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Benjamin Xie he|they

Postdoctoral Fellow

Stanford University

I design for data equity.

I am an Embedded Ethics Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centered AI and McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society. My research interest is in designing critical and equitable human-data interactions for educational and environmental outcomes. I engage with computing education, human-computer interaction, and AI ethics research communities.

I completed my PhD at the University of Washington Information School with Prof. Amy Ko, where I was a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellow and also a research intern at non-profit Code.org. Prior to my PhD, I was an MIT EECS-Google Research and Innovation Scholar as an undergraduate and Master’s student at MIT researching with Prof. Hal Abelson and MIT App Inventor.

For more information, see about me, projects, or CV.

Interests

  • Computing Education
  • Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)
  • Critical Data Studies
  • Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, and Society
  • Participatory Design

Education

  • PhD in Information Science, 2022

    University of Washington

  • MEng in Computer Science, 2016

    Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  • BS in Computer Science, 2015

    Massachusetts Institute of Technology

News

Nov 2023: Paper on computing ethics instruction accepted to TOCE

Review of 40 years of research on ethics instruction in higher education computing courses accepted to the Transactions on Computing Education (TOCE) Journal! see paper

Jun 2023: Awarded grant from Stanford Woods Institute

Proposal on Addressing Environmental Data Inequities by Empowering Youth in Frontline Communities awarded $249k by Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. about grant

Jun 2023: Paper Accepted to ICER 2023

Research on using replays of coding process to improve novice programmers’ metacognition skills accepted to ICER 2023. see paper

May 2023: Presented at Stanford EdTech Ethics Workshop

Described Stanford’s Embedded Ethics program and presented teaching demonstration on embedding ethics in an introductory algorithms class. see slides

Projects

Modeling thoughts processes to provide more equitable practice writing code

Using keystroke logging to provide metacognitive intreventions for novice programmers.

StudentAmp: Contextualized student feedback to amplify minoritized voices in computing courses

StudentAmp contextualized student feedback so teaching teams of large, remote computing courses could interpret it more equitably.

Improving equity of Code.org's CS Discoveries curriculum

Investigating how Code.org CS Discoveries curriculum serves different sub-populations to improve the equity of learning experiences and outcomes.

Codeitz: An adaptive learning experience that lets learners decide

Designing for learner agency in self-directed online learning experiences

Improving computer science education w/ explicit instruction

Providing explicit instrutions to make introductory programming more approachable.

Recent Papers

Developing Novice Programmers' Self-Regulation Skills with Code Replays

Designed tool that enabled replays of code writing process and found that its use improved novice programmers’ self-regulation behaviors when writing code.

Developing Novice Programmers' Self-Regulation Skills with Code Replays

Designed tool that enabled replays of code writing process and found that its use improved novice programmers’ self-regulation behaviors when writing code.

Centering Environmental Justice in Computing Education

Organizing Birds of a Feather to discuss computing education’s role in environmental justice

Theories of Programming (Dagstuhl Seminar 22231)

Summary of research seminar to sketch new theories of programming and consider the role of theories in programming.

Recent Posts

Job Calls for Research in CS & STEM Edu, HCI

Sharing a spreadsheet of job calls related to computing edu, STEM edu, HCI & edu research

Contact

Please reach out to me by email or Twitter direct message! If you are a Stanford affiliate, please send me a Slack direct message.