Mary Beth Rosson
Information Sciences & Technology
Pennsylvania State University
State College, PA 16802
814-863-2478
mrosson@psu.edu

Research

  • With Jack Carroll, I co-direct the CSCL Lab at Penn State in the College of IST. We supervise a range of projects, many involving collaborative learning and problem solving, and combine lab studies, software development, participatory analysis and design, and field studies within the general framework of action research.
  • Under the CSCL umbrella, my (ILSD research group (Informal Learning in Software Development) studies users in a variety of end user development settings, with a focus on web application design, development, and debugging.
  • I am a founding member of the EUSES Consortium (End Users Shaping Effective Software), currently comprised of researchers from Oregon State, CMU, Drexel, University of Nebraska, and Penn State, who are studying issues and techniques related to end-user software engineering.
  • I supervised the PhD of Jochen Rode at Virginia Tech, the CLICK end user development tool for building simple web applications. Flashlight was an ealier prototype based on initial user requirements studies.
  • With Jack Carroll and other colleagues at both Virginia Tech and Penn State, I work on community computing. Projects including work on MOOsburg, a place-based community network projects studying the use of MOOs for community building and interaction and TeacherBridge, an environment for promoting and supporting knowledge development and sharing among public school teachers.
  • The CommunitySims project was carried out over the last few years I was at Virginia Tech. It studied the development of a cross-generational learning community (middle school students and senior citizens) who collaborate on visual simulation projects related to community issues. I am also continuing my work with Cheryl Seals related to object-oriented tools for visual simulations in Squeak.
  • Several students have worked with me on environments and tools for learning and using object-oriented design and programming. An early example from the Smalltalk domain is the the Scenario Browser.
    Teaching (graduate courses only; undergrad classes accessed via PSU's Angel CMS)
  • Integrated Theories and Methods in IST (IST 501)
  • Human-Computer Interaction (IST 521)
  • HCI Theories and Frameworks (IST 522)
    Recent or Significant Professional Activities
  • General Chair, CHI 2007
  • Doctoral Symposium Chair, DIS 2006
  • Program Committee and Graduuate Symposium Mentor, VL/HCC 2006
  • General Chair, OOPSLA 2000
    For Fun
  • A relatively new (but already dedicated) fan of the Penn State Nittany Lions.
  • But still also cheering on the Virginia Tech Hokies in all their efforts!
  • Rooting for the Yankees, who every year seem to more than repay my fan-dom efforts.
  • Always hoping that the New York Giants can possibly ever match the team I loved in the 80s. One of these days!
  • Walking and hiking with our dog, Kerby.
    Selected Online Papers
    These are recent or frequently requested papers, organized by general topic and in reverse chronological order. For other published work, see a recent vita send me an email request).

    Community Informatics

  • Carroll, J.M., Rosson, M.B., Kavanaugh, A., Dunlap, D., Schafer, W., Snook, J. & Isenhour, P. 2006. Social and civic participation in a community network. In R. Kraut, M. Brynin & S. Kiesler. (Eds.) Domesticating Information Technologies.  New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Carroll, J.M. Rosson, M.B., & Zhou, J. 2005. Collective efficacy as a measure of community. In Proceedings of Human Factors in Computing Systems: CHI 2005. New York: ACM.
  • Carroll, J.M. & Rosson, M.B.  2003.  A trajectory for community networks. The Information Society, 19(5), 381-393.
  • Kavanaugh, A., Reese, D., Carroll, J.M. & Rosson, M.B. 2003. Weak ties and collective efficacy in networked communities. In M. Huysman, E. Wenger & V. Wulf (eds.), Communities and Technologies (pp. 265-286), The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. (Amsterdam, September 2003).
  • Carroll, J. M., & Rosson, M. B. 1996. Developing the Blacksburg Electronic Village. Communications of the ACM, 39(12), December, 69-74.

    CSCW or CSCL

  • Carroll, J.M., Rosson, M.B., Convertino, G., & Ganoe, C. 2006. Awareness and teamwork in computer-supported collaborations. Interacting with Computers, 18(1), 21-46.
  • Neale, D.C., Carroll, J.M., & Rosson, M.B. 2004. Evaluating computer-supported cooperative work: Models and frameworks. Proceedings of Computer Supported Cooperative Work 2004 (pp. 112-121). New York: ACM Press.

  • Carroll, J.M., Neale, D.C., Isenhour, P.L., Rosson, M.B., & McCrickard, D.S. 2003. Notification and awareness: Synchronizing task-oriented collaborative activity. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 58, 605-632.
  • Begole, J., Rosson, M.B., and Shaffer, C. A. 1999. Flexible collaboration transparency: supporting worker independence in replicated application-sharing systems. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 6(2), pp. 95-132.
  • Begole, J., Rosson, M. B., and Shaffer, C. A. 1998. Supporting Worker Independence in Collaboration Transparency, Proceedings of the 1998 ACM Conference on User Interface Software and Technology, New York, ACM, pp. 133-142.

