About

Dr. Betsy DiSalvo is an Associate Professor in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech. Her work focuses on computer science (CS) education and informal learning, with an emphasis on developing innovative approaches to increase transfer and reflection in CS courses through maker-oriented learning projects. She is the principal investigator for several NSF-funded projects, including the DataWorks project, which provides CS education through entry-level jobs in authentic working environments for minority young adults. DiSalvo collaborates with game developers and others to create educational games such as Beats Empire, which assesses CS learning outcomes, and Hemonauts, designed to help chronically ill children learn science concepts related to their bodies. Over the past decade, her research has explored the use of information technology by minority parents in their children’s education, working with African American and Latin American parents in Atlanta. She has also led initiatives like the Glitch Game Testers program, a CS education effort targeting African American males, and has worked on projects for various museums and art centers, including the Carnegie Science Museum, the Children’s Museum of Atlanta, Eyedrum Art Center, and the Walker Art Center.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Data science
• Mathematics education
• Psychology
• Pedagogy
• Knowledge management
• World Wide Web
• Software engineering
• Engineering
• Management science

Selected publications

• Exploring the Interplay Between Voice, Personality, and Gender in Human-Agent Interactions

  Open MIND · 2026-02-11

  preprint

  To foster effective human-agent interactions, designers must understand how vocal cues influence the perception of agent personality and the role of user-agent alignment in shaping these perceptions. In this work, we examine whether users can perceive extroversion in voice-only artificial agents and how perceived personality relates to user-agent synchrony. We conducted a study with 388 participants, who evaluated four synthetic voices derived from human recordings, varying by gender (male, female) and personality expression (introverted, extroverted). Our results show that participants were able to differentiate perceived extroversion in female agent voices, but not consistently in male voices. We also observed evidence of perceived personality synchrony, particularly in participants' evaluations of the first agent encountered, with this effect more pronounced among male participants and toward male agents. We discuss these findings in light of limitations in stimulus diversity and voice representation, and outline implications for the design of voice-based agents, particularly regarding the interaction between gender, personality perception, and initial user impressions. This paper contributes findings and insights to consider the interplay of user-agent personality and gender synchrony in the design of human-agent interactions.

  DOI

• Exploring the Interplay Between Voice, Personality, and Gender in Human-Agent Interactions

  ArXiv.org · 2026-02-11

  articleOpen access

  To foster effective human-agent interactions, designers must understand how vocal cues influence the perception of agent personality and the role of user-agent alignment in shaping these perceptions. In this work, we examine whether users can perceive extroversion in voice-only artificial agents and how perceived personality relates to user-agent synchrony. We conducted a study with 388 participants, who evaluated four synthetic voices derived from human recordings, varying by gender (male, female) and personality expression (introverted, extroverted). Our results show that participants were able to differentiate perceived extroversion in female agent voices, but not consistently in male voices. We also observed evidence of perceived personality synchrony, particularly in participants' evaluations of the first agent encountered, with this effect more pronounced among male participants and toward male agents. We discuss these findings in light of limitations in stimulus diversity and voice representation, and outline implications for the design of voice-based agents, particularly regarding the interaction between gender, personality perception, and initial user impressions. This paper contributes findings and insights to consider the interplay of user-agent personality and gender synchrony in the design of human-agent interactions.

  PublisherOA PDF

• Undergraduate Students' Struggles in Computer Science

  2026-02-13

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Computing Education Research (CER) has made valuable contributions to improving undergraduate computing. CER tends to focus on instructional challenges, developing tools and techniques for teaching, or researching a single institution or classroom experience, and as a result, may lack a student-first perspective. To identify if there were student concerns that current research was overlooking, we designed an open-ended survey that asked undergraduate computing students what struggles they experienced and how they solved or coped with those struggles. This paper reports on this survey with N=201 responses from 45 US institutions.Our analysis identified two primary factors in student concerns: social/personal and academic/structural. Many of the top concerns of students aligned with trends in CER literature; however, there were issues, particularly those related to structural factors (curriculum, lengthy content, lack of institutional support, and uninterested professors), that have little representation in CER literature. Many of these issues may have temporal context, suggesting ongoing data collection from students may help identify appropriate directions and trends for CER. While we know students struggle in many ways, this survey provides evidence that further research in areas that are pressing today may be under-addressed.

