Spring 2025
Advancing communal experiences DRG
Instructors:
- Tyler Fox
- Jennifer Turns
In this Directed Research Group (DRG), we will explore both a hypothesis and a design question:
- Hypothesis: There are currently varied experiences of community in the HCDE BS program, with multiple factors contributing to these experiences.
- Design Question: How might we advance a community orientation in the HCDE BS program?
Our work will unfold in three phases:
Part 1: Research and Exploration (3 weeks)
- Share personal perspectives as a starting point for our investigation
- Conduct research beyond our group by interviewing other BS program students (each participant will speak with approximately five peers)
- Examine the history of the BS program and how it relates to the current state of community
- Explore the concept of community broadly—its possible understandings, contributors, and consequences
- Discuss our own experiences with community—where we've felt connected and what factors contributed to that feeling
- Investigate how community experiences connect with course engagement, participation, attendance, learning outcomes, and professional success
Part 2: Ideation (2 weeks)
- Develop possible design directions based on our research findings
Part 3: Design Implementation (5 weeks)
- Form groups around the most promising design directions
Work toward creating deliverables to share at the end of the term
Projects may range from speculative designs to pragmatic prototypes
Enrollment information
- Meeting time: Tuesdays, 2:30 - 4:30 p.m.
- Credits: 2
- Who should apply:
We are seeking up to 12 participants to create a critical mass that can support initial design research and eventually form 3-4 group design efforts. We prioritize a range of experiences and perspectives.
We encourage you to apply if:- You have strong feelings and/or curiosity about community in the HCDE BS program (maybe you appreciate the community you have, feel a lack of community)
- You want to help advance community initiatives
- You are both drawn to and perhaps skeptical of community-building efforts
- You are curious about what "community" means in an academic setting
- You are interested in helping shape community efforts or learning about community development
- This DRG does not count toward the directed research requirement for PhD students.
- Application: To apply, please fill out our Google Form including:
- Confirmation of your availability for Tuesday meetings from 2:30-4:30 PM
- Your major, program, and year
- The perspective you bring to this research (e.g., someone looking for community, someone frustrated with current community conversations, someone who appreciates existing community efforts)
- Application deadline: Friday, March 14
- Anticipated notification date: Tuesday, March 18
Winter 2025
Experimenting with using Generative AI to Reflect
Instructors:
- Jennifer Turns, Professor
- Yuli Flores, PhD student
In this research group, we will explore how undergraduate students can engage with generative AI (Claude, ChatGPT, etc) to support educational reflection. Participants will design and conduct personal experiments with reflection, document their experiences, and collaborate to understand the possibilities and insights that emerge from using AI as a reflection partner. We will be asking:
- How might undergraduate students engage with generative AI to support reflecting related to their education?
- What insights about reflection might undergraduates have as a result of sustained intentional experimentation with generative AI?
Typical sessions will include debriefing of recent reflection “experiments,” discussion of readings (presented by rotating participants), real-time reflection exercises, theme identification and analysis, and planning for next experiments.
Each participant will maintain a personal virtual notebook containing: (a) Experiment notes including preparation methods, changes from previous attempts, satisfaction analysis, and future ideas, (a) traces of Ai engagement associated with each experience, and (c) ongoing thoughts about reflection. The group will generate insights across the individual experiences.
From a research perspective, the group will employ a research-through-design methodology, with iterative experimentation, documentation, regular synthesis of findings, collaborative meaning-making, and progressive refinement of research questions and methods.
Final documentation will include a combination of two or more of the following: design cases (aka the different experiments), a morphological chart of reflection techniques across the cases, and a summary of insights about reflection.
Enrollment information
- Meeting time: Meeting time will be determined based on student availability.
- Credits: 2
- Who should apply:
Participant Requirements:- Must have access to Claude and be willing to use it
- Open to experimenting with different reflection methods
- Willing to share reflection results with the group
- Bring genuine curiosity about reflection (skepticism welcome)
- Commit to maintaining documentation of experiences
- In addition, HCDE BS students will be prioritized.
- This DRG counts toward the directed research requirement for PhD students.
- Questions? Email Jennifer Turns (jturns@uw.edu)
This DRG is at capacity and no longer accepting applications.
Winter 2025
Testing driving the book “How to Write a Journal Article in 12 Weeks"
Instructor: Jennifer Turns
In this group, we will test drive the book “How to Write a Journal Article in 12 Weeks.”
Each member of the DRG will work on a paper they are personally writing, and we will use the book as our guide. We will start with each member overviewing their project and discussing initial reactions to the book. We will then turn to chapter by chapter engagement (that somehow compresses the 12 chapters into our remaining 9 weeks). We will end with a synthesis session. We will collectively decide on the format of the synthesis - this could be a reader’s guide to the book, an HCDE companion document, a synthesis of our experiences and strategies or something else.
Participation will include: weekly discussions of book chapters, sharing of writing progress, discussion of challenges and developed solutions, reflection on interdisciplinary aspects of HCDE, and analysis of book's applicability across different research areas, methods, and epistemologies.
Through the process, we will focus on the following questions:
- How might HCDE PhD students engage with and utilize "How to Write a Journal Article in 12 Weeks"?
- How might doctoral students react to and augment the book's ideas within the HCDE context?
- What might sustained engagement with the book reveal about the experience of writing journal articles in HCDE?
We will additionally explore the hypothesis that working together via this book can concurrently support individual writing progress, cross-cohort collaboration and community building, and emergence of insights about (inter)disciplinary writing.
Enrollment information
- Meeting time: Meeting time will be determined based on student availability.
- Credits: 2
- Who should apply:
Participant Requirements- PhD student in HCDE
- Have sufficient research work ready for paper writing
- Have something resembling results to discuss and foundation for articulation of contribution
- Have identified target journal(s) or be in the selection process
- Be open to experimentation with the writing, and not on critical writing timeline
- Have a spirit of openness to pilot nature of group
- This DRG counts toward the directed research requirement for PhD students.
- Questions? Email Jennifer Turns (jturns@uw.edu)
This DRG is at capacity and no longer accepting applications.
Winter 2025
Usability Study of Google Classroom in Wapato High School
Instructors:
Jennifer Turns, Yuliana Flores, Srushti Prashant Sardeshmukh
The larger project involves Wapato High School students conducting usability testing of Google Classroom, which has been the district-wide education platform since 2020. Over the course of 12 weeks, these students will participate in a curriculum that covers usability testing, product analysis, and research methods. During Engineers Week, from February 17 to 21, they will apply their skills by conducting formal usability tests with peers, teachers, and/or parents.
Students participating in the DRG will assist in enhancing this learning experience for the high school students. This support will include helping to create presentation slides, providing feedback on usability test protocols, and framing the analysis.
This DRG is at capacity and no longer accepting applications.