Background

Full Proposal (PDF)

Two thousand and twenty marked 28 years since the publication of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (SIGCHI) Curricula for Human-Computer Interaction [1]. Developed by the SIGCHI Curriculum Development Group (CDG), the publication outlined examples of courses that covered both foundational HCI concepts as well as innovative methods, tools, and approaches from contemporary HCI research. This publication was the outcome of many years of dedicated efforts by dozens of HCI scholars and educators, with Ronald Baecker chief among them. In his 1989 ACM SIGCHI Bulletin outlining his vision of HCI education [2], Baecker offered “a proposal for a new curriculum in human-computer interaction and user-centered system and interface design.” A few years later, in 1992, his vision, and the ones of his HCI colleagues, materialized in the first version of the SIGCHI Curriculum and for many years this document (known as the green book) shaped the design of many HCI programs. In fact, it is difficult to overstate just how vital this curriculum was to the establishment and growth of HCI education programs.

In the ensuing decades, the HCI discipline has experienced many changes, from the proliferation of mobile phones and social media to the development of ubiquitous computing devices, the internet of things, virtual/augmented reality, voice user interfaces, brain-computer interfaces, and many other innovative technologies that profoundly change the way humans interact with technology. In light of these changes, an international community of HCI educators has started coming together around the common goal of updating the curriculum to reflect modern contexts and challenges. 

Current efforts in this area were driven by the ACM SIGCHI Executive Committee, who sponsored a project to investigate the present and future of HCI education from 2011 to 2014 [3]. A recurring theme from this project was the desire for a collection of online resources for HCI scholars and educators – known as the HCI living curriculum [4] – to share and collaborate on developing course outlines, curricula, and teaching materials. Following on this effort, a workshop was held at the CHI 2014 conference in Toronto, Canada [5] which yielded different visions of what this new curriculum could be. A second workshop was held two years later, at the AfriCHI 2016 conference in Nairobi, Kenya, which brought an international perspective on HCI education and how a global community could participate in its development and growth [6]. The following year, semi-structured interviews with HCI educators were conducted at the CHI 2017 conference in Denver, Colorado [7, 8] to gather feedback on a preliminary framework for the HCI living curriculum. Two years ago, at the CHI 2018 conference in Montréal, Canada, a second workshop was held and emphasized the need to develop a Community of Practice (CoP) to support global HCI education and build excitement and interest in the living curriculum [9]. The results from the workshop, as well as findings from the research conducted at CHI 2017, were published in ACM interactions [10].

Of the many themes that emerged from the CHI 2018 workshop activities and discussions, two stood out as an immediate need: creating discussion channels for HCI educators and providing a platform for sharing HCI curricula and teaching experiences. To that end, for the CHI 2019 conference in Glasgow, Scotland, we organized a symposium dedicated exclusively to HCI education [11]. The one-day symposium – titled EduCHI 2019: Global Perspectives on HCI Education – brought together HCI educators across disciplinary and geographical borders to discuss, dissect, and debate HCI teaching and learning. Featuring two keynote addresses, twelve paper presentations, and a panel discussion by expert HCI educators representing different global perspectives, the symposium was successful in shining a light on current and future HCI education trends, curricula, pedagogies, teaching practices, and diverse and inclusive HCI education.

Feedback from attendees of EduCHI 2019 was largely positive, with respondents to a post-symposium survey providing an average rating of 4 (out of 5) in terms of overall quality. Respondents were especially satisfied with the paper presentations (average rating of 4.5/5). Overall, respondents cited meeting other HCI educators learning about effective teaching practices as two main benefits, but there were also requests for more opportunities for discussions and more engagement between attendees. Therefore, we hope to build off the success of last year’s symposium with EduCHI 2020: The 2nd Annual Symposium on HCI Education.

While this symposium is targeting HCI educators, its scope is much broader. Indeed, we will make an effort to recruit participants with research interests in the area of human-centered education.

Symposium Goals

The goals of the symposium are to: 

  • Support the continued growth and development of the HCI education CoP;
  • Provide a platform for discussing current and emerging trends in HCI education;
  • Share innovative pedagogies and teaching methods from HCI educators; and
  • Promote a global, diverse, and inclusive vision for HCI education.

About the Organizers

The organizing committee includes faculty and students who are active HCI educators and researchers and play key roles in promoting the development of the HCI living curriculum. The first two authors and the last author were the lead organizers of the CHI 2018 workshop on Developing a Community of Practice to Support Global HCI Education (W25) [9] and the CHI 2019 EduCHI Symposium on Global Perspectives on HCI Education [11]. The organizers are also authors on previous HCI education research articles referenced above [3, 4, 10] and more broadly within the area of HCI education [12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17].

