Hello, my name is Clint Zeagler and I am a senior research
scientist at Georgia Tech and I'm here to present a paper
entitled you better work using wearable technology performance driven
inclusive transdisciplinary collaboration to facilitate authentic
learning. So these are the authors on the paper in the sense
of participatory design and inclusion.
We all work together.
These are the students who worked on the projects in the
class and the external.
So this paper describes a set of class projects where
groups worked with performers as collaborators.
The performers were external to Georgia Tech and came in
and worked with the student groups.
We discussed the advantages of working with collaborators
on wearable tech human-computer interaction projects and
the benefits of project-based learning specifically performance
driven projects, especially when working with performers.
Or others from disciplines that are far removed from HCI
just a quick note on gender pronouns because the groups in
the class worked with drag queens.
Sometimes the drag queens, especially when they're out of
drag use he/him and when they were in drag they used she/hers
we might use those pronouns interchangeably and we talked
to the drag queens and they said that was okay when I talk
about authentic learning and project-based learning that
basically focuses on working with on real-world projects
with the student groups.
When I say transdisciplinary collaboration, I mean collaboration
that's really more than interdisciplinary.
So interdisciplinary would be perhaps two different disciplines
working together, but those disciplines are close to each
other here.
We're talking about computer scientist or Computing students
working with performers are drag queens.
So very far removed boundary objects.
So what I mean by boundary objects are those things and or
methods that help groups work together and usually that's
If so, we would look back at a project and say oh that was
a boundary object.
So about the course here are some of the goals of the course,
but basically this was a wearable technology course that
focused on how wearable technology affects society and society
affects wearable technology design and it does not focus
on building skill.
So the group projects we had three different projects two
groups worked with local drag queens from a drag acts called
the other show here in Atlanta and the other grouped with
With a hip hop style dancer on performance costuming all
three groups worked on that.
We're going to focus just on the to drag queen groups today
for the class obviously lectures we had readings in the course
and then we did a lot of in-class discussion.
There were also some skill demonstrations.
So as students needed, as the instructor I would help with
certain Tech skills or fabrication skills sewing things like
that for methods of research.
We use experience reporting and feedback.
So questionnaires at the end of the course along with observations
from me.
Okay.
So let's talk a little bit about the specific projects and
their outcomes one student group worked on a project with
the name drag Duality essentially.
It was a way for the audience to have input into the drag
performance. So as the drag queen came out on stage her costume
that they fabricated would light up in one of two ways with
different patterns and those would correlate two separate
songs and the audience could vote on their phones which performance
they wanted to see and then the dress would light up in that
way one of the ways that the students were able to work with
their drag queen in this in this project.
were through drawing so you see the student sketch on the
left and the drag queen sketch or the collaborators sketch
on the right and this is an example of how the groups were
able to talk to each other about concepts when maybe they
didn't have the same terminology.
So the drag queen performer that they were working with did
not have a high level of technical expertise.
So a lot of what she was doing is writing
call-outs to say this is what I think this should do where
as you can see on the left the students in the group didn't
have a high level of being able to sketch and draw it out,
but they were able to show what portions of garment would
be able to change color and how that might happen.
The students reported learning a lot about hardware skills
and fabrication garment construction fabric choices, and
that's to be expected because they were learning those things
on their own in the course.
We talked about methods of communication and also how to
trend forecast for different types of interactions that might
be interesting for the performance.
The other the other project was called La Mandragora
it changed with reaction to light from the from the audience
or from the spotlight.
So when the spotlight hit it the flowers would open up and
when it was in the dark tendrils would fall down.
Again, students reported learning about electronics and mechanisms
here mostly and also sensors.
So when things that students really had to work through was
sensor thresholds how to get those working correctly.
The students also had to communicate with the with their
drag queen collaborator to figure out performance style because
this wouldn't work on what they call a dancing queen right
because of the way it had to be situated on the head and
how heavy it was you couldn't move around a lot in it.
But luckily the performer that they were working with was
more of a host.
Okay, so some observations and discussion.
First of all, I propose that wearable technology is a great
platform for HCI education mainly because so many different
types of disciplines have to work together or have an understanding
of each other to work on a wearable technology project.
And the more diverse team you have the better projects you
tend to end up with within the class project some students
had to step outside of their comfort
zone in many ways in regards to learning new skills working
with performers and perhaps even learning new cultural references
and you'll see this in some of the quotes in the paper working
with people outside of their comfort zone, especially in
a discipline far away from their's it enriches their learning
experience and enables them to work better in groups when
they leave education or when they leave school.
Working with students and collaborators in different disciplines
help students get ready for real world careers when
you leave college, you don't tend to work and a group that's
fully computer scientists.
And this case at Georgia Tech.
So working with people and understanding how to work with
people that aren't from your discipline can be a really enriching
learning experience.
Again, we talked about boundary objects within education.
I think I have found great success teaching about boundary
objects and having them do readings about boundary objects
before they get into real group work.
This does a couple of things, but by describing an understanding
a boundary object and saying we're going to use a boundary
object instead of looking back and saying that was the boundary
object. It allows the group to upfront understand that there
are boundaries and that you're going to have to create some
kind of shared meaning to be able to collaborate together.
in this case as in many cases drawing was a major boundary
object. Not just the descriptiveness of the drawings as we
saw before in the group that was using drawing to explain
things to each other.
But if you draw together drawing together, you start to understand
the importance of which parts mean more to the person that's
drawing by understanding which parts they draw first and
also you can see how hard they're thinking about the drawing
which imparts weight and importance to the drawing.
So drawing is a great example of a boundary object that these
groups used to be able to collaborate.
I note about performance-driven collaborative work.
So when there's a performance that's going to happen.
It becomes very important that the device works well and
is ready on time.
For instance.
The drag queens were very concerned about the parts of the
garment that they would not be able to fix so they needed
to know that the technology was going to work correctly before
they walked out on stage and have trust in that so being
able to practice with that.
I'll say also that working with performers and especially
drag queens have this 'make it work' attitude when I saw the
groups working together with the drag queens many times drag
queens would be like, okay, we've been talking about this
for 15 minutes.
Let's just start making and put the things together and
make it happen which students especially in academia can
fall behind on, many papers before have talked about skills
as a barrier.
The way we overcame that is even though this wasn't a skill
building class.
I held skill demos and then I also pointed student groups
towards online resources and local resources for help and
being able to build and code the things that they needed
to and you'll see that many of the students noted that they
had difficulty with learning the tech but that they quickly
overcame those and in the end of the class
it's one of the things that they said was most valuable in
their learning
so things to think about when creating groups
try to use terms like experts and collaborators instead of
mentor and client because that the mentor and client tend
to denote levels of authority, if you use collaborators people
work together and then everyone feels like an expert on the
things that I know about, try to find outside collaborators
from a different discipline with very different skills and
expertise from the students, exploit the differences and use
methods such as boundary objects also offer collaboration remembering
that if you teach that upfront and explain what it is the
students will remember that and hopefully remind students
while they're working they are using the processes and methods
that you've taught them and make sure that they're recognizing
that, try to work on projects that have real world consequences,
especially performance driven work.
If you have to get out on stage and something has to work
on stage.
It means that it really has to work because you're in front
of people, and then finally working with collaborators from
different cultural Persuasions can help.
Help and calling out and Illuminating differences in disciplines
and can aid in creating a shared cultural understanding that
can impact students future work.
So that's the case study on these projects.
I hope that you take a chance to read the paper.
And again the paper is you better work using wearable technology
performance-driven inclusive transdisciplinary collaboration to facilitate authentic learning
and I'm Clint Zeagler
Thanks.