
Northwestern University
April 29, 2010 - Chicago, Illinois
ACM CHI 2010 conference
April 10-15, 2009 - Atlanta, Georgia
University of Pennsylvania
March 31, 2010 - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Game Developers Conference
March 9-13, 2010 - San Francisco, California
Nokia Research Center
March 5, 2010 - Palo Alto, California
NSF workshop on Creating a Research Agenda in Computing at the Margins
February 17-19, 2010 - Atlanta, Georgia
Educational Technology Winter School
December 9-22, 2009 - Hyderabad, India
Three Rivers TESOL Fall 2009 conference
October 17, 2009 - Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
CCC workshop on CS and Global Development
Aug 1-2, 2009 - Berkeley, California
Games for Change festival
May 27-29, 2009 - New York City, New York
IEEE/ACM ICTD 2009 conference
April 17-19, 2009 - Doha, Qatar
ACM CHI 2009 conference
April 4-9, 2009 - Boston, Massachusetts
National Science Foundation
March 24-25, 2009 - Washington D.C.
Ashoka: Innovators for the Public
March 23, 2009 - Washington D.C.
American Institutes of Research
March 23, 2009 - Washington D.C.
Columbia University
March 13, 2009 - New York City, New York
United Nations
March 11, 2009 - New York City, New York
Contact Information
Matthew Kam
Assistant Professor
Carnegie Mellon University
School of Computer Science
Human-Computer Interaction Institute
5000 Forbes Avenue
Newell Simon Hall, Room 3525
Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3891, USA
Tel: +1 (412) 268-9805 / Fax: +1 (412) 268-1266
mattkam AT cs DOT cmu DOT edu
@matthewkam Acknowledgement
We are grateful to the MacArthur Foundation, Microsoft, National Science Foundation, Nokia, Qualcomm and Verizon for their major financial support. Sponsors-in-kind include Sony Creative Software (Sound Forge), Wildbit (Beanstalk subversion server) and Wrike (project management facility).
We thank our collaborators for running the extra mile with us: ASSET Foundation India, Byrraju Foundation, edioma, McPherson Middle School (Kansas), Sesame Workshop India and Suraksha.
We acknowledge our tremendous debt to the numerous volunteers who got us to where we are today. Finally, our thanks goes to the parents in the villages and slums who consented to their children participating in our research studies, in the hopes that they -- together with millions of other poor children around the world -- can realize their fullest potentials.
“My son will read and open the books, and my son will write and know writing. And my son will make numbers, and these things will make us free because he will know -- he will know and through him we will know.” -- the non-literate Kino, in John Steinbeck's The Pearl
MILLEE: Mobile and Immersive Learning for Literacy in Emerging Economies. (website)
Cellphone applications that enable children in the developing world to acquire language literacy in immersive, game-like environments. We aim to make localized language learning resources more accessible to underprivileged children, at times and places that are more convenient than schools. Our design methodology is informed by best practices in commercial language learning packages and the traditional village games that children in the developing world play. We are beginning a controlled experiment with 800 rural children in 40 villages in India, with early replication underway in Kenya, China and elsewhere.
Students interested in doing research with me are encouraged to show me a portfolio of previous work. I have a list of mini-projects that undergraduate and Master's students can work on for independent study credit.
The Role of Technology in Learning in the 21st Century | Spring 2010
05-438 and 05-838: Tues & Thurs 12pm to 1:20pm, GHC 4301 (webpage)
Computing is increasingly harnessed to address educational challenges of the 21st century: under-performing inner-city schools, integrating immigrants into the formal schooling system, irregular school attendance in rural developing regions, and women empowerment in the developing world. We frame this course around such authentic problems to showcase the real-world relevance of learning sciences theories for impacting global poverty. Confirmed guest speakers include the World Bank's Education Sector and Microsoft's Global Learning Group.
