Betsy James Disalvo

Georgia Institute of Technology | GT · School of Interactive Computing

Informed by critical data literacy efforts to promote social justice, this paper uses qualitative methods and data collected during two years of workplace ethnography to characterize the notion of critical novice data work. Specifically, we analyze everyday language used by novice data workers at DataWorks, an organization that trains and employs h...

The field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) has shown a growing interest in how technology might support parenting. An area that remains underexplored is the design of technology to support parents from nondominant groups in positively impacting their children's education. Drawing on Actor-Network Theory (ANT), our paper takes a sociotechnical vi...

Parents' participation and actual engagement in their children's education is one of the most important predictors of children's academic success. However, inequities in information access prevent many parents in the United States from engaging in ways that allow their children to achieve such success. We present preliminary research that holistica...

Gestures, or spontaneous hand movements produced when talking, are an untapped resource for understanding student knowledge in computing education. This paper develops a conceptual framework to support future studies of learning and teaching that incorporate gesture studies in programming contexts. In particular, this paper introduces how gesture h...

In response to the recent call for a more intersectionally-aware field of human-computer interaction (HCI), we aim to operationalize intersectionality for technology design in HCI. We develop our lens of intersectionality by drawing on the work of Rita Kaur Dhamoon, and use it to analyze data collected from a multi-sited ethnographic study of seven...

Drawing from over 50 interviews with diverse individuals who identify as makers we explored ways that communities were shaped the physical or online structures they occupy and a shared understanding of behaviors within the community. We identified two key dimensions to maker communities --- fluid and structured, and --- regulated and unregulated. W...

Parents’engagementintheirchildren’seducationiskeytochildren’s academic success and social development. For many parents in the U.S., engagement is still a struggle partly due to a lack of communication and community-building tools that support the broader ecology of parenting, or parental ecology. Although current technologies have the potential to...

Teaching physical computing has become more prevalent in the past several decades as the maker movement has popularized microcontroller kits as a way to engage students in learning about and creating with technology. Depending on the design of the kit, students can be exposed to concepts in electronics, computer science and design of computational...

In many Chinese families, adolescent children are moving abroad to pursue higher education. Due to cultural issues and China's One-Child Policy, parents have high expectations for their children and are willing to invest time and money to help them build a successful future. In this study, we interviewed 9 Chinese students in undergraduate or gradu...

Parents' engagement in their children's education is key to chil-dren's academic success and social development. For many parents in the U.S., engagement is still a struggle partly due to a lack of communication and community-building tools that support the broader ecology of parenting, or parental ecology. Although current technologies have the po...

As project- and problem-based physical prototyping activities become more common in computing and engineering classrooms, it is important to design kits to support desired learning outcomes. The work explored in this paper looks at the effects of organizing physical prototyping materials in individualized (traditional) kits and community (workbench...

Assessment of students' conceptual knowledge is a difficult task in all fields including electrical engineering. Recently, electrical engineering assessments have tried to isolate various types of knowledge through expert reviewed and validated tests or concept inventories, which attempt to cover the foundational concepts within a particular domain...

Building physical computing projects can enable learners to integrate computing into a range of interests and disciplines. However, the electronic portion of these projects can be difficult. Students are learning new concepts as well as how to work with new tools. This influx of information can be difficult for students to retain in their working m...

Participatory design is a growing practice in the field of Human Computer Interaction (HCI). This note is a review of how participatory design activities are a form of learning. The premise of this exploration is that participatory design is more than asking participants for their help in design. Instead, participatory design is a set of methods an...

Parents are often responsible for finding, selecting, and facilitating their children's out-of-school learning experiences. One might expect that the recent surge in online educational tools and the vast online network of information about informal learning would make this easier for all parents. Instead, the increase in these free, accessible reso...

The MoveLab was an educational research intervention centering on a community of African American and Hispanic girls as they began to transform their self-concept in relation to computing and dance while creating technology enhanced dance performances. Students within underrepresented populations in computing often do not perceive the identity of a...

The use of games to make boring activities fun is usually a bad idea. The thoughtless use of points and badges as a method of " gamification " is usually a bad idea. Pandering to stereotypes about women by making games pink and on " girly " topics is usually a bad idea. Yet, these design tactics may provide face saving strategies for those who are...

Informal computer science (CS) education is currently taking shape within the myriad of social and technological solutions available to a wider audience. Increased access to low-cost mobile devices has led to the proliferation of web-based CS education programs accessible by more and more people. Online social networks further bolster the dissemina...

Worldwide, information technology (IT) has exhibited phenomenal growth over the past several decades. This growth underlies the creative and analytical processes for the full range of endeavors ranging from science to business and social interaction, and it powers the burgeoning IT economy. Other benefits include vast career opportunities (OECD 201...

This qualitative study of parents in financially depressed communities in westside Atlanta examines parents' access to information technology and out-of-school learning resources through five dimensions of digital divide: technical apparatus, autonomy, social support, skill, and purpose. The context of this study is a broader research agenda to exp...

