Writing a book from which others can learn is itself a powerful learning experience. Based on this proposition, we have launched Science Online, a wiki to support learning in high school science classrooms through the collaborative production of an online science resource.

In a controlled, randomized trial of SimCalc Mathworlds' technology in 95 7th grade classrooms in Texas, huge learning gains were obtained. But phone interviews with the teachers reveal that positive learning outcomes do not always outweigh barriers to adoption. We claim that technology can help learning, but ask 'will it?'

In Fall of 2007, a team of us from IBM Research had the unique opportunity of teaching an undergraduate Introduction to HCI class at a local university. An added challenge was that we only had three weeks to prepare before the class started. This experience gave us in industry research a 'cross-cultural first encounter' with teaching in academia. We reflect on what we learned from the experience in the following aspects: open-ended assignments and grading avoiding the 'PowerPoint pillow' in lecturing teaching as a collaborative challenge connections between industry and academia around teaching

A number of issues related to new design and pedagogy challenges for HCI in education are responded to by a research project that developed an online collaborative learning system integrating text chat, shared whiteboard and wiki pages. The use of this system in two domains is reported: high-school math and college HCI.

The LATEST project involves a three-prong approach to understanding the transfer of expertise to learners: (a) a model of expert information foragers, (b) tools and interaction techniques to support more expert-like performance in active learners, and (d), a framework for the evaluation of social sensemaking technologies

This essay argues that the most significant shift in education in a millenium is underway and will have a tremendous impact soon. Driven by the technology of writing, educational focus shifted from memorization and rhetoric to analysis and exposition. Driven by digital technologies, it's shifting to search, assessment, and synthesis.

Portable media players can now support a variety of rich media formats to display images, play audio and video files, and display text. As a result, education outside the classroom has become relatively location-free. This paper will investigate the impact of ubiquitous computing on undergraduate educational delivery and student learning.

Through the past two decades, education in CISE has moved toward a model that pervasively incorporates programming projects and other engaging student activity. Realistic activities and materials are intrinsically motivating because they vividly remind learners of the possibilities for meaningfully applying knowledge and skills in the world beyond the classroom. A realistic activity, however, does not ipso facto reveal its own rationales, deeper lessons, cultural meanings and origins, or its roles in a coherent professional practice. In order for realistic activities to serve as effective learning opportunities, underlying rationale and expert thinking behind problem solving, core concepts and techniques must be made available to students

This paper presents complementary views of education to the more traditional cognitive learning view of education represented in educational technology and HCI in education. This paper first presents a case study for which this extended model is considered and then overviews some of the historical treatment of education, special education, and technology for education.

We explore transformative theoretically-based research agendas for education in IT (specifically in HCI and Informatics) from a lifelong learning perspective by instantiating and assessing the following assumption: "If the world of working and living relies on collaboration, creativity, definition and framing of problems and if it requires dealing with uncertainty, change, and intelligence that is distributed across cultures, disciplines, and tools&-then education should foster transdisciplinary competencies that prepare students for having meaningful and productive lives in such a world." Our theoretical framework will be assessed with the experience gained at analyzing research and innovative educational approaches at the Center for LifeLong Learning & Design (L3D), University of Colorado, Boulder and at the Department of Informatics, University of California, Irvine.

In this paper we report on a study of values and information sharing in usability work. We argue that understanding how values and information sharing are related will offer a new perspective for integrating usability work into interactive system development. The study was conducted at a large technology company in the United States. The purpose of the study was to understand whether or not different members of multidisciplinary interactive system development teams held different values with respect to usability and to understand the kinds of information practices involved. We frame the study in an information ecology perspective to discover how different job roles, namely, usability expert, developer, and project manager view usability values and practice usability information sharing. We found that the different job roles hold different values about usability and prefer to share information in ways other than what they are practicing.

Context of system use is an important, yet less-studied area in HCI design. In this paper we developed a theoretical framework called Context-Centered Framework and carried out an empirical study to examine its impact on the system design in terms of design quality on a Nursing Handheld System.

