Matthew KamAssistant Professor
Carnegie Mellon University
mattkam AT cs DOT cmu DOT edu
@matthewkamResearch 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 2012): Tuesday and Thursday afternoons by appointment
Recent News and Travel
Paper presentation @ ACM CHI 2012 conference
May 5-10, 2012 - Austin, Texas
Conference keynote @ DIGITEL 2012
Mar 24-30, 2012 - Takamatsu, Japan
Meeting @ NIH
Mar 9, 2012 - Seattle, Washington
Meeting @ NSF
Mar 1-22, 2012 - Washington, D.C.
DARPA ENGAGE PI meeting @ UCLA
Feb 7-8, 2012 - Los Angeles, California
Talk @ Virginia Tech
Oct 27, 2011 - Blacksburg, Virginia
Featured @ Clinton Global Initiative
Sep 19-22, 2011 - New York City
Featured @ World Economic Forum's session on "Closing the Education Gap"
Sep 16, 2011 - Dalian, China
Panel presentation @ USAID symposium on "Mobiles for Education for Developing Countries"
Aug 18, 2011 - Bethesda, Maryland
Our summer interns from India have their work featured in the press in Ahmedabad Mirror
Aug 2, 2011 - Ahmedabad, India
Commenced pilot of cellphone-based English literacy learning games with 250 children
Jul 29, 2011 - Hyderabad, India
ACM CHI 2011 conference
May 7-12, 2011 - Vancouver, Canada
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), Naandi Foundation, Sesame Workshop 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
I am building the Human Development Lab at Carnegie Mellon. Much of existing education research is based on learners with formal schooling. Yet, schooling and other sociocultural practices have profound influences on how individuals deploy their cognitive resources. We are interested in understanding how to design educational interventions that empower learners with limited schooling. We apply the latest -- and often under-specified -- learning theories to design innovative curricula and technology-enhanced learning environments. Through field studies, we refine existing conceptual frameworks and contribute towards knowledge that can inform learning interventions for such underserved learners. Despite being technology innovators, we maintain a healthy skepticism about technology. We adopt a participatory approach with end-users to understand their needs, attitudes, practices and political environments. We also study successful games to understand what they can teach us about cross-cultural and learning design.
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. After 10+ rounds of field studies in the past 6 years, we are scaling up our pilots in India and elsewhere.
Playpower: Affordable, Effective, Fun Games for Learning in the Developing World. (website)
An open community that develops educational games for affordable gaming platforms throughout the developing world. These games target health, computer literacy, language literacy and STEM (science, technology, engineering and math). We are starting with an existing 8-bit, TV-computer that is currently sold in dozens of developing countries for as little as $10.
ROWDI: Reading Our World Digitally.
Motion-sensing games that middle school students and educators in the US can author to support adolescent literacy learning in the classroom. The game scenes are in turn based on adolescent fiction that students read in their classrooms. Our research goal is to understand how physical actions relate to learning and reading comprehension processes.
Wumun: A Design Model for Women's Empowerment in the Developing World.
An exploration of the design space for appropriate technology to empower non-government organizations working to improve gender equity. We study NGO best practices, developmental trajectories of the women they target, and how technology designs for employability skills and social empowerment need to take the unique characteristics of each developmental stage into account.
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.
Introduction to the Learning Sciences and Educational Technology | Spring 2012, Spring 2011, Spring 2010
05-438 and 05-838: Tue & Thur 12pm to 1:20pm, GHC 5222
Human-Computer Interaction Methods | Fall 2011, Fall 2010
05-410, 05-610 and 05-819: Mon & Wed 1:30pm to 2:50pm, GHC 4401
Research in the Learning Sciences (Educational Games track) | Winter 2009
2-week program with 130 undergraduates selected across India, hosted by IIIT-Hyderabad
Human-Computer Interaction in the Developing World | Spring 2009
05-899C: Tue & Thur 12pm to 1:20pm, CFA 213
I also run small-group sessions with my undergraduate research assistants to coach them on foundational research skills and methods.
