MyTurn: Girls’ Participation in Computing
AI-generated illustration representing the project.MyTurn brings together social robotics, personally meaningful programming projects, peer collaboration, and mentorship to support middle school girls’ interest and participation in computing.
My Contributions
I designed a web-based pre-coding tool that supports students as they move from brainstorming and storyboarding to annotation, pseudocode, block-code planning, and implementation.
Through my dissertation research, I examined how students interacted with the tool alongside peers and mentors during project-based social robotics activities. This work investigated how technological and social scaffolds can support engagement, learning, and interest in computing.
Curriculum and Resources
MyTurn is a social robotics curriculum grounded in the DICE framework (Michaelis & Weintrop, 2022). It integrates support for computing knowledge, value, and belonging to promote students’ interest in computer science.
Activities connect learning about social robots with designing and programming robots for personally meaningful applications.
Explore the MyTurn curriculum and teaching materials
MyTurn curriculum overview, including project activities and classroom implementation.
Related Publication
My research goal is to design, build, and evaluate technology-facilitated learning environments. My work brings together learning sciences, human–computer interaction, computing education, and social robotics.
I completed my Ph.D. in Learning Sciences at the University of Illinois Chicago in May 2026, advised by Dr. Joseph E. Michaelis. I also hold a master’s degree in Computer and Information Science from the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Lahore University of Management Sciences.
My dissertation, “Broadening Participation of Girls in Computing: An Integrated Approach to Supporting Interest in CS,” examined how technological and social scaffolds support girls’ interest in computing. Through the MyTurn project, I designed a web-based pre-coding tool and studied its use alongside peer collaboration and mentorship during social robotics activities.
My broader research includes in-home robot learning companions and teacher-facing tools for designing robot-assisted learning experiences. I use iterative design and mixed methods to understand learners’ experiences and inform technology design.
My future research vision builds on my previous work to investigate the design of AI-enabled technologies that can adapt to learners’ evolving needs and complement social scaffolds embedded within authentic learning contexts to support learning and interest.
AI-generated illustration representing my research.