2(a). PCK for Teaching Inclusive Design

The following PCKs and examples are pulled from our ICER 2018 paper.

Download slides from the ICER 2018 talk

PCK1-Framing: Providing foundations first can give students the capacity to understand and engage with inclusive design methods.

T3X: “When I finally do present GenderMag, which is probably about a month from now, the students will be so used to Abby and her facets, and other facets of personas (the ones they’ve been developing), that there’s not going to be any pushback... they’re just going to be really bought into it at that point.” (Page 5)

PCK2-Credibility: Providing students credible resources can convince them inclusive design methods are valid and useful.

T5N: “It was really helpful to assign the CHI paper [paper investigating GenderMag's impact on stereotyping] as reading before today’s lecture because students were definitely ready to talk about it and they really understood why I am using this.” (Page 5)

PCK3-ContentKnowledge: Content knowledge of the facets can help teachers explain to students each facet’s impacts on how a user might interact with software.

T5N: “I thought those five facets were orthogonal in a sense ... but as I explained to students, they are very related to one another. For example, information processing style and their learning style, I feel like they are very related” …

An expert researcher in the GenderMag method provided a detailed explanation of the nuanced relationships among the facets and examples of how people with these facets might act for use in teaching. (Page 5)

PCK4-Concretization: Reframing facets in concrete ways to explain persona behavior can model how students should use the facets to predict persona behavior.

T3X began describing the Motivations facet by naming it and then reframing it as “Why is the persona sitting in this chair [in front of the computer with this software]?” (Page 5)

PCK5-Modeling: Modeling correct process for students both before and during hands-on practice can help students improve their use of an inclusive design process.

T3X-Student: “Can we use subgoal or the scenario when answering the action question?”

T3X: “Yes you can reference both if it applies to your reasoning.”

T3X-Student: “So is the ‘right thing’ the action? [Referring to wording on the walkthrough forms]”

T3X: “Yes, it is what <driver> defined to us as the action." (Page 6)

PCK6-TheoryOfMind: Coaching students to immerse themselves in the persona can help them with their “Theory of Mind” abilities to see software through the eyes of a persona.

T2N: “Some students seem to have no problem just slipping right into that mindset of ’Abby’s a different person, I understand that different people have different ways of thinking about things, I’m going to speculate from her perspective.’ And other students ... [at least] recognize that their perspectives aren’t the only ones, and that they don’t understand other people’s perspectives. But there are still students that don’t.” (Page 6)

PCK7-Averting“I”: Listening for uses of “I” during in-class activities and prompting students to use the personas’ names can reduce use of “I” methodology and increase perspective-taking.

T3X: “I’ll remind them of the rules, such as they’re never allowed to say “I” or “you” or “the user,” they have to say Abby ... or Tim [the GenderMag personas].” (Page 6)

PCK8-Engagement: Tasking students to modify non-essential parts of inclusive design method materials, such as background information, can increase engagement with the materials through a heightened sense of ownership.

One team modified the Abby persona, turning her into “Jenn.” Part of the backstory they devised for her was:

T6N-Student: “Jenn needs to find housing for her 18 years old son who is deaf and transferring to <University>.” (Page 6)

PCK9-RefutingStereotypes: Pointing students to the evidence underlying inclusive design methods can help students connect their work to foundations rather than stereotypes.

T3X: “This [pattern of data] holds strongest for male versus female developers.”

T3X-Student: “Women are more emotional, they don’t like technology.”

T3X: “Not true, they [in these data] are software developers.” (Page 7)

PCK10-ReducingStereotypes: Having students perform the inclusive design process can reduce tendencies to stereotype members of populations unlike themselves.

“...These data are corroborated by a prior study investigating stereotyping in the presence of the GenderMag inclusive design method, which found that groups that performed a GenderMag walkthrough gender-stereotyped personas less than those who did not do a walkthrough…” (Page 7)

PCK11-HandlingResistance: Relating inclusive design methods’ utility to the broader goal of inclusive appeal and/or to greater market share can mitigate the risk of students’ resistance and motivate them to learn inclusive design.

T6N: “They like the idea that we have to design software for everyone. I used the illustration that if only half the market wants to buy your software, that’s not going to be a very successful product.” (Page 8)

Next: 2(b). Starter Packs