About EduCHI

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Background

Two thousand and nineteen marked 31 years since the launch of the Special Interest Group on Computer-HumanInteraction (SIGCHI) Curriculum Development Group (CDG), who led the development of the foundational Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) SIGCHICurricula for Human-Computer Interaction [1]. Published in 1992, the Curricula included a working definition of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) as well as examples of individual courses. This publication was vital to the establishment and growth of HCI education programs. CDG Chair Tom Hewett noted in the Preface that the report was meant to be “the first iteration” of the product, with plans for iterative refinement over time.

Twenty-seven years further on since 1992 and the fields of HCI show no slowing in its headlong rush towards the future. The internet of things, virtual reality, wearable computing, and user interfaces for intelligence systems are just some of many exciting new areas that HCI is expanding into.

Discussions related to HCI education began a few years after the creation of the ACM SIGCHI. In a 1989 ACM SIGCHI Bulletin article entitled A vision of education in user-centered system and interface design [2], Ronald Baecker outlined “a proposal for a new curriculum in human-computer interaction and user-centered system and interface design”. At the time, Dr. Baecker already alluded to the “incredible breadth of focus” of our discipline. A few years later, in 1992, his vision, and the ones of his HCI colleagues, materialized in the first version of the ACM SIGCHI Curricula forHuman-Computer Interaction [1]. For many years, this document, known as the green book, served to inform the design of many HCI programs.

By the mid-2000s, the discipline of HCI experienced many changes with the proliferation of mobile phones and social media, and the development of ubiquitous computing devices. Many HCI educators recognized the need for updated HCI curricula. As a result, the ACM SIGCHI Executive Committee sponsored a project to investigate the present and future of HCI education from 2011 to 2014 [3]. A recurring theme that emerged in the findings from the project was the desire for a collection of online resources shared among HCI scholars and educators, sharing and collaborating to develop course outlines, curricula, and teaching materials, known as the HCI living curriculum [4].

At the CHI 2014 conference inToronto, Canada, a workshop on developing the HCI living curriculum was held [5]. Several visions of what this new curriculum could be were presented. Two years later, at the AfriCHI 2016 conference in Nairobi, Kenya, a workshop was organized to discuss HCI teaching, bringing a focus on international perspectives to the development of the HCI living curriculum [6].

More recently, a qualitative study consisting of a series of individual semi-structured interviews with HCI educators was conducted at the CHI 2017 conference in Denver, Colorado [7, 8].The aim of the study was to investigate the preliminary framework of the HCI living curriculum. Last year, at the CHI 2018 conference in Montréal, Canada, a follow-up workshop was held on developing a community of practice to support global HCI education [9]. The results from this workshop led to the creation of a Community of Practice (CoP) of HCI scholars and educators that can be accessed at: https://chi2018.hcilivingcurriculum.org/. Discussions from the workshop, as well as findings from the research conducted at CHI 2017, were published in an ACM interactions article [10].

Of the many themes that emerged from the CHI 2018 workshop activities and discussions, two stood out as an immediate need: creating channels for discussion about HCI education and providing a platform for sharing HCI curricula and teaching experiences. To that end, for the CHI 2019 conference in Glasgow, Scotland, we are organizing a symposium dedicated exclusively to HCI education. Focusing on the canons of HCI education in 2019 and beyond, this one-day symposium – called EduCHI 2019: Global Perspectives on HCIEducation – will offer a formal venue for HCI educators across disciplinary and geographical borders to discuss, dissect, and debate HCI teaching and learning.

Through keynote addresses, paper presentations, and a panel discussion by expert HCI educators representing different global perspectives, we aim to discuss current and future HCI education trends, curricula, pedagogies, teaching practices, and diverse and inclusive HCI education. Post-symposium initiatives will aim to document and publish the discussions from the symposium.

While this symposium is targetingHCI 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.

The goals of the EduCHI symposium are to:

  • Support the on-going development of the HCI education Community of Practice (CoP);
  • Provide a platform for discussing current and emerging trends in HCI education;
  • Showcase innovative pedagogies and teaching practices byHCI educators; and
  • Promote a global, diverse, and inclusive vision for HCI education.

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.
  8. Andrea Jovanovic. 2018. Designing the HCI LivingCurriculum. 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