Anyone Can Data
To be an informed citizens, we need to be able to weigh evidence in front of us, whether presented in the news, by teachers and by our governments. We need to understand that what we perceive as relationships between occurrences might not be supported by evidence and, even if they are, they may not be causal. This body of work supports people to understand how to use data to create meaning about their local communities. In particular, the work enables people to tell civic and environmental stories which with to make data-supported arguments to advocate for their community’s needs. Through many years introducing people to working with data, I’ve developed some simple ways to make data projects fun and playful. These simple techniques help to explain some key ideas related to data, including the difference between correlation and causation, why hypotheses matter, how putting a stake in the ground helps you to form theories, how to know how to trust a source and their interpretation, and how to make data-driven arguments of their own.

Makerspaces for Learning
I am deeply interested in the situatedness of learning: how people’s social, physical and mental space impacts their learning and how to design technologies, physical spaces and social spaces to support collaboration, creativity and learning. Based on this interest, I have worked with K12 and higher education schools, museums, and other nonprofits to design and develop makerspaces that best serve their audiences. This has included addressing educational content areas, and philosophy,  identifying the best tools and materials,  creating activities and courses,  developing protocols for safe and creative use of tools, and developing advancement programs for community members. This “Makerspaces for Learning” Pinterest board provides examples of makerspaces, their approaches to designing spaces, choosing tools and furniture and organizing materials.

Distributed Learning Communities
This topic is one that I have returned to throughout my career while at the same time distributed learning tools and approaches have continually evolved. I'll name two bookends of this work. Most recently I led the BKC Research Sprint program,  an international learning opportunity for university students concerned about the ethics of digitalization. My dissertation, “The Sharing of Wonderful Ideas: Influence and Interaction in Online Communities of Creators,” addressed how people in online communities create, influence one another, and share knowledge. The research investigations in my dissertation included 1) a series of quantitative analysis of the communities’ behavioral patterns, identifying the factors that predict members’ influence and how new features were adopted by users and 2) an ethnography of a after-school Scratch club and their experiences when the Scratch web site went live. 

Educational Games
My interest in sociotechnical systems that support learning and creativity led me to work in the context of game-based learning and the study of shared knowledge in educational game communities and  game design teams. The research included how players in educational game communities develop tacit knowledge and how distributed creative teams coordinate complex, interdisciplinary work over a distance.

User Experience Research
My UX toolbox includes broad range of quantitative and qualitative techniques, which allows me to choose the right tool for the job. Techniques include contextual inquiry, ethnographic study, workshopping technologies, interviewing, field study, usability tests, participatory design and online surveys, usage log analysis. Sample projects include