Value-driven Learning: Decoding and Building upon Playful Computing Education

Dr. Betsy DiSalvo

The use of playful interactions, clever metaphors, and wordplay are ways that we make computation more appealing to young people and more accessible and intuitive to everyone. But play is a culturally situated notion, and ways that we embed playfulness into our designs can carry unintended messages that encourage or discourage productive use. The focus of this talk is to introduce the term Value-driven Learning through unpacking our notions around play and metaphor, how those notions shape technology practices in various cultures, and to look at Participatory Design as a method for designing Value-driven Learning.

In this presentation, I explore theories of play and metaphor. Using these theories, I look at critiques of technology that illustrate how play and metaphor are situated within different cultures and impact technology practices. As an approach to address these critiques, I introduce the term Value-driven Learning, and create a conceptual framework for how we can build upon play and interest of learners into sustained engagement with learning. Specifically, I explore Participatory Design, an often playful practice that helps designers learn from participants, breaking down power imbalances and cultural differences, creating shared vocabulary, and scaffolding the design process so participants can better contribute to co-designing. I explore Participatory Design as both a formative methodology and a guiding principle for Meta-design of technology, which allows the participants ongoing agency in reshaping and reinterpreting technology.

Biography

Dr. Betsy DiSalvo is an Assistant Professor in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology. At Georgia Tech she leads the Culture and Technology (CAT) Lab, where they study cultural values and how those values impact technology use, learning, and production. Currently, the CAT Lab is exploring parents’ use of technology for informal learning. In its first stages, this research is developing an understanding of how and why parents use or don’t choose to use computers, mobile devices, and other technology for learning. DiSalvo is also the PI for an NSF funded project (DUE 1431984) exploring how maker oriented learning approaches may increase transfer and reflection in undergraduate computer science courses. She is co-PI for two NSF funded project focused on the CS4All initiative in New York City. The first, (CNS 1645710) is an ecological approach to understand the historically unique rollout of student centered computing education in New York City. The second, (DRL 1742011) is a project to develop playful formative assessment tools to help New York City math and science teachers better understand student progress when they introduce computing in their classrooms. DiSalvo’s work has included the development of the Glitch Game Tester Program, projects for the Carnegie Science Museum, the Children’s Museum of Atlanta, the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, Eyedrum Art Center and the Walker Art Center. DiSalvo received a Ph.D. in Human Centered Computing from Georgia Tech in 2012. Previous to coming to Georgia Tech she was a research scientist at the University of Pittsburgh Learning Research and Development Center.