    • End-User Development

  • Rode, J., Rosson, M.B., & Perez, M. 2006. End user development of web applications. In H. Lieberman, F. Paterno, & V. Wulf (Eds.), End-User Development. Springer-Verlag.
  • Rosson, M.B. 2005. The end of users (slides from Onward! keynote talk; 8MB). In OOPSLA '05 Conference Companion (p. 3). New York: ACM).
  • Rode, J., Bhardwaj, Y., Prez-Quiones, M.A., Rosson, M.B., Howarth, J. 2005. As easy as "Click": End-user web engineering. In D. Lowe & M. Gaedke (Eds.), International Conference on Web Engineering 2005 - Lecture Notes in Computer Science 3579 (pp. 478-488). Berlin: Springer-Verlag.
  • Rosson, M.B., Ballin, J., & Rode, J. 2005. Who, what and why? A survey of informal and professional web developers. Proceedings of Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing 2005 (pp. 199-206).
  • Rosson, M.B., Ballin, J., Rode, J., & Toward, B. 2005. 'Designing for the Web' revisited: A survey of informal and experienced web developers. In D. Lowe & M. Gaedke (Eds.), International Conference on Web Engineering 2005 - Lecture Notes in Computer Science 3579 (pp. 522-532). Berlin: Springer-Verlag.
  • Rode, J., Rosson, M.B., & Perez-Quinones, M.A. 2004. End-users' mental models of web engineering concepts. Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing 2004 (pp. 215-222). New York: IEEE.
  • Rosson, M.B., Ballin, J., & Nash, H. 2004. Everyday programming: Challenges and opportunities for informal web development. Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing 2004 (pp. 123-130). New York: IEEE.
  • Rode,J. & Rosson, M.B. 2003. Programming at Runtime: Requirements and paradigms for nonprogrammer web application development. IEEE 2003 Symposium on Human-Centric Computing Languages and Environments (pp. 23-30). New York: IEEE.
  • Rosson, M. B., & Carroll, J. M. 2003. Learning and collaboration across generations in a community.. In Proceedings of Communities & Technology 2003 (pp. 205-225). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer.
  • Rosson, M.B., Carroll, J.M., Seals, C., & Lewis, T. 2002. Community design of community simulations. Proceedings of Designing Interactive Systems: DIS 2002 (pp. 74-83). New York: ACM.

    Minimalism and Active Learning

  • Carroll, J.M. & Rosson, M.B. 2005. A Case Library for Teaching Usability Engineering: Design Rationale, Development, and Classroom Experience. ACM Journal on Educational Resources in Computing, 5(1), March 2005.
  • Rosson, M. B., & Carroll, J. M. 2005. Minimalist design for community computing. . In Proceedings of Communities & Technology 2005 (pp. 75-94). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer.
  • Carroll, J.M., Choo, C.W., Dunlap, D.R., Isenhour, P.L., Kerr, S.T., MacLean, A., & Rosson, M.B.  2003.  Knowledge management support for teachers.  Educational Technology Research and Development, 51(4), 42-64.
  • Rosson, M. B. & Carroll, J. M.  1996.  Scaffolded examples for learning object-oriented design.  Communications of the ACM, 39(4), 46-47.
  • Carroll, J. M., & Rosson, M. B. 1987. The paradox of the active user. In J.M. Carroll (Ed.), Interfacing Thought: Cognitive Aspects of Human-Computer Interaction. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press (pp. 80-111).

    Object-Oriented Design

  • Rosson, M.B. & Carroll, J.M. 2001.  Scenarios, objects, and points-of-view in user interface design.  In M. van Harmelen (Ed.), Object Modeling and User Interface Design (pp. 39-70). London: Addison-Wesley Longman.
  • Rosson, M. B.  1999.  Integrating development of task and object models.  Communications of the ACM, 42(1: January), 49-56.
  • Rosson, M. B., & Carroll, J. M. 1996. The reuse of uses in Smalltalk programming. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 3(3), September, 219-253.

    Scenario-Based Design

  • Chin, G. & Rosson, M. B. 1998. Progressive Design: Staged evolution of scenarios in the design of a collaborative science learning environment. In Proceedings of Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI'98 Conference (pp. 611-618). New York: ACM.
  • Chin, G., Rosson, M. B. and Carroll, J. M. 1997. Participatory Analysis: Shared development of requirements from scenarios. In Proceedings of Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI'97 Conference (pp. 162-169). New York: ACM.
  • Carroll, J. M., & Rosson, M. B. 1991. Deliberated Evolution: Stalking the View Matcher in Design Space. Human-Computer Interaction, 6(3&4), 281-318.
  • Carroll, J. M., & Rosson, M. B.  1992.  Getting around the task-artifact cycle:  How to make claims and design by scenario.  ACM Transactions on Information Systems, 10(2), 181-212.

    mrosson@psu.edu; last revision: July 2006