The CITS Approach to Researching and Teaching about Technology & Society

Message from the Director Jennifer Earl

This issue of the newsletter has a special focus on education and the mutually invigorating relationship between research and education at our Center. CITS approaches this relationship between research and education in a range of ways.

First, CITS researchers study the relationship between information technology and society: the CITS research emphasis on Technology in Education (TIE) is dedicated to understanding the relationship between technology in the classroom, student learning, and student and instructor experience, as well as to building new tools that can improve student learning and student and instructor experience. You will find remarks on this project by CITS Associate Director and TIE research initiative leader, Kevin Almeroth, and one his distinguished collaborators, Professor Richard Mayer, in this issue of the newsletter.

The range of issues this research initiative has engaged is truly impressive. Faculty and graduate students collaborated to create PAIRwise, a robust open source plagiarism detection program. You can read more about PAIRwise at pairwise.cits.ucsb.edu or watch a video of a prior Faculty Lecture Series event introducing PAIRwise at cits.blip.tv. The research initiative has also studied controlled comparisons of classrooms using various information technologies and those that are not using new technologies through a Mellon Foundation Grant. Their research can help us move away from an “if you build it, they will come” model of technological development, and move toward a model that thinks critically about how to effectively integrate new technologies into the classroom. Second, faculty of CITS run the Technology and Society Ph.D. emphasis. This emphasis allows doctoral students in affiliated academic departments to add a specialized emphasis to their Ph.D. experience and resume. There has been a great deal of student interest in the emphasis. In fact, one of the wonderful surprises of becoming Director was responding to weekly e-mails in the Fall from prospective UCSB graduate students who were drawn to apply to UCSB because of the Ph.D. emphasis and CITS. As part of the Ph.D. emphasis, CITS faculty offer a “gateway seminar” in the Fall and Spring on varying topics at the intersection of information technology and society. My sense of student interest has been strengthened by strong enrollments in that gateway course and by the amazing attendance at a graduate student lunchtime reception that CITS co-hosted with the Center for Nanotechnology in Society for graduate students interested in technology and society. The room was so full that students spilled into the hallway!

Third, CITS research projects involve graduate and undergraduate students in the daily practice of research, which provides valuable research experience and professional mentoring. A range of CITS research projects—from Mellon Foundation-funded projects and NSF-funded projects—include support for graduate student research assistants, and my own NSF CAREER project regularly supports a half dozen or more undergraduate research assistants.

Fourth, graduate students participate and present in the CITS Faculty Lecture Series. In fact, on the day I am writing this piece I am also preparing to introduce Allan Knight, a Computer Science Ph.D. candidate, who is presenting on educational software as part of the Faculty Lecture Series. If you want to see Allan’s talk, or other CITS talks by graduate students, check out the videos of those talks at cits.blip.tv.

As one can see, CITS is deeply involved in education—including both research on technology and education and teaching about technology and society. We hope you see your own research or educational interests represented in our program and invite you to contact us to find out how you can become more involved with CITS.