Researching Creative Learning

As a Ph.D. student at the ATLAS Institute at the University of Colorado Boulder I'm studying the intersection of creative learning, technology, design, and education – specifically in out-of-school spaces likes museums and libraries. I'm interested in understanding and highlighting the work that educators in these spaces do, what challenges they faces, and applying these understandings to the development of resources to support out-of-school educators.

Research Work

Prior to 2020 I worked in the research lab "Laboratory for Playful Computation" and explored creative, interdisciplinary approaches to computer science education. Currently, I am a part of the "Creative Communities" research group. We design and study technology-rich creative learning experiences that are equitable, culturally-relevant, and joyful.

Research Publications

You can find a list of some of my recent publications on google scholar. Recently, I've shared my work as a poster at the RESPECT (Annual Conference on Research in Equity and Sustained Participation in Engineering, Computing, and Technology) conference. In July 2022, I will share a new paper titled "Challenges in Facilitating Computational Learning Experiences in Informal Learning Environments" at the Connected Learning Summit.

Research Approach

I take a qualitative, ethnographic, and participatory approach to my research. In non-academic language that means that I do a lot of interviewing, taking photos and videos, and observing learners and educators/taking notes. These are my data sources. "Participatory" means that I try to be a part of the community that I'm researching, and I like to work in partnership with these community members to make decisions about what we research, and how we do our research.