Tux Member Presentation

Speaker

Rhonda McEwen:
Intuitive or Idiomatic? An information studies and cognitive psychology study of child-tablet computer interaction

2016-04-19 12:30 at 40 St. George St. Suite 5187

Since 2009, Dr. Rhonda McEwen has conducted communications research involving touch-mediated technologies in educational institutions including students with special needs. This experience had a profound effect on her intellectual work and she now describes herself as a scholar of tactile interfaces as her work involves mobile media and cognitive informatics. McEwen’s publications detail results of her research on the use of mobile media and resultant consequences for information interpretation, learning, and touch-interaction design. Today she shares her experiences of conducting research with this special population and offers insights on the relationship between gestures and information processing.

Rhonda McEwen is an assistant professor at the Institute of Communication, Culure, Information and Technology and at the iSchool, at the University of Toronto. She holds an MBA in IT from City University in London, England, an MSc in Telecommunications from the University of Colorado, and a PhD in Information from University of Toronto. Dr. McEwen has worked and researched digital communication media for 15 years, both in companies providing services and in management consulting to those companies. Her research and teaching centre around information practices involving new media technologies – with an emphasis on mobile and tablet communication, new media, social networks, and sensory information processing. CBS 60 Minutes journalists covered McEwen’s research in 2012 & 2013, and she has recent publications in Information, Communication & Society, Computers and Education, Learning & Instruction, New Media and Society, and Library and Information Science Research journals.