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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 Center for Ethics in Society. My research interest is in designing interactions for critical discourse with and about data for equitable learning, community advocacy, and ethical AI use. 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

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

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

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

Apr 2023: Awarded Grant from Stanford Accelerator for Learning and Human-Centered AI Institute.

Funding will go towards understanding the role of critical reflection when novice programmers learn to code with Generative AI. see announcement

Jan 2023: Dagstuhl Seminar report on ‘Theories of Programming’ Published

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

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

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.

Surfacing Equity Issues in Large Computing Courses with Peer-Ranked, Demographically-Labeled Student Feedback

Developed and evaluated StudentAmp, a tool that contextualized student feedback to enable teaching teams to perspective take for more equitable interpretation of student feedback data.

Stakeholders' Interpretations of Data for Equitable Computing Education

Interactions with data that consider prior knowledge, perceptions of power relationships, and cultural competency can enable computing education stakeholders to connect their interpretations of data with their domain expertise in service of equity-oriented goals.

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.