Generative AI and other emerging technologies are significantly impacting the work of software engineers. This impact is not re- stricted to programming; rather it has permeated multiple phases in the software development pipeline. As such, it is increasingly important to understand and analyze the changing work of the AI-enabled software developers who work at the cutting edge of AI Integration. This poster shares the ''Profile of the AI-enhanced Software Engineer'' developed in collaboration between Education Development Center (EDC) and Google. The profile describes in detail the work goals and associated tasks; and the skills, knowledge and attributes needed to do that work effectively. The poster will also share a framework for prompting used by skilled AI-enhanced software engineers across a variety of tasks. Though rapid change is predicted for the field, the Profile can inform K-20 CS and AI education efforts as well as workforce development of the current state of the field and stimulate discussion of how best to prepare for and adapt to the future of work.

We describe our experiences co-designing low-cost Virtual Reality-augmented learning experiences with and for an after-school learning center in Mumbai, India that caters to low-income children from neighboring communities. In partnership with 5 staff members and 16 students at the center, we spent 7 weeks co-designing, piloting, and iterating on VR lessons targeting 28 academic topics over a total of 15 classroom sessions. We found that VR was used to demonstrate real-world phenomena, illustrate abstract concepts, compare and contrast places in the curriculum against virtual landmarks, and motivate students. Most importantly, VR's representational fidelity appeared to arouse students' curiosity, leading them to ask more questions that reflected deeper engagement with the topic.

One consequence of rapid advances in computer technology is the obsolescence of hundreds of millions of computers each year. This paper explores strategies for increasing the reuse of outdated computers through an investigation of an 8-bit home computer that is still popular in developing countries. We observed the use of the computers in 16 households in Ahmedabad and Bangalore, India in order to gain insight into the contextual factors that support the continued popularity of the device. While most computers become obsolete in less than a decade, this 30-year-old computer technology remains useful because it provides exciting, multi-user family entertainment. While having minimal processing power and virtually no connectivity, the 8-bit computer supports input and output channels that are especially suited for co-located social game play. In contrast, PCs are primarily designed for individual use. Therefore, we offer low-cost design recommendations that would enable outdated PCs to support greater shared use and increased utility within the constrained material context of low-income households. These simple interventions, if adopted by computer refurbishment industries, have the potential to significantly extend the useful lifespan of PCs.

The expertise required to develop a speech recognition system with reasonable accuracy for a given task is quite significant, and precludes most non-speech experts from integrating speech recognition into their own research. While an initial baseline recognizer may readily be available or relatively simple to acquire, identifying the necessary accuracy optimizations require an expert understanding of the application domain as well as significant experience in building speech recognition systems. This paper describes our efforts and experiments in formalizing knowledge from speech experts that would help novices by automatically analyzing an acoustic context and recommending appropriate techniques for accuracy gains. Through two recognition experiments, we show that it is possible to model experts' understanding of developing accurate speech recognition systems in a rule-based knowledge base, and that this knowledge base can accurately predict successful optimization techniques for previously seen acoustic situations, both in seen and unseen datasets. We argue that such a knowledge base, once fully developed, will be of tremendous value for boosting the use of speech recognition in research and development on non-mainstream languages and acoustic conditions.

Learning to read in a second language is challenging, but highly rewarding. For low-income children in developing countries, this task can be significantly more challenging because of lack of access to high-quality schooling, but can potentially improve economic prospects at the same time. A synthesis of research findings suggests that practicing recalling and vocalizing words for expressing an intended meaning could improve word reading skills - including reading in a second language - more than silent recognition of what the given words mean. Unfortunately, many language learning software do not support this instructional approach, owing to the technical challenges of incorporating speech recognition support to check that the learner is vocalizing the correct word. In this paper, we present results from a usability test and two subsequent experiments that explore the use of two speech recognition-enabled mobile games to help rural children in India read words with understanding. Through a working speech recognition prototype, we discuss two major contributions of this work: first, we give empirical evidence that shows the extent to which productive training (i.e. vocalizing words) is superior to receptive vocabulary training, and discuss the use of scaffolding hints to ""unpack"" factors in the learner's linguistic knowledge that may impact reading. Second, we discuss what our results suggest for future research in HCI.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nicholas Kristof argues that in this century the paramount moral challenge will be the struggle for gender equality around the world. In this paper, we present a design model for empowering low-income women in the developing world, in ways that cut across individual application areas. Specifically, this model characterizes a possible trajectory for NGOs and women to engage with each other and among themselves potentially augmented by technology to help women escape from poverty. The fieldwork components in this study took place over 15 weeks in three phases, with a total of 47 NGO staff members and 35 socio-economically challenged women in rural and urban India. Interviews and co-design sessions with seven proof-of-concept prototypes showed that women appeared to belong to five distinct stages of growth in striving towards independence. We report the technology design lessons from our co-design sessions to illustrate how user readiness, relationship building at the community and family levels, and integration with state, national and international level programs, should be taken into account in the broader context of intervention design.

Cellphones have the potential to improve education for the millions of underprivileged users in the developing world. However, mobile learning in developing countries remains under-studied. In this paper, we argue that cellphones are a perfect vehicle for making educational opportunities accessible to rural children in places and times that are more convenient than formal schooling. We carried out participant observations to identify the opportunities in their everyday lives for mobile learning. We next conducted a 26-week study to investigate the extent to which rural children will voluntarily make use of cellphones to access educational content. Our results show a reasonable level of academic learning and motivation. We also report on the social context around these results. Our goal is to examine the feasibility of mobile learning in out-of-school settings in rural, underdeveloped areas, and to help more researchers learn how to undertake similarly difficult studies around mobile computing in the developing world.

