Current | Dr. Kayla DesPortes

Computational Murals

Sun, 12 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Overview

The project explores the co-design of artistic computing curriculum with visual and literary artists. The effort is a collaboration with the non-profit organization Community Word Project, which is an “arts-in-education organization that inspires children in underserved communities to read, interpret and respond to their world and to become active citizens through collaborative arts residencies and teacher training programs”. The organization aims at supporting their learners to use poetry, visual art, and music as platforms to amplify their voices. The researchers have been working with the organization and their artists for the past year to explore the potential of integrating computational media as an additional platform for expression. The work has resulted in two participatory design sessions with students and artists, which has led to the launch of CWP 2.0–a 12-week program for high school students to create physical and digital computational murals using processing ( p5js ) and the Arduino. The students engage in developing a collaborative line of poetry and currating a portfolio of photography, as they learn about both the physical and digital forms of computing to create their murals.

Research Questions Explored

The project explores research questions spanning the design of learning activities and computational platforms to support learners and educators in these interdisciplinary spaces.

How can we design learning environments that enable learners to use computational media as a platform for expression?
- How can the design of physical computing platforms and programming environments support the processes of ideation, iteration, and development of murals?
- What are the affordances for expression the digital and physical forms of expression?
- What pedogogical supports are important for supporting the design and development of physical and digital murals?
- What values emerge in the learning environment as learners engage in development of their collaborative computational murals?
How do we support collaboration between learners to make decisions across their poetry, photography, coding and electronics in ways that align with their goals for expressivity?
- How can the design of activities, pedagogical supports, and technology promote engaging across the disciplines?
- How can we support collaboration in the ideation, iteration, and development phases of the students’ artistic artifacts?

Research Team

The research has been conducted in partnership with the Community Word Project organization and the researchers at NYU.

CWP Leads:
- David King - Program Director of School & Community Partnerships
- Elizabeth Leonard - Poet and Teaching Artist
- Michele Kotler - Executive Director and Founder
- Nichelle Ryan - Photographer and Teaching Artist
- Leigh Wells - Deputy Director of Programs & Operations
NYU Leads:
- Juan Pablo Sarmiento - PhD Student in Educational Communication and Technology
- Eunice Lam - MS Student in Digital Media Design for Learning
- Dr. Kayla DesPortes - Assistant Professor of HCI and the Learning Sciences
- Previous Collaborators:
  - Zahra Humaira - MS in Digital Media Design for Learning
  - Mengqiu Chen - MS in Digital Media Design for Learning
  - Jack Lu - MS in Digital Media Design for Learning
  - Eunyoung Jeon - MS in Digital Media Design for Learning

Dancing Across Boundaries of Computing Education

Sun, 12 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Overview

The project examines how to integrate machine learning, data science, and physical computing in the context of dance and cheerleading. The work is part of a collaborative grant between NYU and University of Colorado Boulder, which uses both locations to explore across a number of dance and cheerleading environments. The goal is to understand how to help learners leverage their expertise and cultural practices in order to engage them in authentic and personally meaningful computing. The dancers and cheerleaders will learn to create computing systems with programmable electronics worn on the body (physical computing), use those systems to create statistical models of movement and gesture (data science and machine learning), and then apply the models in a digital experiential learning environment. We are working closely with dance educators and learners to produce design principles, curricula, new educational technologies, and comparative analyses across contexts. In NYC, we have a partnership with the non-profit organization STEM From Dance and its founder and CEO Yamilee Toussaint Beach. The organization “gives girls of color access to a STEM education by using dance to empower, educate, and encourage them as our next generation of engineers, scientists, and techies.” Through working with Yamilee, their instructors, and learners we are building on the powerful programming they have already developed to expand the types of concepts the learners can encounter within a computational dance environment.

Research Questions Explored

This project addresses four main research questions:

How can computing be leveraged to build expertise in dance and cheerleading?
How can dance and cheerleading be leveraged to build expertise in computing?
What are the challenges of integrating computing into dance and cheerleading practices?
How can we meaningfully assess learning outcomes and dispositional shifts with respect to computing in the context of dance and cheerleading applications?

This research will produce curriculum and technology to support learning modules in machine learning, data science, and, physical computing, integrating multiple levels of abstraction across the boundaries of hardware and software (i.e., cyber-physical systems). Through this collaborative inquiry researchers will develop transformative knowledge about how to embed computing into established dance practices, resulting in computing curricula and tools that build on the learners’ and educators’ authentic practices and needs.

Research Team

Yamilee Toussaint Beach - CEO & Founder of STEM From Dance
Willie Payne - PhD Student in Music Technology @ NYU
Dr. Kayla DesPortes (PI) - Assistant Professor of HCI and the Learning Sciences @ NYU
Dr. Yoav Bergner (Co-PI) - Assistant Professor of Learning Sciences and Educational Technology @ NYU
Dr. Ben Shapiro (Co-PI) - Assistant Professor of Computer Science @ CUB

Funders

This project has been funded by the National Science Foundation (STEM+C 1933961).

Data+Art Literacy Curriculum Co-Design

Sun, 12 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Overview

This project explores an art-based perspective on data literacy to promote student relevance, accessibility, engagement, reasoning, and meaning-making with data. Data literacy, or interpreting and reasoning about data, is an essential skill set to be able to inform decisions and actions in today’s society. Collaborating with In collaboration nwith with middle school art and math teachers, we are co-designing curriculum that leverages diverse representational forms, ways of knowing and understanding data.

Research Questions Explored

The work examines:

How do we support effective co-design of data literacy units among art teachers, mathematics teachers, and researchers?
How can we develop educational materials and technology to leverage the representational opportunities across artistic and mathematical practices?
How can we build synergistic curricula for art and math to conceptually support one another?