Human-Computer Interaction in the Developing World | Spring 2009 (reading list)
05-899C: Tues & Thurs 12pm to 1:20pm, CFA 213
Can computing empower the poor in developing countries? To what extent do traditional user-centered design methods ensure that the systems we design truly address the needs of the poor in the developing world? How is designing for – and with – villagers and urban slums dwellers different from designing for middle-income users in the industrialized world? We will examine the applications of HCI methods in developing world contexts such as education, agriculture, healthcare and microfinance.
Anuj Kumar
Derek Lomas
Geeta Shroff
In addition to the above CMU graduate students, I currently work with graduate students from UC Berkeley (Priyanka Reddy, Anuj Tewari), as well as countless undergraduate researchers from CMU and India.
With a group of like-minded individuals, I organize a series of workshops and panels on Interaction Design and International Development at conferences such as IEEE/ACM ICTD 2009, ACM CHI 2009, ACM CHI 2008 and ACM DIS 2008. Our goal is to build a community of Human-Computer Interaction researchers and ground practitioners who are interested in making computing a more positive force for community development.
I served on the Program Committee for the IEEE/ACM Information and Communication Technology and Development (ICTD) 2009 and ACM Interaction Design and Children (IDC) 2009 conferences. In addition, I am a reviewer for journals and conferences that include: ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), Information Technology and International Development (ITID). I was a featured commentator for the Champions of Quality Education in Africa changemakers competition organized by Ashoka.
I co-organized a winter school program track on educational games. This program took place in India, and aimed to build local capacity in the Learning Sciences and Human-Computer Interaction by involving local undergraduates in our research projects.
An Exploratory Study of Unsupervised Mobile Learning in Rural India. Anuj Kumar, Anuj Tewari, Geeta Shroff, Deepti Chittamuru, Matthew Kam, and John Canny. To appear in Proceedings of ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’10), Atlanta, Georgia, April 10-15, 2010. (paper)
Let's Play Chinese Characters - Mobile Learning Approaches via Culturally Inspired Group Games. Feng Tian, Fei Lv, Jingtao Wang, Hongan Wang, Wencan Luo, Matthew Kam, Vidya Setlur, Guozhong Dai, and John Canny. To appear in Proceedings of ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’10), Atlanta, Georgia, April 10-15, 2010. (paper)
Human-Computer Interaction for Development: The Past, Present and Future. Melissa Ho, Thomas Smyth, Matthew Kam, and Andy Dearden. In Information Technology and International Development (ITID), Vol. 5, No. 4.
Reducing Dominance in Multiple-Mouse Learning Activities. Andrea Moed, Owen Otto, Joyojeet Pal, Udai Pawar Singh, Matthew Kam, and Kentaro Toyama. In Proceedings of Conference on Computer Support for Collaborative Learning (CSCL ’09), Rhodes, Greece, June 8-13, 2009. (paper)
Improving Literacy in Rural India: Cellphone Games in an After-School Program. Matthew Kam, Anuj Kumar, Shirley Jain, Akhil Mathur, and John Canny. In Proceedings of IEEE/ACM Conference on Information and Communication Technology and Development (ICTD ’09), Doha, Qatar, April 17-19, 2009.
Designing Digital Games for Rural Children: A Study of Traditional Village Games in India. Matthew Kam, Akhil Mathur, Anuj Kumar, and John Canny. In Proceedings of ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’09), Boston, Massachusetts, April 4-9, 2009. Best Paper Nominee. (paper)
Involving Local Undergraduates in Fieldwork. Matthew Kam. In ACM interactions, July-August 2008 issue. (article; translated into Chinese by uiGarden for practitioners in China
Designing E-Learning Games for Rural Children in
Mobile Gaming with Children in Rural
Localized Iterative Design for Language Learning in Underdeveloped Regions: The PACE Framework. Matthew Kam, Divya Ramachandran, Varun Devanathan, Anuj Tewari, and John Canny. In Proceedings of ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’07), San Jose, California, USA, April 28-May 3, 2007, pp. 1097-1106.