  PublisherDOI

• Active and Passive Decisions: How Ethical Choices Are Made (and Missed) in NLP Research

  2026-04-13 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  While AI ethics interventions often focus on how researchers should navigate consequential choices, they may overlook a prior question: when do researchers recognize they are making a decision at all? This qualitative study examines how academic NLP teams confront “decision moments” – junctures where latent alternative paths could be considered. We propose a railyard problem analogy: where trolley problems presume a discrete choice between visible options, railyard problems concern whether alternative paths register as possibilities at all. Drawing on decision-tracing interviews across four NLP projects, we demonstrate how technical defaults, institutional structures, and tacit norms (infraethics) combine to organize research as a human-infrastructural process. Many consequential outcomes arise through "passive decisions", where alternatives exist but never become sufficiently visible, viable, or voiced (VVV) to warrant deliberation; "active decisions" only emerge when VVV conditions are met. Our analysis suggests ethics interventions should cultivate the collaborative conditions under which alternatives become recognizable.

  PublisherDOI

• Humility as Antidote

  Catalyst Feminism Theory Technoscience · 2026-03-10

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  The problems we see with data science and AI are not new; rather, they are inherent to any technical system employed to abstract over human experiences and populations. Stepping back from critiques of individual data science and AI systems, we study these systems as incantations of the long-forgotten cybernetics, or the practice of command-and-control systems based on self-correcting biological systems. Data science and AI represent second- and third-order cybernetic practice, particularly the specific US technolibertarian approach to 1970s–80s US cybernetics that influenced a number of now-(in)famous computing professionals. This technolibertarian perspective resulted—as we demonstrate with a case study of Facebook’s content moderation failures in Ethiopia’s Tigray region—in contemporary practices where system deployment is prioritized, despite sociocultural differences between developer and deployment site. As epistemological remediation, we imagine data science and AI as a practice founded on cyberfeminism. If we eschew technolibertarian cybernetics as an epistemological bedrock and turn instead to cyberfeminism, can we set a new agenda for data science and AI that prioritize context, origin, rather than generalization? Our call is as audacious as the future appears bleak: Is another cyberfuture possible?

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• 'I get hives when I come on here': Persisting Through Platform-Delivered Microaggressions on LinkedIn

  Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction · 2025-10-16 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  LinkedIn is central to salaried job search and professional networking. In a career development program for adults seeking upward socioeconomic mobility through middle-wage computing work, we aimed to use LinkedIn to find and develop new social ties. However, we could not use the platform for this purpose. Through a participatory research approach, we formed a research team with diverse positionalities to understand why LinkedIn was difficult to use and how it could be better for our program. We analyzed recorded walk-throughs and confirmed our findings with two years of ethnographic field notes and written reflections. Our findings demonstrate that LinkedIn's embedded algorithms and interface design prioritize users with large networks who can afford a LinkedIn Premium subscription. We argue that such platform-embedded power differentials lead to platform-delivered microaggressions. Non-Premium users and users with small networks must endure microaggressions to participate in the salaried labor market. We argue the politics of LinkedIn as a platform are such that its embedded power differentials are beyond our control and unlikely to change. Therefore, we recommend sociotechnical coping and mitigation strategies for career development programs in lieu of design implications for LinkedIn or similar platforms. We contribute a detailed example of how a technology reinforces pre-existing privilege without users' knowledge.