Answers to these questions will build an understanding of how to support interdisciplinary curriculum design collaborations among researchers and teachers. They will also show how art-integrated, maker-oriented activities can support middle school learners’ data literacy development; and how to design technologies that are accessible and powerful to teachers and learners in these interdisciplinary environments.

Research Team

The work is a collaborative project across New York University, Education Development Center, and Fordham University.

Anna Amato - PhD Student Educational Communication & Technology @ NYU
Marian Tes - PhD Student Educational Communication & Technology @ NYU
Camillia Matuk - Assistant Professor @ NYU (PI)
Kayla DesPortes (Co-PI) - Assistant Professor of HCI and the Learning Sciences @ NYU
Ralph Vacca - Assistant Professor @ Fordham (Co-PI)
Megan Silander - Research Scientist @ EDC (Co-PI)
Veena Vasudevan - Post-Doc @ NYU
Peter Woods Consultant PhD Candidate @ University of Wisconsin-Madison

Funders

This project has been funded by the National Science Foundation (DRK12 1908557).

Social Justice Makersapce

Sun, 12 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Overview

The project is an ethnographic study examining equity in makerspaces in collaboration with Clarisa James, the Founder and Executive Director of the non-profit organization DIVAS For Social Justice. The organization recently launched a makerspace designed to empower the local community to tackle issues of social inequities while leveraging emerging technologies. The researchers formed a partnership with DIVAs soon after they acquired the space and have worked with the organization as they have begun planning and developing the makerspace. The initial work has involved co-design sessions with Clarisa, participatory design sessions with the community, and interviews to understand the important values and characteristics of a space that can engage local community members to build technological skills, while applying those skills to addressing social justice issues faced by the neighborhoods and communities in which they reside.

Research

Working closely with the organization, the researchers investigate the following research questions:

RQ. How can we design makerspaces focused on community and social equity?
- RQ1. What values and needs do local community members articulate and advocate for in the design process?
- RQ2. What tensions arise during the development of the makerspace?
- RQ3. What considerations and supports are important for developing equitable and inclusive makerspaces?

Research Team

Shiri Mund - PhD Student Educational Communication & Technology
Joey Azoulai - MS in Digital Media Design for Learning
Dr. Kayla DesPortes - Assistant Professor of HCI and the Learning Sciences

Spectrum of Modularity

Sun, 12 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Overview

This project examines what aspects of the hardware for physical computing can be designed in ways to create glass-box (instead of black-box) scaffolding that fades as the learner gains expertise. The project began with examining the electrical components that can be connected to a microcontroller to lay the foundation of how we could explore the scaffolding throughout the hardware tools.

Motivation

Circuit components for physical computing come in a variety of different forms. They can be highly plug-and-play, like in the LEGO MINDSTORMS Robotics kit, or they can come as individual components leaving the user to figure out how they might create a circuit. Unfortunately, there are not many tools that fit in between these two extremes, or tools that are designed to facilitate learning through scaffolding that can fade. This project was designed to try and understand what tools with that capability might look like. We examined the tools based on their transparency (what the learner can see), and affordances for interaction (how the learner manipulates components within the tools).

Design

The first prototypes for the spectrum of modularity were designed using circuit boards and off-the-shelf components. We explored, six levels of modularity that could exist in the tools. Below is an outline of the various levels.

LEVEL 1: Plug-and-Play Circuits w/ Static Electronic Components

LEVEL 2: Plug-and-Play Circuits w/ Static and Variable Electronic Components<

LEVEL 3: Plug-and-Play Circuits w/ Variable Electronic Components

LEVEL 4: Static Single Electronic Component Modules

LEVEL 5: Variable Single Electronic Component Modules

LEVEL 6: Open Circuit Modules

You can read more about the levels and the rationale behind the spectrum in the publication below. The idea of this work was to draw attention to the design choices in these tools that could facilitate learning. This is not necessarily the only or best way to conceptualize the spectrum, but one attempt. While we used circuit boards for these protoypes, the same concepts can be explored experimenting with the materiality of the boards and components.

Research

Currently we are conducting a lab study comparing students using the standard breadboard, BitBlox, and a set of circuit modules as they learn about the Arduino for the first time. Some of the students will be completing a think-aloud protocol as they learn about the Arduino for the first time. The research questions in this work explore the cognitive and work processes of novices, and how they are affected by the tool design.

RQ1. How can the tools be designed to facilitate students in learning about physical computing?
RQ2. What are the common misconceptions and errors that students make when learning about the Arduino?
RQ3. How do the hardware tools students use affect their self-efficacy with physical computing?

While this study will provide insight into what the students are thinking, it does not give us an understanding of how the tools will affect the socio-technical learning environment in a real-world context. Future studies will be designed to understand research questions in that situation, enabling us to build a deeper understanding of the tools.

Publications

DesPortes, K., & DiSalvo, B. (2017). Where are the Glass-Boxes? Examining the Spectrum of Modularity in Physical Computing Hardware Tools. Proceedings of the the 16th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children (pp. 292-297). ACM. [Download]

DesPortes, K., & DiSalvo, B. (2019). Trials and Tribulations of Novices Working with the Arduino. In Proceedings of the 2019 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research, pp. 219-227. 2019. [Download]

Research Team

Dr. Kayla DesPortes - Assistant Professor of HCI and the Learning Sciences @ NYU
Dr. Betsy DiSalvo - Associate Professor @ Georgia Tech

**Note: The initial work was done as part of my PhD work @ Georgia Tech under the advisement of Betsy and has carried into my work at NYU. **