In many developing countries such as India and China, low educational levels often hinder economic empowerment. In this paper, we argue that mobile learning games can play an important role in the Chinese literacy acquisition process. We report on the unique challenges in the learning Chinese language, especially its logographic writing system. Based on an analysis of 25 traditional Chinese games currently played by children in China, we present the design and implementation of two culturally inspired mobile group learning games, Multimedia Word and Drumming Strokes. These two mobile games are designed to match Chinese children's understanding of everyday games. An informal evaluation reveals that these two games have the potential to enhance the intuitiveness and engagement of traditional games, and children may improve their knowledge of Chinese characters through group learning activities such as controversy, judgments and self-correction during the game play.

Low educational levels hinder economic empowerment in developing countries. We make the case that educational games can impact children in the developing world. We report on exploratory studies with three communities in North and South India to show some problems with digital games that fail to match rural children's understanding of games, to highlight that there is much for us to learn about designing games that are culturally meaningful to them. We describe 28 traditional village games that they play, based on our contextual interviews. We analyze the mechanics in these games and compare these mechanics against existing videogames to show what makes traditional games unique. Our analysis has helped us to interpret the playability issues that we observed in our exploratory studies, and informed the design of a new videogame that rural children found to be more intuitive and engaging.

Literacy is one of the great challenges in the developing world. But universal education is an unattainable dream for those children who lack access to quality educational resources such as well-prepared teachers and schools. Worse, many of them do not attend school regularly due to their need to work for the family in the agricultural fields or households. This work commitment puts formal education far out of their reach. On the other hand, educational games on cellphones hold the promise of making learning more accessible and enjoyable. In our projects 4th year, we reached a stage where we could implement a semester-long pilot on cellphone-based learning. The pilot study took the form of an after-school program in a village in India. This paper reports on this summative learning assessment. While we found learning benefits across the board, it seemed that more of the gains accrued to those children who were better equipped to take advantage of this opportunity. We conclude with future directions for designing educational games that target less well-prepared children in developing regions.

Poor literacy remains a barrier to economic empowerment in the developing world. Of particular importance is fluency in a widely spoken "world language" such as English, which is typically a second language for these low-income learners. We make the case that mobile games on cellphones is an appropriate solution in the typical ecologies of developing regions. The challenge is to design e-learning games that are both educational and pleasurable for our target learners, who have limited familiarity with high technology. We propose the receptive-practice-activation cycle that could be used as the conceptual model for the designs. We then report how this format could be refined, based on our experiences in the field with three games that have collectively undergone nine rounds of iterations. In particular, it appears that maintaining a distinction between learning and fun to some extent is necessary for effective designs.

Poor literacy remains a decisive barrier to the economic empowerment of many people in the developing world. Of particular importance is literacy in a widely spoken "world language" such as English, which is typically a second language for these speakers. For complex reasons, schools are often not effective as vehicles for second language learning. In this paper we explore game-like language learning on cell phones. We argue that phones are an excellent technology platform in the typical ecologies of developing countries. We present the PACE framework that is intended to support the rapid, scalable development of language learning software localized for a particular community of learners. These learners are usually skeptical of formal education and of cultural biases they encounter in learning "remote" languages in particular. Localization of content is crucial to make the language relevant to them and to encourage them to adopt it.

Technology arguably has the potential to play a key role in improving the lives of people in developing regions. However, these communities are not well understood and designers must thoroughly investigate possibilities for technological innovations in these contexts. We describe findings from two field studies in India and one in Uganda where we explore technological solutions in the domains of communication, microfinance and education. Two common underlying themes emerge from these studies: (1) local stakeholders can contribute cultural information relevant to design such as needs and practices through interaction with technology artifacts and (2) unique social network structures embedded within communities are crucial to the acceptance and potential adoption of technology. We end with a synthesis of the three experiences that draws some practical lessons for ICT designers to elicit meaningful feedback and participation from local stakeholders in developing regions communities.

Low levels of education remain a barrier to economic empowerment in the developing world. In our work on English language learning among underserved communities in India since 2004, we have observed differences between school communities in terms of their access to educational opportunities outside school, access to ICTs including cellphones and digital gaming, enthusiasm for visitors, and the relationships between students. We report on these observations and argue that they call for the greater use of a comparative approach in constructing models of the micro-cultures at various schools, so that user-centered design processes and methods can better account for the unique differences across communities.

This paper draws on a 2-week design workshop conducted at a rural primary school in northern India to provide recommendations on carrying out participatory design with school children in rural, underdeveloped regions. From our experiences in prototyping low-tech and hi-tech English language learning games with rural student participants, we advocate that researchers build a more equal relationship that is qualitatively different from one between teachers and students, enlist local adults and children as facilitators, and explore hi-tech prototyping to inspire the best designs.

We describe Livenotes, a shared whiteboard system and educational practice that uses wireless communication and tablet computing to support real-time conversations within small groups of students during lectures, independent of class size. We present an interface design that enables group members to interact with one another by taking lecture notes cooperatively, as well as to augment student note-taking by providing instructor slides in the background to annotate over. Livenotes was designed to facilitate more efficient, stimulating modes of learning that other collaborative approaches do not. We report how the system impacts cooperative learning in an undergraduate class and how students interacted with background slides in the workspace. We conclude with directions for improving the system and learning practice.

Based on our findings from an ongoing pilot with shared computers in rural primary schools in Uttar Pradesh, India since 2001 and two follow-up field studies in the same schools in 2004, we propose some principles for designing educational technology for developing countries as hypotheses. They include constructivist, small-group collaborative learning through digital storytelling and integrating paper- with computer-based practices. We also discuss the need to balance pedagogy, usability and mobility.