Amy S. Bruckman

Amy Susan Bruckman (born 1965) is a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology affiliated with the School of Interactive Computing and the GVU Center. She is best known for her pioneering research in the fields of online communities and the learning sciences. In 1999, she was selected as one of MIT Technology Review's TR100 award, honoring 100 remarkable innovators under the age of 35.[1]

Amy Susan Bruckman
Amy Bruckman in December, 2001
Born1965 (age 54–55)
New York, New York, USA
NationalityAmerican
Alma materMIT Media Lab,
Harvard University
Known forMediaMOO,
MOOSE Crossing
AwardsMIT Technology Review TR100
AERA Jan Hawkins Award
Scientific career
FieldsOnline communities,
Learning sciences,
Constructionist learning,
Information ethics
InstitutionsGeorgia Tech,
GVU Center
Doctoral advisorMitchel Resnick

Early life and education

Amy S. Bruckman was born in New York, New York. She attended the Horace Mann School, an Ivy Preparatory School in New York City, graduating in 1983. Following that, Bruckman attended Harvard University for her undergraduate studies, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in physics in 1987. She received a master's degree in 1991 from the Interactive Cinema Group at the MIT Media Lab, where she was advised by Glorianna Davenport. Her master's thesis described the Electronic Scrapbook, an intelligent home video editing system.[2]

Bruckman went on to pursue a Ph.D. at the Media Lab in Mitchel Resnick's Epistemology and Learning Group. On January 20, 1993, Bruckman established MediaMOO, an online community for new media researchers and educators.[3] The community, managed chiefly by Bruckman, developed a significant following for its time, eventually closing down seven years later.[4] During this time, Bruckman also worked as a research assistant for Sherry Turkle on Turkle's influential book, Life on the Screen (1997). For her dissertation work, Bruckman developed MOOSE Crossing, a MOO-based constructionist learning environment in which young children could learn computer programming skills while building virtual objects.[5]

Georgia Tech

Upon her graduation from MIT in 1997, Bruckman accepted a position as an assistant professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing. As a new Georgia Tech faculty member, Bruckman founded the Electronic Learning Communities (ELC) Lab and began setting up a program of research incorporating her interests in online communities and constructionist learning. She founded the Undergraduate Research Opportunities in Computing (UROC) program at Georgia Tech in 1998, modeling it after MIT's UROP.[6] In 1999, Bruckman's research was supported by a prestigious grant awarded by the National Science Foundation's Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) program.[7] That same year, she was selected as one of Technology Review's 100 remarkable innovators under the age of 35.[8] Her work at this time was described as "the most notable MOO research in education."[8]

On July 22, 1999, Bruckman and graduate student Joshua Berman released The Turing Game, a multiplayer online game inspired by the Turing test that challenged players to explore issues of online identity.[9] The game received national attention[10] and was played by over 11,000 people from 81 countries and all seven continents.[11]

In 2003, Bruckman received tenure and was promoted to the position of associate professor. In 2012, she was made a full professor.

Bruckman currently directs the ELC Lab, the UROC program, and the Web Science initiative at Georgia Tech. She has published dozens of scholarly articles in peer-reviewed journals and has given invited presentations at high-profile academic conferences such as ICLS and CHI. Bruckman's most recent work, often done in conjunction with graduate students she advises, has dealt with topics in information ethics, game studies,[12] social media use,[13] computer-supported collaboration and wikis,[14] and women in computing.

Recognition

In 2002, the American Educational Research Association presented Bruckman with the Jan Hawkins Award for Early Career Contributions to Humanistic Research and Scholarship in Learning Technologies.[15] She was elected to the CHI Academy in 2018.[16] She was also elected as an ACM Fellow in 2018 for "contributions to collaborative computing and foundational work in Internet research ethics".[17]

gollark: Back buttons are for wimps.
gollark: We must all start using Lambda-Dot BLC.
gollark: ^
gollark: I think if human civilisation is wiped out, we should aim to at least properly destroy the Earth first.
gollark: I think it's *pretty* doomed-ish. Human civilisation as we know it, anyway.

See also

References
  1. "The 1999 TR100". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved May 29, 2014.
  2. Bruckman, Amy (1991). "The Electronic Scrapbook: Towards an Intelligent Home-Video Editing System." Master's Thesis, MIT Media Lab.
  3. Bruckman, Amy and Mitchel Resnick (1995). "The MediaMOO Project: Constructionism and Professional Community." Convergence 1:1, pp. 94-109.
  4. Bruckman, Amy and Carlos Jensen (2002). "The Mystery of the Death of MediaMOO, Seven Years of Evolution of an Online Community." In Building Virtual Communities. Edited by Ann Renninger and Wesley Shumar. Pp. 21-33. Cambridge University Press.
  5. Bruckman, Amy (1997). "MOOSE Crossing: Construction, Community, and Learning in a Networked Virtual World for Kids." PhD dissertation, MIT Media Lab.
  6. "Program Involves Undergraduate Students in Research Projects". BuzzWords. Georgia Tech Alumni Association. 2001-04-02. Archived from the original on 2007-10-13. Retrieved 2007-10-11.
  7. "Faculty Awards — College of Computing". Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing. Archived from the original on 2007-12-25. Retrieved 2007-10-10.
  8. "1999 Young Innovator: Amy Bruckman". Technology Review. MIT. November 1999. Retrieved 2007-10-10.
  9. "YOUR ONLINE IDENTITY: RESEARCHERS STUDY HUMAN INTERACTION ONLINE THROUGH GAME PLAYED IN VIRTUAL COMMUNITY" (Press release). GT Research News. 1999-09-09. Retrieved 2007-10-11.
  10. Boese, Christine (2004-10-13). "Can you prove you're not a machine?". CNN.com. Archived from the original on 13 October 2007. Retrieved 2007-10-11.
  11. Berman, Joshua; Amy Bruckman (2001). "The Turing Game: Exploring Identity in an Online Environment" (PDF). Convergence. 7 (3): 83–102. doi:10.1177/135485650100700307. Retrieved 2007-10-12. 11,158 people used it over a one-year period. Players from 81 countries on all seven continents used the game to learn about issues of identity and diversity online through direct experience.
  12. "Can Video Game Testing Spark Interest in Computing Among Black Youth?" (Press release). Georgia Institute of Technology. 2009-09-09. Retrieved 2009-09-15.
  13. Shamma, Tasnim (2016-03-23). "Ga. Tech Project Provides Cubans Faster Access To Internet". news.wabe.org. Retrieved 2016-04-16.
  14. Forte, A., & Bruckman, A. (2005). Why do people write for wikipedia? Incentives to contribute to open-content publishing. Unpublished manuscript, Georgia Institute of Technology, College of Computing, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, Retrieved from http://jellis.org/work/group2005/papers/forteBruckmanIncentivesGroup.pdf
  15. "Georgia Tech University Professor, Bruckman, Wins 2002 Jan Hawkins Award" (Press release). Center for Children & Technology. 2002-04-26. Retrieved 2007-10-10.
  16. Award Recipients, ACM SIGCHI, retrieved 2018-10-18
  17. 2018 ACM Fellows Honored for Pivotal Achievements that Underpin the Digital Age, Association for Computing Machinery, December 5, 2018
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