Hosted by the Bristol Interaction Group (Computer Science)

Human sensory perception and learning are incredibly complex interrelated phenomena. Large deviations exist in the form and function of the sensory apparatuses of different people in similar developmental stages and across the apparatuses of a single person across their lifetime. Somehow with these highly diverse sensory apparatuses people are able to learn and communicate. Learning seems to be an inevitable component of human life and many systems have emerged to guide that process toward particular goals; some learning environments are explicit and intentional about their goals, while others are obfuscated and difficult to interpret. Standardized education requires the act of defining, measuring, and evaluating the performance of specific diagnostic tasks. These tasks require a medium for performance and computerized systems are often used for this purpose. The specific implementation of the interface of these tasks is often mistakenly thought of as the only way to measure whether something has been learned, but the specific interface for a given task can only be compatible with a subset of the population due to their variability and diversity. Exploring the intersensory re-representation of pedagogical interfaces can yield a deep challenge for us to explore what it means to learn independent of the sensory apparatuses being used and how we can engineer multisensory interfaces that allow for more equitable learning opportunities and more accurate measurement across diverse populations. 

Dr. Kyle Keane is a Lecturer in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He has been at MIT since 2013 as a Research Scientist and Lecturer working across multiple departments merging his expertise in computational & theoretical  physics, artificial intelligence & machine learning, educational research and pedagogy, collaborative design, humanitarian engineering, inter sensory perception & communication, and accessibility & assistive technology for individuals living with various disabilities. Before MIT, Dr. Keane worked as a Research Programmer at Wolfram Research Incorporated (makers of Mathematica and www.wolframalpha.com) where he researched non-visual human-computer interfaces for  scientific computing, especially  input and output interaction modalities based on natural manage, sound, and touch. Dr. Keane lives with a degenerative eye condition called Retinitis Pigmentosa, which helps him stay adaptable, resilient, and hopefully forever an active learner.