Browsing by Author "Hassan, Taha"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Griot-Style Methodology: Longitudinal Study of Navigating Design With Unwritten Stories
    Kotut, Lindah; Bhatti, Neelma; Hassan, Taha; Haqq, Derek; Saaty, Morva (ACM, 2024-05-11)
    We describe a seven-year longitudinal study conducted in collaboration with an indigenous community in Kenya. We detail the process of conducting research with an oral community: the deliberate practice of understanding and collecting stories; working with inter-generational community to envision and design technologies that support their ways of storytelling and story preservation; and to infuence the design of other technologies. We chronicle how we contended with translating oral stories with rich metaphors to new mediums, and the dimensions of trust we have established and continue to reinforce. We ofer our griot-style methodology, informed by working with the community and retroftting existing HCI approaches: as an example model of what has worked, and the dimensions of challenges at each stage of the research work. The griot-style methodology has prompted a refection on how we approach research, and present opportunities for other HCI research and practice of handling community stories.
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    On Trust, Editorial Intent, and Recommender Systems for Supporting Higher Education
    Hassan, Taha (Virginia Tech, 2024-09-12)
    Institutional support of higher teaching and learning at scale poses three unique challenges. The first challenge is poor institutional accounting of instructors' use of educational platforms and software, especially the learning management system (LMS). The second challenge is a deficit of trust among stakeholders with unique job roles, prerogatives, and editorial preferences. The third challenge is one-size-fits-all, open-loop, or stopgap support processes. To address these challenges, this three-phase dissertation project proposes a novel sociotechnical framework for institutional support using trustworthy educational recommender systems. This framework accounts for LMS platform contexts, multiple stakeholders, and editorial trust relationships. In its first phase, the project proposes ``Depth of Use" (DOU): a first-principles framework of frequent LMS use-contexts. DOU is found to highlight low-adoption course cohorts, evaluate course design interventions, and improve IT emergency preparedness. The second phase of this project proposes a novel model of recommendation trustworthiness based in stakeholder allocation of RS editorial tasks. The study discovers a spectrum of faculty intentions about editorial division-of-labor and its frequent rationales, including student expertise, professional curriculum needs, authorship burdens at scale, and learner disengagement. In its third phase, the project investigates how editorial trust might be enhanced by transparency cues (guarantees, social proof, content tags). The dissertation concludes with a set of design guidelines to aid HCI practitioners in enhancing editorial transparency and algorithmic explainability, and increasing process efficacy of institutional support.
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    Pokémon GO with Social Distancing: Social Media Analysis of Players' Experiences with Location-based Games
    Saaty, Morva; Haqq, Derek; Beyki, Mohammadreza; Hassan, Taha; McCrickard, D. Scott (ACM, 2022-10-29)
    Pokémon GO is a popular location-based mobile game that seeks to inspire players to be more active, socialize physically and virtually, and spend more time outside. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, several game mechanics of Pokémon GO were changed to accommodate socially-distanced play. This research aims to understand the impacts of the pandemic and subsequent game adjustments on user perceptions of the game. We used an exploratory mixed-method approach, a machine learning technique (Latent Dirichlet Allocation) for topic modeling, and thematic analysis for qualitative coding of top-level Reddit comments to identify whether and how the social distancing approach changes the players’ behaviors. The results demonstrate that players were less physically active, less eager to discover, and more interested in remote social practices. We discuss which players leverage social distancing changes and reflect on key game features that provide a better gaming experience in the age of remote play.
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    Simplify, Consolidate, Intervene: Facilitating Institutional Support with Mental Models of Learning Management System Use
    Hassan, Taha; Edmison, Bob; Williams, Daron; Cox II, Larry; Louvet, Matthew; Knijnenburg, Bart; McCrickard, D. (ACM, 2024-11-08)
    Measuring instructors' adoption of learning management system (LMS) tools is a critical first step in evaluating the efficacy of online teaching and learning at scale. Existing models for LMS adoption are often qualitative, learner-centered, and difficult to leverage towards institutional support. We propose depth-of-use (DOU): an intuitive measurement model for faculty's utilization of a university-wide LMS and their needs for institutional support. We hypothesis-test the relationship between DOU and course attributes like modality, participation, logistics, and outcomes. In a large-scale analysis of metadata from 30000+ courses offered at Virginia Tech over two years, we find that a pervasive need for scale, interoperability and ubiquitous access drives LMS adoption by university instructors. We then demonstrate how DOU can help faculty members identify the opportunity-cost of transition from legacy apps to LMS tools. We also describe how DOU can help instructional designers and IT organizational leadership evaluate the impact of their support allocation, faculty development and LMS evangelism initiatives.