Matt Zago

Computers are good at following instructions, but not at reading your mind

Vision statement

I want to investigate Human Computer Interface (HCI) and educational technology (at CU in particular) to investigate if I want to focus on one of these topics at the graduate level.

Motivation

After taking a cognitive science class with lectures from Michael Eisenberg at CU, I found many of the topics to be interesting, but in particular discussion about HCI and topics that Michael investigated with craft design.

Project Goal:

Enroll and complete the Georgie Tech HCI Course offered through EdX (https://www.edx.org/course/human-computer-interaction-i-fundamentals-design-p)
Investigate HCI and educational tech resources available via labs and others resources at University of Colorado at Boulder. This includes reaching out to faculty and staff to learn about options and review at least abstracts and introductions from published work from CU labs associated with HCI and educational tech.
Write up a final project report on how useful the course was and what I’ve learned that I like/don’t like about HCI and educational tech with a particular focus on if I want to pursue it more and if so what options I might have at CU to do that.

Project Timeline

Communication around HCI and educational tech resources will happen throughout the semester, but the HCI class will have a schedule that is adjusted to 12 weeks and will have completion dates as follows:

Section 1 - Jun 26th, 2023
Section 2 - July 1, 2023
Section 3 - July 6, 2023
Section 4 - July 12, 2023
Section 5 - July 17, 2023
Final Test - July 22, 2023
Additional Suggested Readings Due - August 6, 2023

Risks to project completion:

While the HCI course is listed as taking ~5-6 hours over 6 weeks (a total of 30-36 hours), it’s possible that this could take longer than expected.
It’s possible that I will discover that I don’t like HCI or educational tech before the end of the semester at which point I will need to pivot to a new topic I want to investigate.
Looking at CU resources over the summer can sometimes be more difficult because of lack of availability of staff/faculty that are not active over the Summer.

Mitigation Strategies:

I will schedule and record how long the HCI class takes per week to make sure it is not more time consuming than originally planned.
Early in the semester I will need to compile a list of CU resources and begin communicating with CU faculty and staff about options early in case response times are slow.

Project Assessment:

The HCI class is graded for evaluation.
Weekly status updates will be made to track progress.
A final report discussing what I have learned and which topics (if any) between HCI and educational tech I want to pursue further at CU and what resources might be available to me.