Tricia Ngoon, Ph.D


Hi! I'm Tricia. I am a Research Scientist at TeachFX. My work at TeachFX aims to understand how AI-powered, personalized instructional feedback can help teachers improve their discussion practices to give all students a voice in the classroom. Ultimately, my vision is for technologies that create equitable learning experiences whether that's in formal educational institutions, informal learning environments, or professional learning settings.

Prior to joining TeachFX, I was a NSF STEM Education Postdoctoral Fellow in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. I received my PhD in Cognitive Science at UC San Diego in the Design Lab and my Bachelor's degree in Psychology from UC Berkeley. Outside of work, I enjoy attempting to exercise through boxing, being mediocre at video games, meddling on the piano, and volunteering as a "cat cuddler" at the Humane Animal Rescue of Pittsburgh!

View my CV

Projects

Multi-modal Analytics Tools for Personalized & Contextual Professional Feedback

Professional development in fields where interactions with people are critical for professional success is often impersonal and infrequent. In this project, we collaborate with researchers, professionals, faculty, and K-12 teachers to design tools to scale human obervation and provide automated multimodal analytics through ubiquitous sensing systems in the classroom and workplace. My work aims to understand perceptions and impact around these systems, particularly with regards to ethical AI, privacy, and social dynamics.


CHI '24, DIS '23 (Honorable Mention), CHI '22 (Workshop paper)


Supporting Teachers in Low-Infrastructure Contexts

Teachers in low-infrastructure contexts face challenges related to technology, economic, and environmental infrastructure. In this project, we designed a social media-based chatbot to help teachers in rural Côte d'Ivoire get quick, automated guidance and facilitate communication within their communities of practice.


COMPASS '22


Adaptive Guidance Tools for Supporting Exploratory Thinking in Creative Work

In any creative domain, novices have difficulty exploring the potential space of possibilities because they don't yet have the domain knowledge to know what to explore nor the procedural knowledge to know how to explore. For my PhD dissertation, I studied strategies to help scaffold novices in exploratory thinking and implemented these strategies within creativity support tools.


Dissertation, DIS '21, C&C '19 (Extended abstract), C&C '19 (Graduate Symposium), CHI '19 (Honorable Mention), CHI'19 (Doctoral Consortium), CHI '18 (Honorable Mention), UIST '17 (Demo)


Other Projects

Throughout my career, I am fortunate to have collaborated on several projects related to creativity, patterning in children, and math cognition.


CogSci '22 (Abstract), C&C '19 (Extended abstract), CSCW '16 (Demo), L@S '16 (Extended abstract), NPJ '18, Journal of Neuroscience '15

Recent News

  • Jan 2024: Our paper, "Designing Conversation Support Tools to Visualize Classroom Discussion for Personalized Teacher Professional Development," was conditionally accepted to CHI 2024!
  • Dec 2023: Excited to share that I will be joining TeachFX as a Research Scientist in 2024!
  • Nov 15-18, 2023: Attending POD2023 in Pittsburgh, PA.
  • Nov 2, 2023: Giving a guest lecture for Dr. Angela Stewart's class, "The Machines are Taking Over? Power, Identity, and the Social Impact of AI," at the University of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh, PA.
  • Aug 1 - 2, 2023: Attending the James S. McDonnell Foundation (JSMF) Teachers as Learners meeting in St. Louis, MO.
  • Jul 11-14, 2023: Attending and presenting at DIS 2023 in Pittsburgh, PA.
  • Jul 2023: Very excited that our paper, "'An Instructor is [already] able to keep track of 30 students': Students’ Perceptions of Smart Classrooms for Improving Teaching & Their Emergent Understandings of Teaching and Learning" received an Honorable Mention award at DIS 2023!
  • Jul 3-7, 2023: Attending AIED in Tokyo, Japan.
  • May 21-23, 2023: Attending the NYU Innovating a New Generation of Learning Analytics for Educational Equity Event in Basking Ridge, NJ.
  • Apr 2023: Our paper, "'An Instructor is [already] able to keep track of 30 students': Students’ Perceptions of Smart Classrooms for Improving Teaching & Their Emergent Understandings of Teaching and Learning" was accepted to DIS 2023!