Social Dynamics of Early Stage Co-Design in Developing Regions. Divya Ramachandran, Matthew Kam, Jane Chiu, John Canny, and James L. Frankel. In Proceedings of ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’07), San Jose, California, USA, April 28-May 3, 2007, pp. 1087-1096.
Practical Considerations for Participatory Design with Rural School Children in Underdeveloped Regions: Early Reflections from the Field. Matthew Kam, Divya Ramachandran, Anand Raghavan, Jane Chiu, Urvashi Sahni, and John Canny. In Proceedings of ACM Conference on Interaction Design and Children (IDC ’06),
The Case for Technology in Developing Regions. Eric Brewer, Michael Demmer, Bowei Du, Melissa Ho, Matthew Kam, Sergiu Nedevschi, Joyojeet Pal, Rabin Patra, Sonesh Surana, and Kevin Fall. In IEEE Computer, Volume 38, Number 6, June 2005, pp. 25-38.
Television
India’s Cell Phone Tutors. ABC News, aired on June 16, 2009. (video)
Cell Phone: The Ring Heard Around the World. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation documentary, aired on public television on April 3 and June 5, 2008.
Learn English Through Gilli Danda on Mobile. In DNA India, India, December 5, 2009. (article)
Angrezi, the Phoney Way. In Times of India, India, December 5, 2009. (article)
8-bit Games for $10 PCs. In DNA India, India, November 22, 2009. (article)
PlayPower: 1980s Computing for the 21st Century. In Guardian, United Kingdom, November 4, 2009. (article)
Cell Phones Used to Teach English. In Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, USA, September 10, 2009. (article)
No Phony Business: How the Cell Phone Revolution is Sweeping the Indian Countryside. In The Caravan: A Journal of Politics and Culture, India, July 1-15, 2009 edition, pp. 40-44. (article)
Becoming Literate, One Cellphone at a Time. In Ahmedabad Mirror, India, April 23, 2009. (article)
UP Kids Call California for an English Lesson. In Indian Express, India, January 1, 2009.
Other Popular Media
In Rural India, Learning English via Cellphone. In The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 21, 2009. (blog)
Navigating Identity - Reimagining Oneself Online. In Spotlight on Digital Media and Learning, MacArthur Foundation, October 5, 2009. (blog)
Cell Phone Learning Can Make a Difference. In Babbel Blog, February 27, 2009. (blog)
MILLEE: Approaching Global Literacy with Cellphone Technology. HASTAC announcement, MacArthur Foundation, January 9, 2009. (blog)
MILLEE: English Literacy through Games on the Third Screen. In MobileActive.org, March 18, 2008.
Press Releases
Carnegie Mellon Expands Mobile Learning Project in India With Support From Nokia Research Center in Palo Alto. October 21, 2009. (article)
Matthew Kam is an Assistant Professor with the Learning Sciences group in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. His research integrates his interests in economics, education and computing. One of his major research projects investigates how e-learning games on cellphones can be designed to extend literacy and second language learning among children in rural areas and the urban slums in the developing world. He is scaling it up to conduct a controlled experiment involving 800 village children in 40 rural schools in India, with early replication underway in Kenya and China. His research has received major sponsorship from the MacArthur Foundation, Microsoft, National Science Foundation, Nokia, Qualcomm and Verizon. It was featured in the press in India, ABC News and a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation television documentary. Previously, with the support of a fellowship from the United Nations and University of California, Berkeley, Matthew participated as a third-party evaluator of a microfinance transaction technology in Uganda spearheaded by Hewlett-Packard. As a former administrator, he served on a US$5 million, 18-month project in the Singapore Armed Forces, where he helped to manage its finances and organize the logistics for 200,000 personnel. Matthew earned all his degrees at the University of California, Berkeley: Ph.D. in Computer Science with a minor in Education, B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, and B.A. in Economics.