Advancing Creative Physical Computing Education: Designing, Sharing, and Taxonomizing Instructional Interventions
Workshop at ACM DIS 2024. Monday, July 1

About CFP Schedule Keynote Accepted Contributions Organizers

About

Physical computing is a materially rich practice that connects across skills in STEM, design, arts, and creativity. It also offers learners a means of making personally meaningful, computational artifacts that support creative development, resonate with personal identities, and access a history of craft and culture. Yet, physical computing instruction remains a complex instructional practice that requires navigating computation and reasoning, engineering and mechanisms, and creativity and problem-solving between physical and virtual spaces. Spurred by the pandemic, the shift to remote instruction fostered a wave of creativity in physical computing instruction and new lines of inquiry around access and inclusion, resilient learning, and the creativity, craft, and culture found in physical computing.

Examples of pedagogical interventions: Top Left - Community-oriented guardians in makerspaces decrease fear of failure and increase resilience (person working on a laser cutting machine); Top Right - ioRef.org with QR linked MakerCards enhances problem-solving and debugging skills (various MakerCards labeled "Input," "Controller," "Output" on a workbench with matching electronic components); Bottom Left - Introductory activities that share learners' identities support community building and agency (person using an electronic device worn on the wrist and several pictures related to identity and community); Bottom Right - Lack of in-person classrooms reduces team coordination and project management skills (digital board with project elements and sketches).

Read the Full Workshop Description (PDF)

Call for Participation

Late Submissions Welcome — To join the workshop, you can submit only a design conjecture as 4 slides with the provided template to creativephysicalcomputing@traceslab.net .

This workshop aims to bring together researchers, educators, and practitioners with interests in physical computing to discuss how to build and promote creativity in physical computing instruction across domains including but not limited to design, art, architecture, the learning sciences, engineering and computer science.

We invite you to submit a short (max 4-page) position paper presenting an instructional practice in your physical computing teaching, makerspace, or related context. To facilitate discussion during the workshop, position papers must be formatted as a design conjecture and be accompanied by 4 slides following the provided template.

We have prepared several examples of how to use this format to document a learning intervention as guides for submitters.

Design conjectures (Sandoval, 2013) include the following components:

  • Context: Where is this instructional practice occurring? Who is involved?
  • Embodiment: What is the intervention?
  • Mediating Processes: How does the intervention lead to the outcomes?
  • Outcomes: What are the goals of the intervention?

Submit papers by June 10, 2024. by email to creativephysicalcomputing@traceslab.net
Notifications to authors will be shared by June 14, 2024.

Accepted papers will be shared with attendees before the workshop and made publicly available on the workshop website after the workshop. Slides will be presented during lightning talks and used to shape group discussions at the workshop. At least one author of each accepted submission must attend the workshop; all participants must register for both the workshop and at least one day of the conference.

Schedule and Workshop Structure

The workshop will be a one-day in-person evens. The workshop consists of a series of activities that will foster exchange of emerging research and curricular approaches to creative physical computing.

Duration Activity
Morning Introduction
08:30-09:00 (30 min) Welcome: Registration and coffee.
09:00-09:15 (15 min) Introductions: Overview of workshop goals.
09:15-09:45 (30 min) Lightning Talks: Showcasing participants’ interventions and challenges.
09:45-10:30 (45 min) Makerspace Tour: Tour of local Makerspaces with Laurens Boer
10:30-11:00 (30 min) Break
  Categorizing Interventions
11:00-11:30 (30 min) Activity: Affinity groups speed-dating.
11:30-12:15 (45 min) Activity: Organize interventions around affinity groups.
12:15-12:30 (15 min) Share out: Reflections, observations, gaps, and opportunities.
12:00-14:00 (90 min) Lunch and informal discussion.
Afternoon Expanding Connections
14:00-14:45 (45 min) Invited keynote: Daniel Ashbrook
14:45-15:30 (15 min) Small-group discussions Merging pedagogical moves.
15:30-16:00 (15 min) Break
  Designing Innovations
16:00-16:30 (30 min) Activity: Ideate a new instructional intervention or study in small groups.
16:30-16:45 (15 min) Closing discussion and next steps.
16:45-17:00 (15 min) Wrap up.

Keynote Speaker and Invited Guests

Daniel Ashbrook will offer a keynote talk in the workshop. More details to follow.

Laurens Boer will provide a tour and discussion of IT University of Copenhagen’s makerspaces in the afternoon.

Accepted Contributions

Coming soon!

Organizers

images of organizers: Presented as a row of six circular portraits showing the individuals smiling.

  • Daragh Byrne is an Associate Teaching Professor at the School of Architecture at Carnegie Mellon University. He is affiliated faculty with the IDeATe Network and holds courtesy appointments in the School of Design and the Human Computer Interaction Institute. His teaching and research intersects with designing for smart and connected objects, tangible interaction design, and the maker-movement, with a emphasis on creativity-support and documentation.

  • Kayla DesPortes is an Assistant Professor of Human-Computer Interaction and the Learning Sciences at NYU Steinhardt, where her work intersects computing technology, learning opportunities, and social equity to create spaces for self-empowerment with technology. She employs participatory research methods to blend computing, engineering, and data literacy with artistic practices, aiming to create inclusive, culturally rich learning environments.

  • Noura Howell is an Assistant Professor in Digital Media at Georgia Tech. Her research combines embodied physical computing with design futuring to critically reimagine Emotion AI, or algorithmic ways of knowing emotion. Her research and teaching develop embodied and immersive art experiences with physical computing, synthesis of critiques of biosensing for generative design directions, and novel approaches in design futuring.

  • Marti Louw is faculty in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University where she directs the Learning Media Design Center. As a design-based researcher, she focuses on how design as a creative problem-solving form of systematic inquiry can be used to collaboratively envision and create technology-enhanced learning environments that are socially co-constructed, personally relevant, and emancipatory.

  • Sarah Sterman is a Research Assistant Professor in Computer Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her research seeks to understand creative process and build novel computational creativity support tools to enhance creative work across domains including writing, CS education, and design. She studies learning and community dynamics within makerspaces, especially with regard to the impacts of documentation tools for physical computing.

  • Cesar Torres is an Assistant Professor in Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington. His research and teaching explores the intersection of digital fabrication and craft practices to examine the dialectical relationship between the digital and physical, the material and immaterial, theory and practice, the academic space and the community space, and the professional and the amateur.