Hire an Illini
Emily Marie Hastings
- Advisor:
- Brian Bailey
- Departments:
- Areas of Expertise:
- Computer-Supported Cooperative Work
- Human-Computer Interaction
- Thesis Title:
- Supporting Instructor Decisions on Algorithmic Team Formation through Integrating Stakeholder Voices
- Thesis abstract:
- Instructors are increasingly turning to algorithmic tools to help implement criteria-based approaches to team formation and address the new challenges arising as courses grow larger and more interdisciplinary, or move online. Tools like these are also applicable in other contexts that utilize teams, including massive open online courses (MOOCs) and online labor markets like Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk), and reflect a general increase in automation which has opened new opportunities for interface and workflow design in many contexts. In general, algorithmic tools can help to streamline the team formation process for both instructors and students. However, configuring the inputs to the algorithms used by these tools is a complex task with an expansive set of options available, and instructors have little guidance on which criteria they should use or how to determine their relative importance, despite the fact that these decisions could have a major impact on the teams created and their experiences. In addition, these tools tend to leave little room for student input into the team formation process, and often rely on input data of uncertain accuracy self-reported by students. My dissertation aims to address these weaknesses of current algorithmic team formation practices by developing a learner-centered workflow that will allow instructors to more confidently configure algorithmic tools and allow students more control over a process from which they have heretofore been excluded.
- Downloads:
Contact information:
ehstngs2@illinois.edu