A MITH Digital Dialogue
Tuesday, March 30th, 12:30-1:45
MITH Conference Room, McKeldin Library B0135

“Prototyping a Dual-Display e-Reader in the Literature Classroom”
by NICK CHEN and KARI KRAUS

This semester, the Computer Science Department and the English Department at UMD teamed up to provide Honors students in Book 2.0: The History of the Book and the Future of Reading with a prototype electronic reading device. The deployment is part of a longitudinal study to understand how electronic reading devices are used in an academic setting. One of the goals this semester is also to determine how the introduction of a second device–wirelessly linked to the first–affects the reading experience. In this Digital Dialogues talk, Chen will describe the devices being used by Kraus and her students, their design rationale, and some of the more unique aspects of the study being conducted. Kraus will preview an upcoming assignment that has students reading a 20th-century avant-garde novel on the
dual-display e-readers, a novel originally published in unbound sheaves that the reader is encouraged to assemble in any order. The presenters will conclude with some of the more surprising results gathered so far, at the
halfway point of this study.

Nicholas Chen is a doctoral candidate in the department of Computer Science at the University of Maryland and is affiliated with the Human Computer Interaction Lab (HCIL) at UMD. He is advised by Professor Francois Guimbretiere in the Cornell University Information Science Department. His research is on electronic reading devices, pen-based user interfaces, and interactions for supporting simultaneous use of multiple devices. Chen currently holds the Google Fellowship in Human Computer Interaction.
Previously, he performed the first-ever evaluation of a dual-display electronic reading device.

Kari Kraus is an assistant professor in the College of Information Studies and the Department of English at the University of Maryland. Her research and teaching interests focus on new media and the digital humanities, textual scholarship and print culture, digital preservation, and game studies. Kraus is a local Co-PI on a Library of Congress NDIIPP grant for preserving virtual worlds; a Co-PI on an IMLS Digital Humanities Internship grant; and, with Derek Hansen (iSchool), the Co-Principal Investigator of an NSF grant to study Alternate Reality Games in the service of education and design.

Coming up @MITH April 6th: Patrik Svenson (HUMlab, Umea. Sweden), “Envisioning the Digital Humantities”

View MITH’s complete Fall Speakers Schedule here:

http://web.archive.org/web/20100608231200/http://www.mith2.umd.edu/programs/mith_speakers_spring_2010.pdf

All talks free and open to the public!

Contact: Neil Fraistat, Director, MITH (www.mith.umd.edu, mith@umd.edu, 5-8927).