I'm a research fellow in the Culture Lab within Newcastle University. At present I'm working on the PATINA project, exploring how pervasive technologies can transform the process of research, and the research space. [more]
I'm a research fellow in the Culture Lab within Newcastle University. At present I'm working on the PATINA project, exploring how pervasive technologies can transform the process of research, and the research space. [more]
Over the last few weeks I've been working up a study design to explore shyness in higher education. What I have found surprising is that it seems that very little research has looked at shyness in higher education learning interactions (with the exception of Psychologists like Ray Crozier). Yet, when I think about higher education, I think about the importance placed on students around constructing their own knowledge and contributing to discussion and debate, and therefore the extent to which students need to be comfortable to express opinions that others may not agree with, and sometimes be seen making mistakes. These sorts of interactions can be thought of as shyness invoking - they place students in a position where judgements can easily be made about themselves as individuals (i.e. their ability, their intelligence, their personality).
The study we will be undertaking from January aims to both understand students' experiences of shyness within a particular instance of higher education (a programming lab class), whilst also exploring how technology might help students' express their shyness, and perhaps even help students experiencing shyness feel more at ease in this setting. We hope to collect data relating to around 160 students' experiences of shyness over 10 weeks - the potential is there to really collect some very interesting data.
At the moment I'm designing a "shyness" interface that will run on students' desktop computers as they learn to program. The intention is to collect students' self reports of shyness (both behavioural and affective) in real time whilst they learn to program. I'm applying the guidelines for designing affective classroom technologies that I developed in a CHI paper this year - these technologies should be flexible, support agency and reflection, and provide privacy and student voice.
A paper prototype of a "shyness" interface - using the circumplex model of emotion designed by the eMoto project.