Present
Anuj Kumar
Girija Uday Kumar (curriculum developer)
Indrani Vedula (project manager)
I also work with Hanika Karkhanis (CMU Entertainment Technology Center), Dovan Rai (WPI), and Pooja Reddy (CMU Modern Languages), as well as countless talented undergraduate researchers from CMU and universities in India.
Graduated Advisees
Geeta Shroff, M.S. in Computer Science 2010
I play an active role in advancing the dialogue between the international development, human-computer interaction and learning sciences communities, whom I feel need to learn more from one another. I serve on the program committees of major academic conferences such as ACM CHI 2011. I serve as a regular reviewer for journals and conferences such as ACM CHI, ACM CSCW, Foundations and Trends in HCI, IEEE/ACM ICTD, ISLS ICLS, and ITID. I have organized several workshops and panels at academic conferences such as ISLS ICLS 2010, ACM CHI 2010, IEEE/ACM ICTD 2009, ACM CHI 2009, ACM CHI 2008, and ACM DIS 2008.
Improving Literacy in Developing Countries Using Speech Recognition-Supported Games on Mobile Devices. Anuj Kumar, Pooja Reddy, Anuj Tewari, Rajat Agrawal, and Matthew Kam. To appear in Proceedings of ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’12), Austin, Texas, May 5-10, 2012. (paper)
SMART: Speech-enabled Mobile Assisted Reading Technology, for word comprehension. Anuj Kumar, Pooja Reddy, and Matthew Kam. In Proceedings of 15th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED ’11), Christchurch, New Zealand, June 29-July 1, 2011. (paper)
When a Console Game Becomes CSCL: Play, Participatory Learning and 8-Bit Home Computing in India. Derek Lomas, Dixie Ching, Christopher Hoadley, Kishan Patel, and Matthew Kam. In Proceedings of ISLS Conference on Computer Support for Collaborative Learning (CSCL ’11), Hong Kong, July 4-8, 2011. (paper)
Towards a Design Model for Women's Empowerment in the Developing World. Geeta Shroff, and Matthew Kam. In Proceedings of ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’11), Vancouver, Canada, May 7-12, 2011. (paper)
Productive Oral Vocabulary Knowledge in Word Reading: An Intervention Study using Cellphone Games in Rural India. Anuj Kumar, Pooja Reddy, and Matthew Kam. Presented at the American Association for Applied Linguistics Conference (AAAL ’11), Chicago, March 26-29, 2011. (slides)
Rethinking Speech Recognition on Mobile Devices. Anuj Kumar, Anuj Tewari, Seth Horrigan, Matthew Kam, Florian Metze, and John Canny. Position paper for Workshop on Intelligent User Interfaces for Developing Regions, to appear in Proceedings of ACM Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI ’11), Palo Alto, February 13-16, 2011. (paper)
Using Mobile Phones to Investigate the Effect of Productive Lexical Processing on Word Recognition in Rural India. Anuj Kumar, Pooja Reddy, and Matthew Kam. Presented at the Second Language Research Forum (SLRF ’10), University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA, October 14-17, 2010. (slides)
An Exploratory Study of Unsupervised Mobile Learning in Rural India. Anuj Kumar, Anuj Tewari, Geeta Shroff, Deepti Chittamuru, Matthew Kam, and John Canny. In Proceedings of ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’10), Atlanta, Georgia, April 10-15, 2010. Best Paper Honorable Mention. (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. 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, 2009. (paper)
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 Honorable Mention. (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. (paper)
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.
Old-style Computers Get New Life in Developing Countries. In Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, USA, February 10, 2010. (article)
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
Cellphone Serves as Learning Platform for the Developing World. In Communications of the ACM News, July 6, 2010. (article)
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 in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. His research investigates the theory, design and in-situ use of technologies -- broadly defined -- by underserved communities in learning contexts throughout the world, in the service of improving the lives of the poor. His research has been featured in the international press, 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 multi-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's research draws on his multidisciplinary background: a Ph.D. in Computer Science with a minor in Education, B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, and B.A. in Economics, all from the University of California, Berkeley.