MIT 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 abilities. She’s a soft-spoken observer, with a eager curiosity in how individuals use house and reply to their environments. Combining her observational abilities with energetic neighborhood engagement, she works on the intersection of know-how, training, and human connection to enhance digital studying platforms.
Morris grew up in rural upstate New York in a household of makers. She realized to stitch, cook dinner, and construct issues with wooden at a younger age. Considered one of her earlier reminiscences is of a small handsaw she made — with the assistance of her father, knowledgeable carpenter. It had picket handles on each side to make sawing simpler for her.
Later, when she wanted to study one thing, she’d flip to project-based communities, slightly than books. She taught herself to code late at night time, profiting from community-oriented platforms the place individuals reply questions and submit sketches, permitting her to see the code behind the objects individuals made.
“For me, that was this enormous, wake-up second of feeling like there was a path to expression that was not a standard computer-science classroom,” she says. “I feel that’s partly why I really feel so obsessed with what I’m doing now. That was the massive transformation: having that neighborhood obtainable on this actually private, project-based method.”
Subsequently, Morris has turn into concerned in community-based studying in various methods: She’s a co-organizer of the MIT Media Lab’s Competition of Studying; she leads inventive coding neighborhood meetups; and she or he’s been energetic within the open-source software program neighborhood growth.
“My years of organizing studying and making communities — each in particular person and on-line — have proven me firsthand how highly effective social interplay may be for motivation and curiosity,” Morris stated. “My analysis is actually about figuring out which parts of that social magic are most important, so we will design digital environments that higher assist these dynamics.”
Even in her art work, Morris typically 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 side of nature, similar to flowing water, birds in flight, or crowd kinetics. These marvelous installations are commanding and calming on the similar time, probably as a result of they focus the thoughts, eye, and typically the ear.
MIT graduate scholar and MAD Fellow Caitlin Morris contributed idea design, design growth, electrical design and engineering, firmware growth, 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 know-how from the Parsons College of Design at The New College.
Throughout, in between, after, and typically concurrently, she taught design, coding, and different applied sciences at the highschool, undergraduate, and graduate-student ranges.
“I feel what sort of bought me hooked on instructing was that the way in which I realized 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. They usually thought it was their fault. They simply didn’t actually really feel welcome throughout the conventional training mannequin.”
Morris says that when she labored with these college students, tossing apart custom and as a substitute saying — “You recognize, 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 totally different method” — she noticed individuals “type of unlock and be like, ‘Oh my gosh. I by no means thought I might try 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 individuals, these unlock moments.”
For her doctoral work with the MIT Media Lab’s Fluid Interfaces Group, she’s specializing in the private house and emotional gaps related to studying, notably 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 review social studying dynamics,” she says. “My analysis investigates how social interplay patterns affect curiosity growth 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 parts of social interplay will not be replaceable by an AI-based digital tutor. Following that evaluation, her aim 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 via reflection and interviews,” Morris explains. “This method helps join what individuals do with how they really feel about their studying expertise.
“I goal to make two major contributions: first, evaluation instruments for finding out social studying dynamics; and second, prototype instruments that show 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 targets make Morris an ideal match for the MIT MAD Fellowship. One assertion in MAD’s mission is: “Breaking away from conventional training, we foster creativity, crucial considering, making, and collaboration, exploring a spread of dynamic approaches to organize college students for advanced, real-world challenges.”
Morris desires to assist neighborhood organizations take care of the fast AI-powered modifications in training, as soon as she finishes her doctorate in 2026. “What ought to we do with this ‘bodily house versus digital house’ divide?” she asks. That’s the house at the moment fascinating Morris’s ideas.
