Kayla DesPortes, Value-Driven Learning in Physical Computing

Physical computing education has the ability to integrate computing into a variety of domains expanding the possibilities to engage students in personally valuable educational experiences with computing. However, it is difficult to create these personally valuable experiences to accommodate the diversity of students in a learning environment. DesPortes will discuss her work integrating participatory-design processes into physical computing education to scaffold students to reflect on their values and integrate them into their learning experiences. Through this work she has begun to explore the design space of hardware tools to improve the ability for students to learn about the electronics. She will also present her investigations into the modularity of the hardware tools to support collaboration and learning.

Tesca Fitzgerald, Human-Guided Task Transfer in Interactive Robots

As robots become more commonplace, they will need to be able to address a wide variety of problems. Since a robot cannot be programmed to complete every task, it is important for robots to learn new tasks from interaction with a human teacher, as well as transfer their learned skills to address unfamiliar tasks. I propose a cognitive system enabling a robot to address a range of transfer tasks by (i) analyzing the similarities and differences between the new task and familiar ones, (ii) identifying the level of knowledge abstraction appropriate for transfer, and (iii) collaborating with a human teacher to ground its knowledge abstractions and complete the new task.

Tom Jenkins, Co-Housing IoT

Cohousing IoT is a research through design project that considers emerging domestic technologies and their relationship to alternative living arrangements, particularly cohousing communities. Cohousing is a form of semi-communal living where private homes lie around shared space. Each residence is self-sufficient, but together the community can offer social support that would otherwise be absent. Living in a cohousing community can be understood as participating in a kind of hyper-local civic sphere. The strong community bonds that exist in these communities foster social resilience not found in standard residential arrangements. This unique arrangement makes it clear that traditional assumptions around the smart home fall flat. What would an Internet of Things look like when spread across multiple houses but only one home? This project prototypes speculative Internet of Things devices to support the values of cohousing. Rapid prototyping and other kinds of maker practices provide a way to quickly and simply construct real-world devices to support the values of practices in communities like these.