References

  1. Thomas T. Hewett, Ronald Baecker, Stuart Card, Tom Carey, Jean Gasen, Marilyn Mantei, Gary Perlman, Gary Strong, and William Verplank. 1992. ACM SIGCHI Curricula for Human-Computer Interaction. ACM, New York.
  2. Ronald Baecker. 1989. A vision of education in user-centered system and interface design. ACM SIGCHI Bulletin 20, 3 (January 1989), 10-13. DOI=http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/67900.67901
  3. Elizabeth F. Churchill, Anne Bowser, and Jennifer Preece. 2013. Teaching and learning human-computer interaction: past, present, and future. interactions 20, 2 (March 2013), 44-53. DOI=http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2427076.2427086
  4. Elizabeth F. Churchill, Anne Bowser, and Jennifer Preece. 2016. The future of HCI education: a flexible, global, living curriculum. interactions 23, 2 (February 2016), 70-73. DOI=http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2888574
  5. Elizabeth F. Churchill, Jennifer Preece, and Anne Bowser. 2014. Developing a living HCI curriculum to support a global community. In CHI ’14 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA ’14). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 135-138. DOI=http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2559206.2559236
  6. Zayira Jordan, Jose Abdelnour Nocera, Anicia Peters, Susan Dray, and Stephen Kimani. 2016. A Living HCI Curriculum. In AfriCHI’16 Proceedings of the First African Conference on Human Computer Interaction. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 229-232. DOI=http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2998581.2998623
  7. Andrea Jovanovic, Olivier St-Cyr, and Mark Chignell. 2017. Towards the HCI living curriculum. Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA) Conference. Toronto, ON: Canada.
    DOI=https://doi.org/10.24908/pceea.v0i0.10383
  8. Andrea Jovanovic. 2018. Designing the HCI Living Curriculum. Unpublished Masters of Applied Science Thesis. Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering. University of Toronto, Canada. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322990274_Designing_the_HCI_Living_Curriculum
  9. Olivier St-Cyr, Craig M. MacDonald, Elizabeth F. Churchill, Jennifer Preece, and Anne Bowser. 2018. Developing a Community of Practice to Support Global HCI Education. In CHI ’18 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA ’18). ACM, New York, NY, USA, W25. DOI=http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3170427.3170616
  10. Olivier St-Cyr, Andrea Jovanovic, Mark Chignell, Craig M. MacDonald, and Elizabeth F. Churchill. 2018. The HCI living curriculum as a community of practice. interactions 25, 5 (September 2018), 68-75. DOI=http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3215842
  11. Olivier St-Cyr, Craig M. MacDonald, and Elizabeth F. Churchill. 2019. EduCHI 2019 Symposium: Global Perspectives on HCI Education. In CHI ’19 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA ’19). ACM, New York, NY, USA, Sym03. DOI=http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3290607.3298994
  12. Colin M. Gray. 2014. Evolution of Design Competence in UX Practice. In CHI’14: Proceedings of the 2014 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM New York, NY, USA, 1645-1654. DOI=http://doi.org/10.1145/2556288.2557264
  13. Mihaela Vorvoreanu, Colin M. Gray, Paul Parsons, and Nancy Rasche. 2017. Advancing UX Education: A Model for Integrated Studio Pedagogy. In CHI’17: Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM New York, NY, USA, 1441-1446. http://doi.org/10.1145/3025453.3025726
  14. Colin M. Gray, Paul Parsons, and Austin L. Toombs. In press. Building a Holistic Design Identity Through Integrated Studio Education. In B. Hokanson and G. Clinton (Eds.) Educational Technology Beyond Content. Switzerland: Springer.
  15. Leigh Ellen Potter. 2018. A Day in the Life: An Interactive Application to Introduce IT Students to the Workplace. In SIGMIS-CPR’18 Proceedings of the 2018 ACM SIGMIS Conference on Computers and People Research (pp. 138-142). New York, NY, USA.
    DOI=http://doi.org/10.1145/3209626.3209716
  16. Anna Vasilchenko, Adriana Wilde, Stephen Snow, Madeline Balaam, and Marie Devlin. 2018. Video coursework: opportunity and challenge for HCI education. In AVI ’18 Proceedings of the 2018 International Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces. New York, NY, USA, Article No. 87.
    DOI=http://doi.org/10.1145/3206505.3206596
  17. Adriana Wilde, Anna Vasilchenko, and Alan Dix. 2018. HCI and the educational technology revolution #HCIEd2018: a workshop on video-making for teaching and learning human-computer interaction. In AVI ’18 Proceedings of the 2018 International Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces. New York, NY, USA, Article No. 9.
    DOI=http://doi.org/10.1145/3206505.3206600