In this paper, we will present one of our projects in progress, with regards with a broader issue in CSCL research, authentic learning. Related research suggests that authentic learning, including authentic materials and activities, contribute to gaining knowledge and other professional skills. We, with many other researchers, argue that CSCL systems should support authentic learning. Our ongoing project presented here is an interactive case study library that supports college level usability engineering education. Our long-term vision of this project is to explore and support case-based learning toward more authentic learning.

This paper discusses the issue of control within the context of educational computing; particularly, it addresses ways educational technology can augment preexisting social structures within the classroom, while distributing control of both the technology and learning to students. The paper introduces a multi-user software application, the Text Aggregator, for use in classroom activities as well as the studies we anticipate conducting with the system.

In this paper, I introduce a subset of findings of a 6 week long study of players of the online game World of Warcraft and their social environment in Beijing and Shanghai to illustrate how local structures and cultural values influence the process of adopting the technology. Local governmental regulations, family dynamics, and living standards, as well as economic infrastructures in these cities shaped dynamics in and around the game, creating a reciprocal back and forth between the game and its local context. Many in-game strategies were developed to accommodate regulations devised outside of the game or to adapt to the specific infrastructural settings such as slow Internet connections. I hope to stimulate conversation about the generalized notion of the player of educational games and shed some light on how (educational) games are adopted quite differently in various local settings.

In the Scaling-Up SimCalc study we were able to demonstrate the successful use of technology in classrooms, and found that teachers implemented SimCalc in a variety of ways. We ask, 'how do these varying implementations affect student outcomes?' I will explore the student, teacher, and technology interactions through case studies.

The results presented in this paper illustrate the effects that team dynamics have upon technology appropriation, as well as on the students' satisfaction, and performance in the courses, through mixed-method data collection strategies concerning the use of the iDeas system, which augments paper sketchbooks with multimedia capture and sharing capabilities.

Few studies have empirically evaluated pattern languages as a shared language for interaction design. In the HCI community, interaction patterns proliferate, but consensus on what constitutes a pattern language is missing. We evaluate four criteria required of a pattern language, and its impact on shared understanding.

Previous research on the use of diagrams for argumentation instruction has highlighted, but not conclusively demonstrated, their potential benefits. We examine the relative benefits of using diagrams and diagramming tools to teach causal reasoning about public policy. Sixty-three Carnegie Mellon University students were asked to analyze short policy texts using either: 1) text only, 2) text and a pre-made, correct diagram representing the causal claims in the text, or 3) text and a diagramming tool with which to construct their own causal diagram. After a pretest and training, we tested student performance on a new policy text and found that students given a correct diagram (condition 2 above) significantly outperformed the other groups. Finally, we compared learning by testing students on a third policy problem in which we removed all diagram or tool aids and found that students who constructed their own diagrams (condition 3 above) learned the most. We describe these results and interpret them in a way that foreshadows work we now plan for a cognitive-tutor on causal diagram construction. [Appeared in AEID 2007]

This research investigates whether and how to combine two effective instructional approaches, tutored problem solving and worked-examples. In two experiments, we compared a standard Cognitive Tutor with two example-enhanced versions, with 'fixed' and 'adaptive' fading of examples. The adaptive fading method leads to higher transfer performance than the other methods.

This study examined the issues related to sensemaking handoff in computer support helpdesks. Existing theories of sensemaking (Russell et al, 1993 and Weick, 1996) were used as a framework. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with two different computer helpdesk personnel groups at a large mid-western university. Successful handoffs occurred either very early or very late in the sensemaking process. This choice of handoff time as well as other aspects of handoff are discussed using the principles of least collaborative effort and mindfulness.

This informal boaster introduces a work in progress project which focuses on the problem of how people come to think of technological artifacts as useful resources in everyday setting, and how people maintain the artifact in a prolonged use even if the artifact is discontinued.