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Marti Louwmartil@pitt.edu Learning Research & Development Center |
Research Faculty, University of Pittsburgh Center for Learning in Out-of-School Environments (UPCLOSE)
Sr. Research Associate, Learning Research & Development Center (LRDC)
Louw brings 15 years of experience in science communication and the design of informal learning experiences to the center. Her production and design experience spans a range of educational media and environments including broadcast television, websites, multimedia exhibits and informal learning venues from museum to everyday public spaces. She has written and produced science documentaries and web content for WGBH/NOVA and the Scientific American Frontiers series on PBS. While at the Chedd-Angier Production Company she produced numerous interactive multimedia exhibits for museums and science-technology centers. Before joining UPCLOSE, Louw worked at the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh as a project developer and grant writer for the NSF funded How People Make Things traveling exhibit. In 2003, Louw completed a M.A. in Interaction Design from Carnegie Mellon University where she applied design and human-computer interaction approaches to the conceptualization, development and use of technology for participatory informal learning experiences.
UPCLOSE seeks to bring a practical theory of informal learning into action. I work to enact theory on project-based implementations that creatively bridge informal learning research and interaction design practice from initial conceptualization through realization and assessment. My particular research interest is in the way design and its related communication strategies can be used to create successful educational media, informal learning experiences and produce technology artifacts that positively impact learning. Ongoing design research areas include developing strategies for supporting professional online learning communities and enabling community action through co-design processes that creatively utilize networked digital media and sensing technologies. New research directions include the development of a regional participatory civic media and public engagement in science effort focused on Marcellus natural gas development.
Gigapixel Cyberinfrastructure for Participatory Science Learning and (PI) in collaboration with the CREATE Lab (Carnegie Mellon University- Robotics Institute) and the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Louw is leading the effort to build a set of cyberlearning projects based on explorations and interactions around very high-resolution gigapixel images of scientific merit to support public understanding, participation, and engagement with science. Through a design research process, the project team will explore and prototype exemplar use cases that demonstrate how emerging gigapixel image and data visualization technologies can be used as a science communication medium that offers scientists, informal science education and media professionals, and publics new ways to learn science together. Our primary goal is to empower and build capacity with informal science education (ISE) professionals to utilize new media technologies to facilitate public-science interactions and catalyze participatory kinds of science learning experiences. The proposed cyberlearning projects draws on the networked, interactive, social, and collaborative affordances of an explorable, annotatable, gigapixel-resolution online image environment <www.gigapan.org>. [NSF/DRL#1114476]
Center for the Advancement of Informal Science Education (CAISE) project lead for the CAISE Media Initiative and with Sherry Hsi, Lawrence Hall of Science, the CAISE Timeline Initiative (See beta version). Past projects include developing and documenting Inquiry Groups including Assessing the Impact of ISE Professional Online Communities, a two-day meeting focusing on how to conceptualize and evaluate successful professional online learning communities, especially those serving multidisciplinary informal science education (ISE) communities. [NSF/DRL#0638981]
Marcellus Shale Civic Media and Monitoring Initiatives
A game-changing technological advance—the combination of horizontal drilling with slickwater hydraulic fracturing—is unlocking a vast new energy resource for development right under our feet. The Marcellus shale gas play challenges citizens, landowners, communities, businesses, environmental and civic leadership to make difficult choices in view of competing concerns: water use and disposal, air quality, infrastructure development and maintenance, land management, economic growth and myriad community impacts. Supporting the best possible, science informed, decision-making in this complex ecology requires collective knowledge-building, advanced dialogue and data sharing between a diverse set of stakeholders. To this end, we are proposing a new, participatory civic media initiative and public engagement in science (PES) effort focused on regional issues arising from the rapid development of the Marcellus and Utica basins.
See www.MarcellusMedia.org (alpha) for project details.
An emerging consortium of partners including the Carnegie Museum of Natural History (CMNH), the Alliance for Aquatic Resource Monitoring (ALLARM) of Dickerson College, and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology (CLO) are proposing to the NSF and others to develop, implement and evaluate Monitoring Marcellus, a public participation in scientific research (PPSR) project to serve rural communities and support science literacy and discourse. UPCLOSE is also consulted with the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Healthy Environments and Communities (CHEC) on their Fractracker.org and Marcellus Citizen Stewardship project. With the CREATE Lab at Carnegie Mellon University, Louw is working on the development, prototyping and implementation of a low-cost, web-enable real time TDS monitor (www.waterbot.org) and air quality monitor for citizen science, community monitoring, data visualization, communication and engagement activities. See www.MarcellusMonitors.org (alpha) for project details.
