This research project investigates the interaction of teachers and staff at a local elementary school as they navigate the shift to teaching remotely during a pandemic. We are specifically seeking to understand how this school's staff apply their collaborative culture to address the unprecedented challenges of teaching online.
Reality Media and the Anthropocene
The “Reality Media and the Anthropocene” project explores the design of emerging reality media, such as AR and VR in how they create new ways to develop an understanding of the Anthropocene, the new geological epoch in which human activities are the dominant force of change. The goals of the project are to understand how reality media help with the learning and reflection of the newly proposed concept (the way to understand human existence) and identify critical design features from existent cases.
We Got the Beat
We Got the Beat (WGB) is a project founded by Cedric Mannie and Kameica Yazzie in collaboration with Dr. Breanne Litts. WGB aims to impact young people’s perception of health through the use of computers with the aim of informing literature about health, health sciences, computer programming, and especially learning sciences.
Storycoding
We explore how to support teaching and learning of computational thinking (CT) practices in interdisciplinary, age-appropriate contexts. To prepare youth to be computationally literate in a digital world economy, two key approaches have emerged aiming to make text-based programming more widely applicable, accessible, and age-appropriate.
Safe Passages for U
The Graduation Game
The Graduation Game (TGG) is an academic exploration game designed in ARIS. This game has been utilized for two years as an orientation tool for psychology undergraduate students. This game allows students to explore the courses they will take during the first year of their bachelor’s degree situated on the Utah State University Campus.
Culturally Responsive Making
Culturally Responsive Making: Developing High-Low Tech Maker Activities in Local and Mobile Spaces for Supporting American Indian Youth is a two-year, National Science Foundation (#1623404) funded project in collaboration with Arizona State University and the University of Pennsylvania. The goal of this project is to develop culturally responsive making activities and makerspaces with two Indigenous communities, one in Utah and one in Arizona.
Learning Analytics in ARIS
In partnership with the Field Day Lab (David Gagnon) and Videogame Research (Dr. Dennis Ramirez), this project brings together computer, data, and learning designers and scientists to explore how the log data in a mobile development platform can shed light on youths’ learning in making and coding their games. Specifically, we examined ARIS (Augmented Reality and Interactive Storytelling), a narrative-based programming platform for non-programmers made up for a web-based editor and a client-based app.
Narrative Educational Videos
For centuries, some of the greatest educators (e.g., Aristotle and Aesop) have promoted storytelling as a vehicle for disseminating knowledge. Narrative techniques used to share information have been studied in academic disciplines such as marketing, communication, and medicine. However, little research exists examining the impact of narrative videos on the development and retention of declarative or procedural knowledge.
Computational Making Scaffolds
To make computational making with visual programming tools more approachable for youth and interdisciplinary subjects, learning supports or scaffolds that will help 10-14 year old youth develop an interactive game narrative and then transition from their design ideas into the visual programming tool they are using are needed.
Computing with PocketCHIP
We explore how to support teaching and learning of computational thinking (CT) practices in interdisciplinary, age-appropriate contexts. To prepare youth to be computationally literate in a digital world economy, two key approaches have emerged aiming to make text-based programming more widely applicable, accessible, and age-appropriate.