Chris Langston, UX Researcher - Accessibility, Pearson
Nathan Moon, Research Scientist II, CACP
Disability Area: Topic Area:
Length of Session (in hours): 1-hr
Format: Lecture
Expertise Level: All Levels
Type of session: Not provided
Summary of Session
The BreakThru project has recruited over 30 mentors to guide more than 80 students into STEM education and careers. Using social media and our unique virtual environment, BreakThru allows STEM students and mentors to connect, learn and break through barriers to success.
Abstract
Since being presented at AHG 2011, the NSF BreakThru project has recruited over a hundred students and mentors from STEM careers and majors. Students participate in mentoring activities using our Second Life islands and social media, which have been designed for the project as an online mentoring sanctuary. Mentors connect with their students through a variety of mobile and online communication channels, enabling a truly diverse array of mentoring relationships as unique as each student. Now entering into its fourth year, BreakThru has undergone numerous revisions to better serve the needs our participants, including an increased focus on mobile devices. In addition, researchers are now beginning to package BreakThru as a scalable model for implementation in other locations. This presentation provides a progress report on those efforts and discusses some of the key challenges presented by development of an electronic mentoring program.
Kepoints
Achieving recruitment and retention goals.
Need to accommodate diverse communication preferences.
Developing a scalable, transferrable model.
Speaker Bio(s)
Chris Langston
Chris Langston has a decade of applied and experimental research experience in progressively senior roles as qualitative UX researcher, accessibility specialist, and instructional designer. He has designed and conducted experimental protocols using multiple UX research methods to generate findings from students with disabilities in virtual world environments as a Co-Principle Investigator for the Georgia STEM Accessibility Alliance. He developed and taught a graduate-level course on usability and accessibility for Georgia Tech’s Industrial Design program.
At Pearson, Chris leads research related to accessibility for the UX research team within Pearson’s learning design division. He works with designers, product managers, developers, and prototypers to increase conformance with WCAG 2.0 guidelines. Chris also provides expert assistance to expand access to online education products through identification of problems, and application of research methods to reveal accessibility barriers.
Nathan Moon
Nathan W. Moon, PhD, is the Associate Director for Research of the Center for Advanced Communications Policy (CACP) at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. His primary research interests are workplace accommodations for people with disabilities, disability policy, accessibility and inclusion in postsecondary education, and systematic interventions to improve postsecondary STEM education.
Dr. Moon has conducted research sponsored by the National Science Foundation and U.S. Department of Education regarding accessible STEM education. He led a team that authored a handbook on classroom accommodations for students with disabilities in STEM education. He also currently serves as the external evaluator for the University System of Georgia’s (USG) STEM Initiative, and is Co-Principal Investigator of the Georgia STEM Accessibility Alliance BreakThru project.