Syllabus
Feb. 1st - Intro Session
Outlining current problems and focus topics, examining successful examples of learning technology, providing examples of projects, learning about students and their motivations.
Readings: none for the first session.
Assignment (Due 02/03): Student Project Showcase
Sign up sheet for the class: https://forms.gle/Lhc9fMEDRjBhDCMj9
Class Slides
Feb. 3rd - Design Practices I
User-centered design, user research methods, personas, interviews, contextual inquiries, affinity diagrams and synthesizing research.
Resource: Universal Methods of Design
Class Slides
Feb. 8th - Design Practices II
Common heuristics that guide designers. Gathering data to inform the design, getting to know the stakeholders, performing prototyping and iterations on design, performing participatory design. Application of general design heuristics to designing for children. Participatory design with children.
Assignment (Due: 02/17): Research Question Pitch
Come up with a 2 minute pitch discussing what problem or opportunity you are interested in addressing and for who. For example, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have made learning accessible to students across the globe, however, they are known to have a high drop out rate, and students are not able to complete the courses. I am interested in designing an experience that would be increase student engagement and motivate them to complete their online courses.
- Try not to come up with solutions yet.
- Try to focus on who your users are, and what is the problem at hand.
- Try to keep it under 2 minutes.
- Add your pitch to the slides along with your name.
Class Slides
Feb. 10th - General Considerations when Designing for Children
In this session, we will look at a few recommendations from the practitioners regarding designing technologies for children. We will also look at the notion of developmental appropriateness. What children normally can do by what age?
Readings:
- Resnick & Silverman (2005) Some reflections on designing construction kits for kids
- Hirsh-Pasek et. al. (2015) Putting education in “educational” apps: Lessons from the science of learning.
- Bus et. al. (2014) Affordances and limitations of electronic storybooks for young children’s emergent literacy.
Assignment (*Due: 02/15):
- Think about what motivated you as a child. Write a reflection in the slides.
- Try DuoLingo (a classic example of gamification). Did it work for you? What did you like and did you not like about the experience? If you made some observations, write a reflection in the same slides.
Feb. 15th - Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation
Motivating children is essential for their participation in learning experiences. Often designers resort to extrinsic motivation. How efficient is it? What are its limitations? How can we create intrinsic motivation for children to interact with learning technology?
Readings:
- Lillard, A. S. (2016). Montessori: The science behind the genius. Chapter 6: Extrinsic rewards and motivation.
- Cordova, D. I., & Lepper, M. R. (1996). Intrinsic motivation and the process of learning: Beneficial effects of contextualization, personalization, and choice.
- Resnick (2017) Lifelong Kindergarten. Chapter 3: Passion + In their own voices
Feb. 17th - Design studio
Feb. 22nd - No class (Presidents day)
Feb. 24th - Learning through Play
Play is a great example of intrinsically motivated activity. But what exactly is play? And how can it be employed in service of learning?
Readings:
- Ackermann et. al. (2011). The future of play.
- Resnick (2017) Lifelong Kindergarten. Chapter 5: Play.
- Vygotsky, L. (1933). Play and its role in the mental development of the child.
March 1st - Learning Games
When we think about play, we often think about games. Is designing an educational game similar to “gamification” of a learning experience? If not, what does it involve?
Guest speaker - Eric Klopfer.
Readings: Chapters from Klopfer et. al. (2018). Resonant games: Design principles for learning games that connect hearts, minds, and the everyday.
March 3rd - Design Studio
Project teams, introduction & background
Assignment (Due: 03/10):
- Share out your teams and what you are working on. No slides necessary. We ask that you fill in this form (one per team), so we can keep track of projects:
- Our second mini-goal would to be to describe what problem / gap / opportunity you are looking at, and for who. Describe why this problem is important, and support it with background research (data, anecdotes). This is typically what the introduction section of a paper looks like. Add it in the drive folder “Project Introductions” using the filename TEAMNAME_INTRODUCTION.
