The iUX Academy is an integrative learning initiative that provides students real-world practice in User Experience, or UX, through partnerships with local industry.

“I am honored to receive this award that recognizes faculty who push boundaries and shift paradigms,” Wisniewski says. “It is only though innovation that Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ will achieve its Collective Impact.” The award is one of the university’s most prestigious internal recognitions, celebrating innovative ideas that have been developed into impactful, scalable programs that align with Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝â€™s Collective Impact Strategic Plan.

The iUX Academy provides students hands-on, practical training by allowing them to consult for local industry. UX encompasses everything from the attitude a person has toward a technology-based product or service to the overall experience interacting with that technology. Everything associated with that interaction — from core functionality and interface design to ease of use and even societal impacts of that technology — is methodically studied and designed by a UX researcher to maximize the overall end-user experience.

“When I first came to Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝, there was a gap in education for students who were interested in UX careers. The iUX Academy was established in Spring 2016 to fill this gap,” says Wisniewski. She says the project  began after Bogen Communications, a local company, contacted her about conducting usability testing for a new software product they were developing. “I saw this as a great opportunity for Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ to partner with local businesses to create integrative learning opportunities for our students.”

Wisniewski says the program not only educates students that UX is a viable and lucrative career path, but also gives them the critical competencies sought by employers.

The iUX Academy also helps establish Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ as a source of high-quality UX talent for local companies. Since its inception, the program has given more than 30 students the opportunity to gain paid work experience with local industry partners, including Bogen, Peraton and Medi-Iot. Following their participation in the program, students have been placed at Fortune 500 companies such as Deloitte, FedEx and HP.

Marchioli Award recipients receive a $5,000 grant as part of the award, which Wisniewski says she will use to expand the program. She plans to use the funds to hire a part-time iUX Academy lab manager for now, but with the continued success of the program, she says that position will eventually become a full-time role.

“We have more opportunities than the bandwidth to pursue all of them,” Wisniewski says. “A full-time lab manager would allow me to scale the iUX Academy to Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝-level greatness. At Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝, we like to go big, and that is what the iUX Academy intends to do.”

Details about the can be found at its website, including information for students interested in participating as well as companies seeking UX design consultation.

Pamela Wisniewski is hoping to change that. The assistant professor of computer science studies how adolescents interact with technology and how this interaction amplifies certain risks. She recently received the to look at ways to provide young people the tools they need to prevent them from becoming victims of sexual predators.

As part of Wisniewski’s research, she will examine ways to prevent the online exploitation of low-income, young women, whom she says are often most susceptible to unwanted online sexual solicitations that may lead to more serious offline risks, including sex trafficking.

“Empowering at-risk youth to manage online sexual risks more effectively will help them actualize the benefits of internet connectivity by teaching them how to engage online more safely,” she says.

The William T. Grant Scholars Program supports the professional development of promising researchers in the social, behavioral and health sciences. Wisniewski is the first computer science researcher to receive this award and will receive $350,000 to support her efforts.

Wisniewski’s five-year research project will start this fall.

A new study from the Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝, Pennsylvania State and Ohio State found that typical teens seem to be resilient and cope with most online risks, moving beyond the temporary negative impacts quickly.

The researchers conducted a web-based diary study of 68 teens. They chronicled the teens’ online experiences for eight weeks and used pre-validated psychological scales to assess how negative online experiences impacted teens’ emotional state and well-being. While they found that teens reported more negative emotions during the weeks they experienced cyberbullying and explicit content, these effects were gone only a week later. The findings will be presented at the 2018 conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing next year.

“I think if there is a message here, it is that teens are being exposed a lot, but they bounce back and show resiliency,” said Bridget McHugh, who worked on the study while a Ph.D student at Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ and is now a leadership development consultant at Ohio State University. “We’re not exactly sure how they are learning the coping skills, but they are and that’s good news.”

McHugh said coping may be happening through other online interactions with friends or through support from social media communities.

Pamela Wisniewski, a computer science assistant professor at Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ in Orlando who led this research, concluded that more research needs to be conducted into how teens learn to cope in the constantly changing social media world.

“I know parents are afraid of all the dangers out there, especially because teens seem to be practically tethered to the internet with their mobile devices,” she said. “But we may be over problematizing online risks and creating another stressor for teens and parents. What we should be looking at is, what does this all mean for the everyday teen?”

“We absolutely acknowledge there are cases where teens experience severe online risks, such as cyberbullying, that lead to long-term negative outcomes, like committing suicide,” Wisniewski said. “These are terrible, but they are also extreme cases. The good news is that in our study, we found that these extreme scenarios aren’t the average teen experience.”

She suggests parents help their children learn to manage risk, and that can’t happen if there isn’t open communication. But that’s a challenge when it comes to the topic of online activity. In another study, Wisniewski found that teens don’t communicate about all the risks they encounter online because parents tend to overreact.

Wisniewski has a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and joined Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ in 2015. Her research on adolescent online safety has won best paper awards (top 1%) and best paper honorable mentions (top 5%) at premier conferences in her field, as well as being featured by Science Daily, Forbes and NPR.

McHugh earned her Ph.D from Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ in 2016. Her work focuses on the benefits and drawbacks of social media and other forms of digital communication among adolescents and young professionals.

This research was funded in part by the National Science Foundation under grant CNS-1018302. Any opinion, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. National Science Foundation.