To determine appropriate computer science curricula, educators sought to better understand the different affordances of teaching with a visual programming language (Alice) or a text-based language (Jython). Although students often preferred one language, that language wasn't necessarily the one from which they learned the most.

Frequently in information design, we lean toward selecting a platform based upon our knowledge, values, and interests, independent of our audience's practices with information. We found ourselves facing this issue when seeking a technology platform to increase access to learning resources for parents within a financially depressed community. We did...

Gamification is the buzzword for adding gaming elements such as points or badges to learning experiences to make them more engaging and to increase motivation. In this paper we explore how Khan Academy has incorporated gaming elements into its CS learning platform. By mapping the literature on motivational processes to popular games we critically a...

In this study we found that search terms that would likely be used by parents to find out-of-school computer science (CS) learning opportunities for their children yielded remarkably unproductive results. This is important to the field of CS education because, to date, there is no empirical evidence that demonstrates how a lack of CS vocabulary is...

Why would individuals who are capable of learning opt not to? Learning is important for stability and success. It would seem rational that students in groups that are frequently underrepresented or marginalized would be motivated to learn. However, negotiation of multiple identities and self-beliefs can impact motivations to learn. For example, you...

Within the learning sciences the concept of design is important in developing learning environments and conducting research. We propose the field of learning sciences seek better understandings of design from the field of design. In this paper we focus on Participatory Design (PD), where goals for real world impact and democratic process resonate w...

Computing is the new literacy, and teaching computing in a world where computers are ubiquitous demands new techniques and contexts for learning. As these evolve, so too will the student profile.

We report on the implementation and evaluation of a three-year program to increase interest in studying computer science (CS) among African American male high school students. Over the course of 3 years, the Glitch Game Tester (Glitch) program employed 25 African American male high school students. These students tested pre-release digital games, f...

In my research I use cultural values as lens to understand everyday technology practices and their implication on learning. Using ethnographic and design research methods I conduct in-depth formative work and create interventions to better understand motivations to learn and motivations to actively not learn. My work focuses on disadvantaged and un...

With the growing body of qualitative research on HCI and social computing, it is natural that researchers may choose to conduct that research in a mediated fashion-over telephone or computer networks. In this paper we compare three different qualitative data collection technologies: phone, instant message (IM), and email. We use quantitative analys...

In the summer of 2011, we revamped the curriculum for the GLITCH Game Testers research project to better serve the interests of the 15 student participants. Our new curriculum, based on Greenfoot and game development, replaced an earlier curriculum that students felt was inauthentic. Through Greenfoot, the new curriculum had the benefits of authent...

Click! Urban Adventure Game was a mixed-reality role-playing game where girls worked in teams to solve a fictional mystery based on a real-world issue, using technology and science to conduct their investigation. In this article we describe the design of the experience and present evidence that the game increased girls’ confidence, interest, and kn...

Computer science is not that difficult but wanting to learn it is.

Many young African American males have a passion for video games, but they don't often translate that passion into learning about computing. Part of the problem is that they do not identify with computing as a social norm within their peer group. This disidentification with computing can negatively impact academic performance and limit opportunitie...

In this paper we present a study with young African American men, to gain a better understanding of the impacts of cultural and gender identity on play practices and to explore the relationship between cultural play practices and interest in computing. Our findings indicate that while young African American men play video games frequently, their ob...

In this paper, we examine the relationship between digital games and interest in computer science. When we undertook this research, our goal was to expand upon past work that explores video games as a positive influence on students' interest in CS. We utilized both quantitative and qualitative research methods with a large technically and academica...

Computing education suffers from low enrollment and a lack of diversity. Both of these problems require changes across the entire computing education pipeline. The "Georgia Computes!" alliance, funded by the National Science Foundation's Broadening Participation in Computing program, seeks to improve the computing education pipeline in Georgia. "Ge...

Computing education suffers from low enrollment and a lack of diversity. Both of these problems require changes across the entire computing education pipeline. The "Georgia Computes!" alliance, funded by the National Science Foundation's Broadening Participation in Computing program, seeks to improve the computing education pipeline in Georgia. "Ge...

Glitch Game Testers is a research project to develop a sustainable high school job program to train and employ high school students as game testers (1). Our goal is to leverage the passion that young urban African American men have for video games into agency with technology. The first step is to encourage these young people to see the computation...

The authors present an exploratory study of Black middle school boys who play digital games. The study was conducted through observations and interviews with Black American middle school boys about digital games as an informal learning experience. The first goal of the study is to understand the cultural context that Black students from economicall...

African-American males are underrepresented in the field of Computer Science. We seek to create learning interventions to help develop young African American men's passion for video games into an interest in computation and agency with technology. Using Design Research methods we have conducted a series of studies with young African American men to...

The possible causal relationship between playing digital games and interest in computer science has been explored by researchers and outreach programs working on broadening participation in CS. This paper reviews empirical data from over 1,000 students at a technical university regarding their interest in CS and their frequency of game play. The da...