- Our third mini-goal would be to identify what background research you need to do, and what existing work in the area looks like. For instance, if your project is about making sustainable education fun, your background research would be about sustainability, sustainability education for children, and current technological interventions in the area. Perhaps if you are thinking of a game-based intervention, then a section on serious games would be relevant. So identify your areas of background research, and write up a “Background + Related Work” section for your paper. Add it in the drive folder “Background” using the filename TEAMNAME_BACKGROUND.
March 8th - Scaffolding
In the previous sections, we had a look at exploratory and child-motivated learning. However, in its unguided form, such learning is limited. Here, we examine how learning can be supported without turning it into an overly structured, drill-like activity.
Readings:
- Mayer (2004). Should there be a three-strikes rule against pure discovery learning?
- Wood, Bruner & Ross (1976). The role of tutoring in problem solving
- Resnick (2017) Lifelong Kindergarten. Excerpts on teaching
- Sysoev et. al. (2022) Child-driven, machine-guided: automatic scaffolding of constructionist-inspired literacy play
Bonus question: Children seem to learn to speak on their own, without the need for teaching. Why can’t they learn everything like that? Or can they?
March 10th - Design Studio
System design, prototyping
March 15th - Learning Behaviors: Self-Regulation
Certain behaviors can strongly affect both how children learn and how they interact with technology. Can these behaviors be developed? Can technology help? Can it be harmful? In this session, we will look at self-regulation.
Readings:
- Lillard, A. S. (2016). Montessori: The science behind the genius. Chapter 4: Executive function
- Kegel, C. A., van der Kooy-Hofland, V. A., & Bus, A. G. (2009). Improving early phoneme skills with a computer program: Differential effects of regulatory skills. Learning and Individual Differences
- Antle, A. N., Chesick, L., Levisohn, A., Sridharan, S. K., & Tan, P. (2015, June). Using neurofeedback to teach self-regulation to children living in poverty. International Conference on Interaction Design and Children
March 17th - Design Studio
Iterative testing & feedback, prototyping
March 22nd - Spring Break
March 24th - Spring Break
March 29th - Learning Behaviors: Growth Mindset and Curiosity
Certain behaviors can strongly affect both how children learn and how they interact with technology. Can these behaviors be developed? Can technology help? Can it be harmful? In this session, we will look at growth mindset and curiosity.
Readings:
- Yeager, D. S., & Dweck, C. S. (2020). What can be learned from growth mindset controversies?. American Psychologist
- Park, H. W., Rosenberg-Kima, R., Rosenberg, M., Gordon, G., & Breazeal, C. (2017, March). Growing growth mindset with a social robot peer. In Proceedings of the 2017 ACM/IEEE international conference on human-robot interaction
- Gordon, G., Breazeal, C., & Engel, S. (2015, March). Can children catch curiosity from a social robot? In Proceedings of the Tenth Annual ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction
Date TBD - Other stakeholders: Parents and Teachers
So far we only discussed child-technology interactions. However, parents and teachers play vital roles in children’s learning process. How can technology account for these stakeholders and support their involvement?
Readings:
- K. V. Hoover-Dempsey and H. M. Sandler, “Parental involvement in children’s education: Why does it make a difference?,” Teachers College Record
- Parish-Morris et. al. (2013) Once upon a time: Parent-child dialogue and storybook reading in the electronic era. Mind, Brain, Educ
- B. L. Takeuchi and R. Stevens (2011) The New Coviewing: Designing for Learning through Joint Media Engagement. Joan Ganz Cooney Center
Mar. 31st - Design studio
Apr. 5th - Learning Technologies in Contexts
Learning technologies are deployed into existing educational and social systems. Interacting with these systems is an important consideration for technology design. In this session, we will discuss what challenges might arise in this process, and are there ways to address them.
Guest Speaker: Justin Reich (to be confirmed)
Readings: Reich, J. (2020). Failure to disrupt: Why technology alone can’t transform education.
