Partner Profile: Dr. Erin Walker

Today we are sharing a Partner Profile for Dr. Erin Walker, a collaborator with CGEST and someone who is doing great work in the field of computing to make it more inclusive. To do this profile, we asked Dr. Walker some questions to invite her to describe her work.

Please describe briefly what your position is and where you are based

I am starting as an Associate Professor at the University of Pittsburgh in January. I will have a joint appointment between the School of Computing and Information and the Learning Research and Development Center. Previously, I was an Assistant Professor in the School of Computing, Informatics, and Decision Systems Engineering at Arizona State University.

How would you describe your research focus?

My research in on educational technology, and more specific, personalized learning environments. These environments can adapt to an individual students’ needs and context to create a more productive learning experience. I design and develop innovative technologies, and then study why and under what circumstances they are effective.

Describe a current project you are working on and why you are excited about it

Myself, Kim Scott at CGEST, and Amy Ogan at Carnegie Mellon University recently received a NSF award on a project that I am very excited about. We will be developing a social programmable robot based on Cozmo, an existing off-the-shelf robot for kids and adults developed by Anki. Cozmo is programmable in that learners can use a visual programming language to change its behaviors to accomplish particular tasks. It is social, in that it can convey emotion with its facial expressions, sounds, and movements. We will be creating culturally-responsive programming curriculum surrounding the use of Cozmo, investigating whether Cozmo’s social behaviors are more motivating for learners than a non-social robot, and then adding additional social dialogue to Cozmo to further engage learners.

What are you hoping to learn from this research?

We want to learn whether and how engaging with a social programmable robot, designed in a culturally-responsive way, improves outcomes from CS education curriculum. We are hoping that extending Cozmo will give us insight into how informal CS education activities can be made more appealing to a diverse audience.

Why did you choose the site/subjects you did?

We will be collaborating with Girl Scouts of Southern Arizona on a multi-session, after school course for 6th to 8th grade girls. This course takes place within the context of the GSSoAZ Social Justice Program, which provide programming for girls from underresourced rural and urban areas. The particular middle schools we will be working with represent greater than 80% Hispanic populations. We see this as an opportunity to design our curriculum and technology for and with members of a population that have been excluded from traditional robotics programs. Through that process, we will develop better understanding of the features of culturally-responsive curriculum and technology. What we develop will be available for future use by GSSoAZ programs.

What is innovative about this research?

This research is innovative in that the culturally-responsive social programmable robot we develop will be a first-of-its-kind technology. By building a robot that socially interacts with learners as it is being programmed, we are hoping to have a transformative impact on current thinking surrounding middle school robotics curriculum.

Where do you hope to go from this in the future?

Once we develop the social programmable robot and understand its effects, we are hoping to be able to expand its surrounding curricula and disseminate the curricula and technology more broadly to middle school robotics programs.

Thank you to Dr. Walker for contributing through this interview!

Dr. Erin Walker will be an Associate Professor at University of Pittsburgh beginning in January 2019.

Click here to learn more about Girl Scouts of Southern Arizona.

Click here to learn more about Cozmo.

Featured image courtesy of #WOCinTech Chat wocintechchat.com