I'm a probationary non-tenured faculty member in the College of Information Sciences & Technology + College of Education at
The Pennsylvania State University. My research deals with computer-aided cognition and decision-making, focusing
on the design and evaluation of computational tools to enhance human learning
in "everyday" settings.
My mantras:
- The product of good research is better people
- Invent [experiences] and Iterate [with evidence]
Which just means I build systems, study how people use them, feed those findings back into the design process to make better tools and people. Doing this requires me to be flexible, find the right tools to achieve my goals. I spend a lot of time learning…a good thing.
Contact: bsmith at ist dot psu dot edu.
After 10+ years of building learning environments, I realized that people are pretty good at learning. The difficulties often come when people need to unlearn prior attitudes, beliefs, & practices that bias the acquisition of new knowledge & skills. So I build systems to help people develop new ways of thinking and doing by reflecting on existing, potentially brittle, theories and habits. Some of those have been proofs of concept that never left the lab. The ones below are for real.
More info can be found at the ublearnin site.
Projects
I'd rather build systems than write about them, but academia forces me to "publish or perish." So here's some selected publications.
Smith, B.K., Frost, J., Albayrak, M., & Sudhakar, R. (2006). Facilitating narrative medical discussions with computer visualizations and photography. Patient Education and Counseling, 64: 313-321.
Smith, B.K., Sharma, P., & Hooper, P. (2006). Decision making in online fantasy sports communities. Interactive Technology & Smart Education, 4: 347-360.
Smith, B.K. (2006). Design and computational flexibility. Digital Creativity, 17(2): 65-72.
Smith, B.K. (2005). Physical fitness in virtual worlds. IEEE Computer, 38(10): 101-103.
Smith, B. K. & Reiser, B. J. (2005). Explaining behavior using video for observational inquiry and theory articulation. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 14(3): 315-360.
Animal Landlord
My first "imagery as data" project, Animal Landlord is a video annotation system originally built for high school biology classrooms. Jacques Cousteau, David Attenborough, and others taught many of us about animal behavior, but the gist here was to get students to observe and interpret video clips without the aid of expert narrators.
Students act as field biologists, annotating and comparing video to create hypotheses about how and why animals do what they do. Northwestern Univ has more to say about the current versions and deployments of the software, go check them out.
Image Maps
(with Erik Blankinship, MIT)
Image Maps has learners studying how and why their local communities changed over time. Historical photographs provide the data and evidence for their theories of community change. In the original version, we built a "location-aware" camera equipped with a global positioning system (GPS) and digital compass. By combining the camera's knowledge of position and orientation with a geo-referenced image database, students could photograph buildings and automatically see historical pictures of the same location. Mapping and annotation tools allow students to assemble these historical images into theories about historical progress in their communities.
While our initial studies dealt with history curriculum, the system is now being deployed to senior citizen's centers, historical commissions, and urban planning projects to assist adult reflection on city change.
Personal Health Imaging
(with Jeana Frost, Boston University, Meltem Albayrak & Rajneesh Sudhakar, PSU)
Medical conditions such as asthma, diabetes, and obesity can be managed by altering behaviors. This work examines the potential of digital imagery as a tool for capturing and reflecting on existing practices related to health management.
The first intervention introduces photography into diabetes self-management. Individuals with diabetes take pictures of their eating, exercise, and other habits, these are visualized along with blood glucose records to provide additional context about their health. Studies of the system have taken place in diabetes education courses, the everyday lives of college students, & patient/physician consultations. The work is currently being extended to K-12 health curricula and a mobile implementation of the software is in development.
That's How I Beat Shaq
(with Rajneesh Sudhakar, Priya Sharma, PSU, & Paula Hooper, TERC )
15-30 million people regularly play online fantasy sports games, where players assume the role of "league owners," selecting professional athletes to form ideal sports teams. Players of these games compete with others in what can be viewed as a resource allocation task: Decisions about teams involve choosing athletes to maximize winnings while working with limited assets. As a result, successful fantasy sports play may involve a variety of sophisticated, yet informal information seeking and mathematical practices.
We've been studying fantasy sports players to understand their informal knowledge use. These findings will be used to augment a fantasy basketball engine with tools for statistical data analyses, information seeking, and collaborative argumentation.
No Pain, No Game
(with Stephen Yang, PSU)
Excessive playing of computer/video games has been criticized for many reasons, one being their potential contribution to overweight and obesity among young Americans. However a new genre of exergaming has emerged to engage players in using their bodies to control virtual experiences.
We've been working with multimodal game controllers to understand their effects on physical activity and fitness. Pilot studies of adolescents playing exergames reported participants achieving high cardiovascular activity and low perceived exertion. A recent 3-month case study demonstrates the effects on weight and HbA1c levels.
We continue to study exergames and their effects on health as well as designing games that use physiological sensors to increase reflection on exertion and other physical outcomes.