Marisol Wong-Villacres
Ph.D. Candidate
School of Interactive Computing
College of Computing
Georgia Institute of Technology
Date: Tuesday, March 30th, 2021
Time: 12:00pm – 3:00pm (EDT)
Location: Bluejeans Link
Meeting URL
https://bluejeans.com/4050623974?src=join_info
Meeting ID
405 062 397 4
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Committee:
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Dr. Betsy DiSalvo (Advisor, School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology),
Dr. Neha Kumar (Advisor, School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology),
Dr. Michael Best (School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology)
Dr. Carl DiSalvo (School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology)
Dr. Ricardo Gomez (Information School, University of Washington)
Dr. Amy Ogan (School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon)
Summary:
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International migration to higher-income countries such as the United States (U.S.) is a worldwide, growing phenomenon. As the number of people moving across the world increases, so does the number of children of immigrants needing support to succeed academically. While a growing number of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) offer parent-education support, these rarely respond to the complex reality of parents from nondominant backgrounds, such as immigrants. When ICTs cater to these groups, they tend to do this via patches to help these parents catch up with mainstream society. By disregarding immigrant parents' strengths and capacities—or assets—to contribute solutions to their own problems, most parent-education ICTs end up perpetuating information inequities. In response, my dissertation works with low-income, Spanish-speaking Latin* immigrant parents to explore design pathways for parent-education ICTs to better respond to parents from nondominant groups.
I approach this problem through an assets-based approach to design, which fosters technology-supported transformations that build on and amplify users' strengths. Through ethnographic fieldwork and Participatory Design (PD) engagements, this dissertation offers two contributions to existing Human-Computer Interaction research on the role of technology in learning, education, and families. First, it contributes a holistic understanding of how information channels in the educational system operate as assets for parents. Second, it proposes assets-based design pathways for parent-education ICTs to support Latin* immigrant parents. This research also contributes to HCI's growing interest in a design process that uplifts strengths by advancing analytical approaches and methodological considerations for facilitating assets-based design in a large-scale system. These contributions can significantly inform critical transformations for technology in educational systems and illuminate a design process that supports vulnerable groups in attaining sustainable, emancipatory changes.
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