  PublisherDOI

• A Window into DataWorks: Developing an Integrated Work-Training Curriculum for Novice Adults

  2025-02-12 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Computing education is often confined to the context of formal education or after-school programs; however, there is a growing industry built around adult education, including workshops, coding intensives, online learning, and apprenticeship programs. Amidst these efforts, little research has explored the workplace as a site for novice adult learners to develop computing skills. In this experience report, we present an integrated training curriculum for adults at DataWorks, an organization that trains and employs novice adults from groups historically underrepresented in computing who seek to advance their career through on-the-job learning. ''Data Fellows'' are hired to complete client projects by providing data services for local organizations, nonprofits, and businesses. Training is integrated into employees' weekly responsibilities at DataWorks, and the curriculum consists of four modules: Microsoft Excel, Critical Data Literacy, Python Fundamentals, and Career Development. In this report, we reflect holistically on the evolution of the curriculum over three years. We distill our reflection into insights to inform other integrated training programs that aim to equip novice adults with computing skills in the workplace.

  PublisherDOI

• Datum Fieldnotes: easing the data work burden on civic and non-profit organizations

  2025-04-23

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Clinical Standards and Proximate Futures: Participatory Design Futuring of Diabetes Technologies with an Under-Resourced Community

  Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive Mobile Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies · 2025-12-02

  article

  Imagined visions of the future underlie much of the history of ubiquitous computing. Critiques of speculative design approaches, however, amplify concerns of ubicomp's inherent focus on the future, inciting questions of who is futuring and how to amplify historically marginalized voices. Taking a research through design approach, we conducted participatory speculative design workshops focusing on diabetes self-monitoring technology, within under-community sites which predominantly serve Black older adults. We explore community member perspectives on three modalities of ubiquitous health technologies: smarthome, wearable, and smartphone application. While much previous research focuses on diabetes technologies, we explore an area which is currently understudied by the ubicomp community: diabetic foot disease monitoring. Further, we center a community which faces greater diabetes health disparities. We provide findings related to health priorities and values of community members, and their broader considerations regarding current and speculative (AI-based) technologies. We reflect on the tensions between current clinical standards of care and the participant agency afforded by participatory design. Finally, we discuss the ways in which participants' views of current and speculative technologies contrast with ubicomp's as a field, specifically surrounding temporality and sociohistorical context.

  PublisherDOI

• Teaching Participatory Design

  2024-12-19

  book-chapterOpen access

  This chapter is written for scholars who may be teaching Participatory Design for the first time but have an understanding of, and possibly concrete experiences with, Participatory Design work. This chapter will also give experienced Participatory Design teachers a chance to reflect upon their practice. Based on our own teaching experiences and the contributions of several scholars and colleagues, we place strong emphasis on the need to base the teaching of Participatory Design on the continuous combination of practice and reflection. The chapter discusses the implications of this approach, the challenges it entails, and how to address them. We argue for the possibility of students engaging in “real” Participatory Design processes outside the classroom. The aim of this chapter is also to contribute to the development of a pedagogical framework for teaching Participatory Design. This direction centres teaching practice on two pedagogical modes: mutual learning and reflection-in-action. In discussing the practice of teaching Participatory Design, the chapter highlights three main aspects. The first is supporting students’ awareness of the relevance of the social dimension in Participatory Design practice and engaging them in reflection on related issues. To this end, questions that can promote students’ critical thinking are discussed. Given the relevant role of workshops in many Participatory Design processes, a second aspect is providing students with guidelines to consider the materiality in facilitating workshops, as well as opportunities to practise and combine practice with reflection. The chapter provides some concrete steps to consider for this purpose. The third aspect is guiding students in analysing Participatory Design outputs, a critical practice that is not easy and sometimes overlooked. The chapter ends with an annex, providing nine cases-examples, complementing the text and inspiring future teachers of Participatory Design. The cases-examples comprise teaching Participatory Design to bachelor-, master-, and PhD-students and to practitioners engaged in NGOs living labs.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Carl DiSalvo

  Georgia Institute of Technology

  12 shared

• Kayla DesPortes

  11 shared

• Mark Guzdial

  Michigan United

  11 shared

• Amy Bruckman

  10 shared

• Annabel Rothschild

  9 shared

• Marisol Wong-Villacrés

  Escuela Superior Politecnica del Litoral

  8 shared

• Tom McKlin

  7 shared

• Ben Rydal Shapiro

  Georgia State University

  6 shared

Education

• Ph.D., School of Interactive Computing

  Georgia Institute of Technology

  2012