My main area of research is the academic culture of commuter college students. For over a decade I’ve worked with Mariana Regalado of Brooklyn College on our project The Scholarly Habits of Undergraduate Students, in which we use ethnographic methods to explore the student experience at CUNY. We’ve interviewed and surveyed students and faculty at six CUNY colleges to learn how, where, when, and with what technologies and other tools students complete their academic work, and the challenges and opportunities they encounter. Updates and findings, including our research protocols, are posted on our project website. We’ve also created a website to highlight our visual data from 2009-2011: Finding Spaces, Making Places.
Beginning in 2019, Mariana Regalado (Brooklyn College) and I have joined the Data Doubles research team. This Institute of Museum and Library Services grant-funded project is exploring undergraduates’ perspectives on privacy issues associated with academic library participation in learning analytics initiatives. We’re excited to be working with collaborators from 6 universities and to bring the perspectives of our CUNY students to this study.
I also study the pedagogical use of games and interactive technologies in higher education. I’m on the Steering Committee of the CUNY Games Network, group of faculty, staff and graduate students across the university who are interested in game-based learning. More specifically, I’ve explored the use of games and game mechanics to teach research skills and information literacy competency in undergraduate library instruction. I’m also interested in using games in faculty and staff development; I’ve created Game On for Information Literacy, a brainstorming card game to facilitate making games for library instruction.
As a Co-PI on City Tech’s Living Lab project I was also a member of the management team for the OpenLab, an open digital platform for teaching, learning, and collaboration at City Tech. Built using WordPress and BuddyPress, the OpenLab provides a space for students, faculty, and staff at the college to work. We’ve seen swift adoption of the OpenLab since our Fall 2011 launch, and the team continues to work with our users to develop new features and pedagogies.
I’m a strong supporter of open access scholarly publishing and open educational resources. I publish my own research open access whenever possible, and advocate for open access across CUNY and in academia. I’ve contributed to the Open @ CUNY blog and also write about open access (among other topics) for the Association of College & Research Libraries’ ACRLog.