About

Through support from the US National Science Foundation (NSF), and Virginia Tech’s Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology, Center for Human Computer Interaction, and Computer Science Department, we are undertaking an initiative we call 'Technology on the Trail'. This initiative seeks to explore the influences, both positive and negative, of technology when used on extended trail hikes and similar activities. Technology is often targeted for use in heavily populated urban environments, but thousands of people take technology away from cities on their outdoor adventures, raising questions about appropriate use when in a more isolated and natural environment. These environments provide some level of separation for most people from technologies, but a need for community and communication still exists for hikers and their friends and family. Widely available technologies and apps, including mobile devices, GPS, biometric sensors, photo and video apps, and mobile blogging tools allow

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Sociology
• Political Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Medicine
• Public relations
• Internet privacy
• Applied psychology
• Business
• Engineering
• Advertising
• Knowledge management
• Geography
• Ecology
• Psychology
• Human–computer interaction
• Physical medicine and rehabilitation
• Social psychology

Selected publications

• Learning to Trust: Understanding Editorial Authority and Trust in Recommender Systems for Education

  2021 · 10 citations

  • Computer Science
  • Computer Science
  • Internet privacy

  Trust in a recommendation system (RS) is often algorithmically incorporated using implicit or explicit feedback of user-perceived trustworthy social neighbors, and evaluated using user-reported trustworthiness of recommended items. However, real-life recommendation settings can feature group disparities in trust, power, and prerogatives. Our study examines a complementary view of trust which relies on the editorial power relationships and attitudes of all stakeholders in the RS application domain. We devise a simple, first-principles metric of editorial authority, i.e., user preferences for recommendation sourcing, veto power, and incorporating user feedback, such that one RS user group confers trust upon another by ceding or assigning editorial authority. In a mixed-methods study at Virginia Tech, we surveyed faculty, teaching assistants, and students about their preferences of editorial authority, and hypothesis-tested its relationship with trust in algorithms for a hypothetical ‘Suggested Readings’ RS. We discover that higher RS editorial authority assigned to students is linked to the relative trust the course staff allocates to RS algorithm and students. We also observe that course staff favors higher control for the RS algorithm in sourcing and updating the recommendations long-term. Using content analysis, we discuss frequent staff-recommended student editorial roles and highlight their frequent rationales, such as perceived expertise, scaling the learning environment, professional curriculum needs, and learner disengagement. We argue that our analyses highlight critical user preferences to help detect editorial power asymmetry and identify RS use-cases for supporting teaching and research.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Trail as Heritage: Safeguarding Location-Specific and Transient Indigenous Knowledge

  2021 · 11 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Computer Science

  The importance of Indigenous Knowledge (IK) in understanding the environment and informing scientific studies has gained prominence with the increased attention on environmental sustainability. Researchers have partnered with indigenous communities towards leveraging technology to preserve these important IK. However, there still remains a gap in the understanding of how indigenous community members use technology to engage with, and safeguard their IK. We conducted an interview-based study with museum experts and members of an indigenous community in Kenya to understand how community members seek, preserve, and disseminate location-dependent IK. We augmented our findings through a year-long observation of organic interactions on six Facebook Pages that are specifically geared towards discussing aspects of IK. The findings illustrate the importance of location in providing context, and identifying disappearing IK. We also highlight how community members seek and share the IK especially on Facebook. We conclude by describing research and design opportunities for identifying and preserving IK in accordance with community wishes.

  DOI

• #TeamTrees: Investigating How YouTubers Participate in a Social Media Campaign

  Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction · 2021 · 16 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Public relations

  YouTube is not only a platform for content creators to share videos but also a virtual venue for hosting community activities, such as social media campaigns (SMCs). SMCs for public awareness is a growing and reoccurring phenomenon on YouTube, during which content creators make videos to engage their audience and raise awareness of global challenges. However, how the unique celebrity culture on YouTube affects collective actions is an underexplored area. This work examines an SMC on YouTube, #TeamTrees, initiated by a YouTube celebrity and sought to raise people's awareness of tree-planting and climate change. The authors annotated and analyzed 992 #TeamTrees videos to explore how YouTube celebrities, professionals, and amateurs in different channel topics diagnose problems, present solutions, and motivate actions. This study also looks into whether platform identities and framing activities affect campaign reach and engagement. Results suggest that #TeamTrees reached creators who are generally not active in social issues. The participating YouTubers were likely to motivate the viewers to donate and join celebrities' and community's actions, but less involved in examining the environmental problems. Celebrities' videos dominated the campaign's influence. Amateurs' videos had a higher engagement level, although they need more support to frame campaign activities. Based on these findings, we discuss design implications for video-sharing platforms to support future SMCs.

  DOI

• Using smartwatches to facilitate a group dynamics-based statewide physical activity intervention

  International Journal of Human-Computer Studies · 2020 · 14 citations

  • Computer Science
  • Applied psychology
  • Artificial Intelligence
  DOI

• Depth of Use: An Empirical Framework to Help Faculty Gauge the Relative Impact of Learning Management System Tools

  2020 · 6 citations

  • Computer Science
  • Computer Science
  • Multimedia

  Learning management system (LMS) tools are increasingly relevant to scaling computing pedagogies. Measuring their utilization and impact at scale, however, remains computationally expensive. We examine the problem of estimating the utilization of a department-wide LMS, and its impact on the design, management and outcomes of Computer Science courses. We introduce 'depth-of-use' (DOU): a first-principles, resource-specific metric of LMS utilization. We then hypothesis-test the relationship between DOU and course attributes like modality (course level, mode-of-delivery, third-party app use), participation (enrollment, viewership), logistics (teaching support, digital skills training) and outcomes (average GPA, DFW rate). Experiments on metadata from over 1300 Computer Science courses taught at Virginia Tech between 2015 and 2019 suggest that our framing of DOU helps identify resource-level preferences of micro-cohorts of courses, linked to their content, logistics and pedagogies. We discover that, across the Computer Science department at Virginia Tech, overall LMS use is consistently linked to favorable learning outcomes. We also discover that a complex interaction between the needs for scale, ubiquitous access and interoperability drives strong LMS utilization, with graduate and online-only courses faring highest in their aggregate use of LMS services. Finally, we describe two key applications of our analyses. One, we demonstrate how DOU can help CS faculty identify the relative impact of transition from legacy apps to LMS services. Two, we describe how DOU can help instructional designers evaluate and improve their design interventions.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Shuo Niu

  Clark University

  3 shared

• Chris North

  Virginia Tech

  3 shared

• JJ Cadiz

  Microsoft (United States)

  2 shared

• William Luebke

  2 shared

• Saurabh Bhatia

  2 shared

• Morva Saaty

  Virginia Tech

  2 shared

• Andrey Esakia

  Virginia Tech

  2 shared

• Neelma Bhatti

  Habib University

  2 shared

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