About Me

I am currently a PhD. student working in the POET Lab with Dr. Deborah Tatar at the Virginia Tech Center for Human Computer Interaction. My research interests at this point are fairly wide and varied; they can be best described as a set of key phrases:

• human-computer interaction
• computer science education
• slow/local computing
• digital technology in education
• simple software to support co-located interaction
• interaction design for "non-traditional" users
• tuple spaces as a language for coordination

Current Projects

Currently, I am at work on a handful of projects, all of which broadly fit under the category of collaborative idea-sharing for learning in co-located groups. They are very similar in some of their foundational features and implementation, but have unique distinctions important to their respective intended contexts of use. These projects include the following (links forthcoming):

• PlaceMark

  PlaceMark is a multi-user collaborative writing system. Users can create textual entries which are shared within the group. The contributions are displayed in a shared list, which can be re-orderd by any user. When used with a standard GPS device, this system allows users to embed location stamps in the entries. It also supports shared tagging for creating groups of entries, annotation, or any number of organizational techniques. This software will be used in the fall 2008 in a freshman seminar at Hollins University.

• ThoughtSwap

  ThoughtSwap is a multi-user system for supporting group discussion. Users can enter textual items for discussion into the system (questions, statements, etc), and these items are randomly and anonymously distributed to others in the discussion. Once in the possesion of other users, these items can be brough up in conversation and added to a shared list for reference. We are currently implementing a new version of the software and plan on evaluating it in classrooms in the fall 2008 semester.

• Text Aggregator

  The Text Aggregator is, again, a multi-user system for supporting classroom discussion. This system is extremely simple, yet we believe, very powerful if used correctly. It allows students in a classroom to enter textual comments which are shared annonymously with everyone in the class. This can be used as a tool to redirect conversation, to get quick feedback from students on questions raised by the instructor, or any other task which requires quick and open-ended feedback from members of a classroom or small group.

Contact

Mail

Matt Schaefer
Computer Science Dept.
Virginia Tech
2202 Kraft Drive
Blacksburg, VA 24060

Email

Personal

See my personal home page for personal stuff, textual meanderings, and photos.