My MORNINGSIDE ACADEMY FOR DESIGN (MAD) Fellow Caitlin Morris is an architect, artist, researcher, and educator who has studied psychology and used on-line studying instruments to show herself coding and different expertise. She’s a soft-spoken observer, with a eager curiosity in how folks use area and reply to their environments. Combining her observational expertise with energetic group engagement, she works on the intersection of expertise, schooling, and human connection to enhance digital studying platforms.
Morris grew up in rural upstate New York in a household of makers. She discovered to stitch, prepare dinner, and construct issues with wooden at a younger age. One in all her earlier recollections is of a small handsaw she made — with the assistance of her father, knowledgeable carpenter. It had wood handles on either side to make sawing simpler for her.
Later, when she wanted to study one thing, she’d flip to project-based communities, somewhat than books. She taught herself to code late at evening, profiting from community-oriented platforms the place folks reply questions and put up sketches, permitting her to see the code behind the objects folks made.
“For me, that was this large, wake-up second of feeling like there was a path to expression that was not a standard computer-science classroom,” she says. “I believe that’s partly why I really feel so obsessed with what I’m doing now. That was the large transformation: having that group obtainable on this actually private, project-based method.”
Subsequently, Morris has develop into concerned in community-based studying in various methods: She’s a co-organizer of the MIT Media Lab’s Pageant of Studying; she leads artistic coding group meetups; and he or she’s been energetic within the open-source software program group improvement.
“My years of organizing studying and making communities — each in particular person and on-line — have proven me firsthand how highly effective social interplay could be for motivation and curiosity,” Morris mentioned. “My analysis is actually about figuring out which components of that social magic are most important, so we will design digital environments that higher help these dynamics.”
Even in her paintings, Morris generally works with a collective. She’s contributed to the creation of about 10 giant artwork installations that mix motion, sound, imagery, lighting, and different applied sciences to immerse the customer in an expertise evoking some facet of nature, reminiscent of flowing water, birds in flight, or crowd kinetics. These marvelous installations are commanding and calming on the identical time, presumably as a result of they focus the thoughts, eye, and generally the ear.
MIT graduate pupil and MAD Fellow Caitlin Morris contributed idea design, design improvement, electrical design and engineering, firmware improvement, and fabrication to “Diffusion Choir,” an set up from the artist collaborative Hypersonic, in addition to Sosolimited and Plebian Design.
Video: Hypersonic
She did a lot of this work with New York-based Hypersonic, an organization of artists and technologists specializing in giant kinetic installations in public areas. Earlier than that, she earned a BS in psychology and a BS in architectural constructing sciences from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, then an MFA in design and expertise from the Parsons College of Design at The New College.
Throughout, in between, after, and generally concurrently, she taught design, coding, and different applied sciences at the highschool, undergraduate, and graduate-student ranges.
“I believe what sort of bought me hooked on instructing was that the best way I discovered as a baby was not the identical as within the classroom,” Morris explains. “And I later noticed this in lots of my college students. I bought the sensation that the conventional method of studying issues was not working for them. And so they thought it was their fault. They simply didn’t actually really feel welcome inside the conventional schooling mannequin.”
Morris says that when she labored with these college students, tossing apart custom and as an alternative saying — “You understand, we’re simply going to do that animation. Or we’re going to make this design or this web site or these graphics, and we’re going to method it on this completely completely different method” — she noticed folks “form of unlock and be like, ‘Oh my gosh. I by no means thought I might do this.’
“For me, that was the hook, that’s the magic of it. As a result of I used to be coming from that have of getting to determine these unlock mechanisms for myself, it was actually thrilling to have the ability to share them with different folks, these unlock moments.”
For her doctoral work with the MIT Media Lab’s Fluid Interfaces Group, she’s specializing in the private area and emotional gaps related to studying, significantly on-line and AI-assisted studying. This analysis builds on her expertise rising human connection in each bodily and digital studying environments.
“I’m growing a framework that mixes AI-driven behavioral evaluation with human professional evaluation to check social studying dynamics,” she says. “My analysis investigates how social interplay patterns affect curiosity improvement and intrinsic motivation in studying, with explicit deal with understanding how these dynamics differ between actual friends and AI-supported environments.”
Step one in her analysis is figuring out which components of social interplay usually are not replaceable by an AI-based digital tutor. Following that evaluation, her purpose is to construct a prototype platform for experiential studying.
“I’m creating instruments that may concurrently observe observable behaviors — like bodily actions, language cues, and interplay patterns — whereas capturing learners’ subjective experiences by way of reflection and interviews,” Morris explains. “This method helps join what folks do with how they really feel about their studying expertise.
“I intention to make two major contributions: first, evaluation instruments for finding out social studying dynamics; and second, prototype instruments that exhibit sensible approaches for supporting social curiosity in digital studying environments. These contributions might assist bridge the hole between the effectivity of digital platforms and the wealthy social interplay that happens in efficient in-person studying.”
Her objectives make Morris an ideal match for the MIT MAD Fellowship. One assertion in MAD’s mission is: “Breaking away from conventional schooling, we foster creativity, essential pondering, making, and collaboration, exploring a variety of dynamic approaches to organize college students for advanced, real-world challenges.”
Morris needs to assist group organizations cope with the speedy AI-powered adjustments in schooling, as soon as she finishes her doctorate in 2026. “What ought to we do with this ‘bodily area versus digital area’ divide?” she asks. That’s the area at present fascinating Morris’s ideas.
