Organizing Committee

Elizabeth Bonsignore is a PhD candidate in the iSchool at the University of Maryland. Her research interests include the design and use of collaborative sense-making technologies that support lifelong learning, whether in formal education or informal contexts (museum, library, home). Specific work includes analysis of mobile storytelling application design and use; online communities for educators and children; and the design of Alternate Reality Games as platforms for learning and collaborative-tool evaluation. These efforts include close collaboration with Kidsteam, a participatory design research team at the Human-Computer Interaction Lab.

Derek L. Hansen is an Assistant Professor of Information Technology within the Ira A. Fulton College of Engineering and Technology at Brigham Young University. His research focuses on technology-mediated social participation, online communities, social network analysis, and increasingly games for change. He is currently working on two NSF grants focused on the workshop topic: one examines alternate reality games in the service of education and design, the other studies location and online games that encourage citizen scientists to capture and analyze data on biological species.

Zachary O. Toups is Research Engineer directing the new Emergency Operations Human Interfaces Lab with Texas Engineering Extension Service Disaster Preparedness and Response. His research interests include the use of game mechanics to engage players in human-human interaction and interfaces to information technology in coordinating real-life disaster response. His dissertation and ongoing research pioneers zero-fidelity simulations that capture human- and information-centric aspects of practice. Ongoing work develops game designs for educating emergency responders, including mixed reality outdoor play. His focus has been on teaching team coordination by creating game environments in which players cooperate and communicate under stress, based on observations of work practice.

Lennart E. Nacke is an Assistant Professor for HCI + Game Science in the Faculty of Business and IT at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology in Canada. His research focuses on the creation and analysis of digital gaming environments and mechanics. In the past years, he has organized and chaired several workshops on research topics such as applying game design principles to system development (i.e., gamification), affective computing and psychophysiological evaluation, game metrics and biometrics, physiological computing, game usability and user experience at venues such as CHI, DiGRA, FDG, Future Play, and GDC Canada.

Anastasia Salter is an Assistant Professor at the University of Baltimore in the Information Arts and Technologies department. Her primary research is on digital narratives with a continuing focus on virtual worlds, gender and cyberspace, games as literature, educational games and fan production. She holds a Doctorate in Communications Design from the University of Baltimore, where her dissertation examined the Adventure Game Studio platform as a source of fan creativity and personal storytelling through gaming. She is also currently completing her MFA thesis in Children’s Literature at Hollins University.

Wayne G. Lutters is an Associate Professor of Information Systems in the College of Engineering and Information Technology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). His research interests are at the nexus of CSCW, social media, and knowledge management. He specializes in field studies of IT-mediated work, from a socio-technical perspective, to better inform the design and evaluation of collaborative systems. His lab is currently examining processes of virtual organizing in ARGs, MMORPGs, and a host of more traditional work environments.

CSCW2012: Mixed Reality Games Workshop