hci Disciplinary Commons: Participants

I have been teaching HCI for 12 years, having developed the first ever HCI course at the University of Queensland in 1994 - a course which I revised several times over the subsequent seven years. I have since taught similar MSc courses here at the University of Glasgow in HCI and User Centred Software Design. I teach some HCI at second year level, and am just about to start teaching HCI at first year.

I lead the Human Computer Interface Design module within the Division of Computing and Creative Technology at Glasgow Caledonian University, a modern post-92 university. The division runs a variety of programmes, notably a number of 2+2 degrees which take students articulating from FE colleges with HND qualifications and allows them to ‘convert’ these to a degree in one year or an Honours degree in two. Computing and Creative Technology is staffed by specialists from a number of disciplines including Graphic Design, Product Design and Audio Engineering as well as more traditional Electronic Engineering, Software Engineering, programming and HCI backgrounds. We aim to produce graduates who have the skills to work in the multimedia and internet industries. To this end we try to equip students with “a range of digital and practical skills which can support the development of products and services and which demonstrate a creative ability in the interpretation of information and user expectations”.
Most of my teaching for the last six years has been in the areas of Human Computer Interaction and of Multimedia Learning Technologies. I also currently teach on a number of design based modules. The HCI module I run has been specifically tailored to meet the needs of students coming from a practical design background and is taught by both designers and people from more technical disciplines. It aims to provide a targeted introduction to the key issues involved in screen based interaction and to the process of interface design for graphics and multimedia students.  As such it covers a subset of the topics covered by conventional introductions to HCI. It is practically driven with a coursework element which runs for much of the semester and develops an interface from concept through storyboards to working prototype with students receiving feedback on their design throughout the process. 

I am a lecturer in the Department of Computing at the University of Gloucestershire. At degree or postgraduate level I have studied psychology, biomedical science, and multimedia. I have a working background in healthcare and education which has led to several research and development projects within UK and overseas healthcare, medical education and eLearning. Although I have a scientific background, I take a pragmatic approach and use both qualitative and quantitative tools in my research. My most recently completed research looked at the use of eLearning in junior doctor education. I am currently exploring the use of a virtual gallery for formative feedback in higher education, and RFID in healthcare.

Having never consciously considered teaching or computing as personal career choices, I have fallen into HCI lecturing unintentionally. However, now that I'm here, I have no intention of escaping, and, if anything, find myself having to curb my enthusiasm to avoid overselling HCI. The parts of my job I enjoy most is seeing the 'ah-ha' moment in students as it all starts to make sense, and seeing students confidence in themselves grow.

Deryn Graham is currently a Senior Lecturer at the School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, University of Greenwich. Dr Graham's teaching and research interests are in the areas of e-Learning and Teaching, Human-Computer Interaction and Interaction Design, and Artificial Intelligence, in which she has both published and held grants. Her latest research grant is for work in Interaction Design for Visually Impaired Students.

SL University of Lincoln I have been teaching a one-semester Introduction to HCI unit on an undergraduate Computing/Media Technologies programme for several years. The focus of my course is on usability evaluation tools and techniques, and part of the assessment requires the students to carry out a real, valid, albeit very small-scale user study. I have developed the course in this way because I have felt that the learning opportunity provided by 'real' people doing unpredicted things far outweighs any theoretical content I might provide. I am currently researching for an EdD looking at aspects of online learning, particularly CMC (computer-mediated communication) for learning, linked to my HCI interests, and have been incorporating and assessing the use of synchronous (chat) and asynchronous (discussion group) systems in my teaching as part of this work.

I'm Nadia Berthouze, a lecturer at the UCL Interaction Center (UCLIC). Since 2006, I've been teaching a course entitled "Design and Experience" within the Master course in Human-Computer Interaction with Ergonomics (HCI-E) run by UCLIC. My teaching experience is however longer. I worked at a Japanese University for the previous 6 years where I taught various computer science disciplines including Affective Computing. I'm now in the process of adapting my teaching material to create a course on Affective HCI that I'm planning to teach at two levels: Master in HCI and undergraduate diploma in psychology. What I expect from this workshop is improving my understanding and practice of teaching within the field of HCI. I believe that peer review and knowledge sharing are very important tools towards this goal. A particular challenge I'm facing in my courses is not only the fact that my course is interdisciplinary but also the fact that my students come from a very diversified background (computer science, psychology, design, etc.). The fact that the workshop focuses on HCI will give me the opportunity to develop, discuss and adapt general teaching techniques to the special interdisciplinary disciplines of HCI and its special audience.