City as Learning Lab (co-PI) An innovative research and implementation project to discover how communities creatively engage with robotic technologies for learning and change. Project partners include the Community Robotics Education and Technology Empowerment (CREATE) lab at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute, and the Georgia Institute of Technology as well as local museums, community organizations, and afterschool clubs. [NSF/DRL#0610348]
NeighborhoodNets (co-PI) is series of research-based community technology empowerment projects that use participatory and co-design strategies to imagine and plan creative products, services and interventions in neighborhoods using sensing and robotic technologies. We conduct public participatory design workshops that provide opportunities for neighborhood residents to engage in the creative exploration and application of networked digital imaging and sensing technologies to publically address their concerns and causes. Summer workshop series were conducted in Lawrenceville (project documentation), Braddock (project documentation) with community residents, and organizers, and urban youth programs. To support these participatory sensing projects, we design, develop and adapt affordable sensor and technology platforms (e.g. Canary sensing platform, Dylos air quality monitors) suited to these the needs of these public programs. [Intel]
Activated Science Learner (ASL) seeks to create and validate a battery of measures that predict sustained, long-term engagement with science opportunities across in and out-of-school settings. These measures will include the following component constructs (all related to science as a domain): interest, curiosity, motivation, persistence, appreciation of value, capability of engaging in reasoning, responsibility for learning, and identity. Our group is looking at how the design of the three "Es" Environment, Experiences and Engagement can support activation within and between contexts. This work is done in collaboration with the Lawrence Hall of Science at the University of California, Berkeley with funding from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.
InformalScience.org (co-PI) led the redesign and development this online resource to support the growth of a vibrant community of research and practice in the field of informal science education. [NSF/DRL#0610348]
The Warhol::Resources & Lessons collaborated with the Warhol Museum and oversaw the research and evaluation their new online educator curriculum project. [Alcoa]
Conceptulizing and developing the How People Make Things traveling exhibition with the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh as the originating co-PI, grantwriter, project developer and advisor. [NSF/DRL#0407355]
DiSalvo, Carl, Marti Louw, David Holstius, Illah Nourbakhsh and Ayca Akin. (Forthcoming). “Towards a Public Rhetoric through Participatory Design: Critical Engagements and Creative Expression in the Neighborhood Networks Project. Design Issues. Cambridge: MIT Press
Louw, M. (2012, May-June) Supporting Innovation in a Changing Media Landscape. Dimensions. (p 22-25). Washington D.C: Association of Science and Technology Centers.
DiSalvo, C., Louw, M. Coupland, J., Steiner M. (2009). Local issues, local uses: Tools for robotics and sensing in community contexts. In Proceedings of the Seventh ACM Conference on Creativity & Cognition (C&C '09). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 245-254.
DiSalvo, C., Nourbakhsh, I., Holstius, D., Akin, A., & Louw, M. (2008). The Neighborhood Nets Project: A case study of critical engagement and creative expression through participatory design. In Proceedings of the Tenth Anniversary Conference on Participatory Design 2008 (PDC '08). Indiana University, Indianapolis, IN, USA, 41-50.
Louw, M. & Steiner, M. (2008). The Neighborhood Nets Project: Braddock. [Final Report] Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Center for Learning in Out-of-School Environments.
Marianne Berkovich, Jenna Date, Rachael Keeler, Maureen O' Toole, and Marti Louw. (2003). Discovery point: enhancing the museum experience with technology. In CHI '03 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '03). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 994-995.
paper | poster | full report
Louw, M. (2003) Designing for Delight: The Role of Wonder, Discovery, Invention and Ingenuity in Museum Exhibit Design.
Master's Thesis.
Carnegie Mellon University. Thesis Advisors: Dr. Richard Buchanan, School of Design & Dr. Andreea Ritivoi, Dept. of English (Rhetoric)
Louw, M. (2003) Talking Trash: Designing a Recycling Experience for the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh. Master's Thesis Project.
Carnegie Mellon University. Advisor: Dr. Jodi Forlizzi, Human Computer Interaction Institute [GUSH Funded]
tech report | slides
Design Issues Associate Editor Book Reviews (2004-2005) MIT Press
19(1) | 19(2)
Studio Project: Time, Motion and Communication
Client: Carnegie Museum of Natural History Sky Theater Eomasis
Short selected for larger format screening at the 2002 International Planetarium Society meeting at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and New Mexico Museum of Natural History's DynaTheater.
Studio Project: Information and Interface Design
Client: National Aviary
Telepresent Robot Interface Design for RAVEN Distance Learning / Implemented (2003)
information architecture | slides
WGBH/NOVA Garden of Eden (PBS 2001) Producer, Screenwriter
WGBH/NOVA Japan's Secret Garden (PBS 2000) Producer
WGBH/NOVA Medieval Siege (PBS 2000) Co-producer
WGBH/NOVA Secrets of Lost Empires II (PBS 2000) Series associate producer
WGBH/NOVA Lost Tribes of Israel Broadcast Website Content writer, game developer