Apr. 7th - Design studio
Apr. 12th - No class (Media Lab Member’s Event)
Apr. 14th - AI for learning
AI is making rapid advances in the recent decade, and offers interesting opportunities for learning technologies. It can support personalization, one-on-one learning activities, as well as help teachers to make sense of student behaviors. However, there are challenges and ethical considerations to applications of AI in education as well. In this section, we will look at them.
Readings:
- Luckin, R., & Cukurova, M. (2019). Designing educational technologies in the age of AI: A learning sciences‐driven approach. British Journal of Educational Technology
- Belpaeme, T., Kennedy, J., Ramachandran, A., Scassellati, B., & Tanaka, F. (2018). Social robots for education: A review. Science robotics
Apr. 19th - Ethics of technology for children
Can technology harm children’s learning? Can it interfere with other important aspects of childhood (e.g. socialization)? How to develop inclusive and equitable designs? What rights children have, and how technology can account for them?
Readings:
- Alderson, P. (2005). Designing ethical research with children. Ethical research with children
- Blikstein, P., & Worsley, M. (2016). Children are not hackers: Building a culture of powerful ideas, deep learning, and equity in the maker movement. In Makeology
Special activity: Discuss in class: How will children benefit from your research? How have you thought of inclusivity for ALL children? Does your research consider equity? How will you communicate your research to children in an accessible way? What are some potential harms of your research for children?
Apr. 21st - Design studio
Apr. 26th - Evaluating designs
How do we evaluate learning technologies for children? This session will introduce both inspection and empirical evaluation methods commonly used in the field of HCI, e.g., heuristic evaluations, cognitive walkthroughs, observations/ethnograph, usability tests, and controlled experiments. We will cover strengths and weaknesses of different evaluation metrics, such as social-desirability bias for self-reported responses, and how to evluate learning outcomes, engagement and usability. We will also discuss qualitative observations, quantitative measures and design-based research paradigm.
Readings:
- Schwarz, Norbert. “Self-reports: How the questions shape the answers.” American psychologist 54.2 (1999): 93.
- Lazar, Jonathan, Jinjuan Heidi Feng, and Harry Hochheiser. Research methods in human-computer interaction. Chapter 10: Usability Testing. Morgan Kaufmann, 2017.
- Relkin, E., de Ruiter, L., & Bers, M. U. (2020). TechCheck: Development and validation of an unplugged assessment of computational thinking in early childhood education. Journal of Science Education and Technology
- Sandoval, William. 2014. “Conjecture Mapping: An Approach to Systematic Educational Design Research.” Journal of the Learning Sciences
Optional:
Apr. 28th - Design studio
May 3rd - Buffer class
This class will be used to go deeper into a topic of students’ choice, or an important earlier topic that was for some reason insufficiently covered during previous sessions.
Assignment (Due: 05/03):
- Document the development of your prototype, all the rounds of your user tests, and how the prototype evolved over time. Create a detailed write up ont he final state of the prototype, with a list of all its features. Add a section about future work of where you wish to take this prototype. Add it in the drive folder “Prototypes blog” using the filename TEAMNAME_PROTOTYPES.
May 5th - Design studio
May 10th - Project presentations
Final project reports (*Hard deadline: 05/10):
In document format (.docx/.pages/.pdf), submit your final project reports in the Projects Folder. Include your supplementary materials, prototypes, videos, testing protocol in the same folder and hyperlink them in the report.
Sections:
- Introduction: Describe your project area, why it is important, summarize your work, and how it contributes to the area
- Background: Describe the literature in areas releavnt to your project. Example, if your project is about games for sustainability, describe how games help with behavior change, and intervention for promoting sustainability. Also describe other related projects and research attempting similar work. Then, describe how your work is unique and fills the gap in literature.
- Prototype: Describe your prototype in its final stage. Give a detail explanation of each feature. Design process: Document the different stages of your design. Begin from the initial brainstorming, to early fidelity prototyping, high fidelityprototyping, and how user tests and background knowledge from readings and related work influenced your design.
- Evaluation: What did you learn from evaluating your design with users (or proxy users).
- Future steps: Where do you intend to take this work?