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ItemEMBODIMENT IN COMPUTER SCIENCE LEARNING: HOW SPACE, METAPHOR, GESTURE, AND SKETCHING SUPPORT STUDENT LEARNING(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2021-05-01) Solomon, Amber ShaniceRecently, correlational studies have found that psychometrically assessed spatial skills may be influential in learning computer science (CS). Correlation does not necessarily mean causation; these correlations could be due to several reasons unrelated to spatial skills. Nonetheless, the results are intriguing when considering how students learn to program and what supports their learning. However, it's hard to explain these results. There is not an obvious match between the logic for computer programming and the logic for thinking spatially. CS is not imagistic or visual in the same way as other STEM disciplines since students can't see bits or loops. Spatial abilities and STEM performance are highly correlated, but that makes sense because STEM is a highly visual space. In this thesis, I used qualitative methods to document how space influences and appears in CS learning. My work is naturalistic and inductive, as little is known about how space influences and appears CS learning. I draw on constructivist, situative, and distributed learning theories to frame my investigation of space in CS learning. I investigated CS learning through two avenues. The first is as a sense-making, problem-solving activity, and the second is as a meaning-making and social process between teachers and students. In some ways, I was inspired to understand what was actually happening in these classrooms and how students are actually learning and what supports that learning. While looking for space, I discovered the surprising role embodiment and metaphor played while students make sense of computation and teachers express computational ideas. The implication is that people make meaning from their body-based, lived experiences and not just through their minds, even in a discipline such as computing, which is virtual in nature. For example, teachers use the following spatial language when describing a code trace: "then, it goes up here before going back down to the if-statement." The code is not actually going anywhere, but metaphor and embodiment are used to explain the abstract concept. This dissertation makes three main contributions to computing education research. First, I conducted some of the first studies on embodiment and space in CS learning. Second, I present a conceptual framework for the kinds of embodiment in CS learning. Lastly, I present evidence on the importance of metaphor for learning CS.
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ItemFROM NEEDS TO STRENGTHS: DEVISING ASSETS-BASED PARENT-EDUCATION ICTS FOR LATINX/A/O IMMIGRANT PARENTS IN THE UNITED STATES(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2021-04-28) Villacres Falconi, Lucia Marisol MarisolImmigration to higher-income countries such as the United States (U.S.) is a worldwide, growing phenomenon. As the number of people moving across the world increases, so does the number of children of immigrants needing support to succeed academically. While a growing number of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) offer parent-education support, these rarely respond to the complex reality of parents from nondominant backgrounds, such as immigrants. When ICTs cater to these groups, they tend to do this via patches to help these parents catch up with mainstream society. By disregarding immigrant parents' strengths and capacities—or assets—to contribute solutions to their own problems, most parent-education ICTs end up perpetuating information inequities. In response, my dissertation works with low-income, Spanish-speaking Latinx/a/o immigrant parents to explore design pathways for parent-education ICTs to better respond to parents from nondominant groups. I approach this problem through an assets-based approach to design, which fosters technology-supported transformations that build on and amplify users' strengths. Through ethnographic fieldwork and Participatory Design (PD) engagements, this dissertation offers two contributions to existing Human-Computer Interaction research on the role of technology in learning, education, and families. First, it contributes a holistic understanding of how information channels in the educational system operate as assets for parents. Second, it proposes assets-based design pathways for parent-education ICTs to support Latinx/a/o immigrant parents. This research also contributes to HCI's growing interest in an assets-based design process by advancing analytical approaches and methodological considerations for working with assets in a large-scale system. These contributions can significantly inform critical transformations for technology in educational systems and illuminate a design process that supports vulnerable groups in attaining sustainable, emancipatory changes.
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ItemMaker-Oriented Curriculum for Human-Centered Design and Prototyping Instruction(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2020-10-16) Cochran, Zane RayAs the role of human-centered design and human-computer interaction continues to expand its role in undergraduate and graduate computer science and engineering programs, the demand for tools and technologies to study these concepts continues to increase. Part of this demand includes providing students access to digital fabrication tools that assist them in producing physical prototypes to explore the human-centered concepts taught in these programs. While the maker movement has resulted in the proliferation of 3D printers, laser cutters, and easily programmed microcontrollers, there remains a need to formalize the implementation of these technologies into HCI course curriculum. This work focuses on the development of a curriculum method and instructional modules that merge elements of human-computer interaction and computer science, with rapid physical prototyping.
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ItemUser’s role in shaping WeChat as an infrastructure: practice, appropriation, creation(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2020-08-17) Zhou, Rui RZThe past decade has seen the rapid development of information and communication technologies, particularly online social platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. While online social platforms have existed since the early years of the internet, it is only in recent years that they begin to set foot on mobile devices, bringing them accessible to more people from all over the globe. Gradually gaining their presence in people’s everyday lives, some of these social platforms have started expanding themselves from a simple social platform to a more powerful, more embedded, and more transparent infrastructure, supporting their users through various ways that are not limited to social or communication aspects. One instance of such a social platform that has successfully turned into an infrastructure is WeChat, the most popular mobile social application in China. Introduced in 2011, WeChat is currently the fifth largest social networking platform in the world, holding 1.2 billion monthly active users. When it was first developed, WeChat was solely a mobile instant messenger that supported users with a set of common communication media. However, through its growth in the past nine years, it has also designed and integrated many non-communication, non-social functions for online payment, gaming, and much more. Nowadays, Chinese people use WeChat all the time: from paying street vendors to calling ride-hailing services, from reading daily news to reserving restaurant tables, WeChat is not only a communication tool but also an all-encompassing platform and infrastructure that Chinese people use to fulfill all kinds of needs. Given this prominent presence of WeChat and its status as both a platform and an infrastructure, WeChat’s development and its relationship with its users are worth studying; its success offers a lot to learn about other similar platforms that are swiftly evolving into infrastructures. This dissertation delves deep into understanding WeChat by focusing on how people use it. It asks questions about how people use WeChat, why people use WeChat, and how people’s use of WeChat has influenced WeChat to move from a platform to an infrastructure. To answer these questions, five empirical studies were conducted, revolving around Chinese people’s use of different functions on WeChat under various situations and scenarios. Relying on qualitative methods, these studies together provide a holistic view of how people use WeChat. In addition, a meta-analysis was done on data collected from these studies, aiming for teasing out the user’s role in WeChat’s evolvement from a platform to an infrastructure. Findings from these studies reveal that while WeChat influences users and shapes their interactions with each other, it is affected and changed by users’ practices as well. Furthermore, by using WeChat, users, knowingly or not, have pushed WeChat to become a powerful infrastructure. This dissertation is the first in-depth study that researches diverse aspects of WeChat by attending to people’s ways of using it, providing a holistic view of Chinese people’s engagements with WeChat in their everyday lives and how these engagements contribute to WeChat’s infrastructuralization. This dissertation offers three major contributions to the field of Human-Computer Interaction: first, it provides an in-depth exploration of a popular non-Western social and communication application; second, by taking a user-centered perspective, this dissertation uncovers the mutual-shaping relationship between WeChat and its users; third, most importantly, this dissertation contributes to understanding other social platforms’ infrastructuralization processes by using WeChat as an exemplar, uncovering the role played by users in this process.