I am a senior lecturer in School of Computing at Napier University. I spent many years as a contract researcher / HCI person in software houses in the North of England before biting the bullet and becoming an academic. I have taught HCI at both undergraduate and postgraduate level for more 10 years (though it seems much longer); I have also co-authored an HCI text book and have published numerous research papers. My main research focus is the 'why' rather than the 'what' and 'how' of HCI.

My main aim when teaching my course is to make sure that the students see that HCI is just a part of the general spectrum of design, and as such I try to use as many examples as possible from outside computing. The focus of the course has moved much more towards usability and accessibility of the years and I try to encourage a flexible view of these rather than being constarined by one particular method or school of thought. The foundation of the course is human factors material that I think is vitally important: students have often not thought at all about the effects that systems have on people, nor indeed noticed that people are really quite different. I regard it as a great success when some of my students report that they have become much more sensitised to their environment and notice things like push doors with handles on them or deliberately uncomfortable furniture in fast food restaurants.

I am a senior Lecturer in Computing at the School of Computing, Faculty of Technology, Southampton Solent University. I lead two HCI modules to undergraduates: Human Computer Interaction Design (the larger of the two delivered to BSc Level 2 students and covering aspects of interaction, human factors with some design) and User Interface Design a smaller module to HND level students. I have been teaching and developing in this area for approximately 10 years. I have recently attended and delivered a paper on user centred Task Analysis at HCI International 2007 in Beijing, China. Other recent HCI related papers include 'Human Factors in the HCI Learning Process: A Survey' at HCI International 2005 in Las Vegas and 'A Pragmatic HCI Approach: Engagement by Reinforcing Perception with Functional Design and Programming' at ITiCSE 05, Portugal. I am also responsible for the creation and development of a Usability Lab at Solent. The intention of creating the lab is to provide undergraduates and post- graduates with a means of assessing product and interface usability either in relation to their own work or possibly for outside sources in industry.

I am a lecturer at the Informatics Department in the University of Sussex. I am interested in exploring the support that collaboration and external representations can offer to students learning programming, software development and in general computational thinking. A related area of interest has to do with exploring the potential that new forms of interaction (tangible interfaces, embodied interaction) have for learning in general and specifically i) as a way to approach engagement and motivation ii) as a way to foster collaboration, and iii) for specifying concrete and abstract behaviours (programming, scripting, computational thinking) and the impact that this has on learning.

My name is Mairin Nicell and I am currently a lecturer in the School of Computing and Intelligent Systems at the University of Ulster, Magee. I have been teaching within this school for four years, previously being employed as a Teaching Fellow, only recently beginning my new position as lecturer. The subjects that I teach are as follows:

• COM009 Introduction to Programming This is an introductory programming module using Visual Basic.NET. It is taught to Level A students and is seen as a foundation module.
• COM178 Systems Analysis and Data Management This module is taught to all first year computing and electronic students within the School. It involves Systems Analysis techniques coupled with the formation of a database system.
• COM350 Human Computer Interaction This module is taught to all second year students within the school. It involves the study of how humans interact with computer systems in order to guide the development of modern, high quality user interfaces.

Over the past four years I have been involved in elearning and have worked on a number of projects within the school as part of our widening participation strategy. I am also interested computer science education, web technologies as well as HCI.

I am a lecturer based in the faculty of Computing, Engineering and Mathematical Sciences at the University of the West of England, Bristol. I am also Director of Learning Development for the faculty. This year my teaching portfolio includes Human-Computer Interaction, Creativity and Design and Digital Stories. I trained as an electronic engineer and have an MSc in Biomedical Instrumentation Engineering. I have a long-standing involvement in the application of adaptive non-linear learning techniques to a range of medically related problems. My main research interests lie in the area of adaptive computing techniques for knowledge discovery. My current research focus is on the development of interactive evolutionary systems and related HCI issues.

Sue Barnes began working at the University of Worcester for nine years. She is currently a Senior Lecturer in Computing and Course Leader for undergraduate computing degrees. Over that time she has helped build the Computing portfolio of honours degrees which now includes:

• Single Honours Computing
• Web Development
• Computer Networks
• Computer Games and Multimedia
• Business Information Technology
• IT for Education and Training

She teaches a wide range of topics over all three undergraduate years including; website design, database applications, interface design and professional issues. She particularly enjoys the opportunity to network with colleagues and exchange teaching and learning views and ideas. Sue is also an Honorary Life Member of the National Postgraduate Committee. Sue enjoys spending time on the family narrowboat moored in Warwickshire.

Paul is a senior lecturer in Human Computer Interaction at the University of York. He has been teaching HCI for six years but this is first year at York and his first year teaching a stand alone HCI module. His research is varied, partly because of the need to supervise student projects, but he is primarily interested in statistical models of user behaviour and understanding positive experience such as the experience of immersion in videogames. When not working, he likes singing and walking and gardening.