Building a lab—and developing its researchers

I established the lab to give students research experience, advance my own research agenda, and create a dedicated research space for a department that historically lacked one. Its purpose was to put people’s experiences at the center of technology development.

I established the staffing, research priorities, partnerships, facilities, funding, and operating practices, seeking mentorship from others who had built similar labs.

I organized educational-research training around the semester, teaching weekly topics that coincided with students’ group-project assignments. Students learned methods in the context of research they were actively undertaking.

Returning and more experienced students mentored newer researchers, while doctoral students took on greater responsibilities. I reviewed the work due each week and provided instructional feedback, combining shared learning with direct oversight of research quality.

• Weekly instruction aligned with project assignments
• Peer mentoring and increasing responsibility
• Weekly faculty review and instructional feedback

David R. Flores joined as a first-year undergraduate willing to learn research. I taught him research methods and guided his participation in a Blackboard usability project. David drafted the research materials and collected the data; I conducted the data analysis. We coauthored a poster documenting the study while it was still in progress.

The project examined how students navigated Blackboard course sites, combining task observation, surveys, eye tracking, and facial-expression recording.

Completed work included research on learning-management-system usability, digital literacy and accessibility, and evidence-based approaches to learning and performance.