Rob Farrell
I am a Research Staff Member in the Social Computing Group at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center. I have a long-standing interest in the social and cognitive processes of human learning. I like to prototype disruptive technologies and then iteratively improve the systems with feedback from field studies.
At Carnegie-Mellon University, as an undergraduate, I worked with Dr. John Anderson to develop an intelligent tutoring system for introductory programming used for 16 years at CMU. Later, in graduate school at Yale University, I worked in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Lab with Roger Schank on case-based reasoning and its application to case method instruction. I started at Bellcore in the Artificial Intelligence group and later joined Sue Dumais’ Information Sciences group in Morristown, NJ. After moving to IBM in 1998, I managed the Knowledge Interaction Research group in Yorktown Heights. My areas of research have included distance learning, visualization of collaborative activities, discussion summarization, and learning objects.
Since joining the Social Computing group, my work has focused on user interfaces for communication and coordination of large groups. For example, I developed a timeline visualization tool that helps employees engage in complex organization-wide processes. I am now working on mobile applications for people with limited written literacy.
Contact information
Email: robfarr@us.ibm.com. Robert Farrell/Watson/IBM@IBMUS
Internal Address: 3N-B22 , Hawthorne
External Address: IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, P.O. Box 704, Yorktown Heights, NY 10598 USA
Find me on http://www.linkedin.com and http://www.facebook.com
Publications (selected)
Gary Marchionini, Yaxiao Song, and Robert Farrell, “Multimedia surrogates for video gisting: Toward combining spoken words and imagery”. Information Processing & Management (IP&M), Volume 45, Issue 6, 2009, Pages 615-630.
Catalina Danis, Mark Bailey, Jim Christensen, Jason Ellis, Thomas Erickson, Robert Farrell, Wendy A. Kellogg. “Mobile Applications for the Next Billions: A Social Computing Application and a Perspective on Sustainability.” 2nd Workshop on Innovative Mobile Technology & Services for Developing Countries (IMTS-DC 09) in conjunction with International Conference on Computing and ICT Research (ICCIR), Kampala, Uganda, July 30-31 2009.
Catalina Danis, Mark Bailey, Jim Christensen, Jason Ellis, Thomas Erickson, Robert Farrell, Wendy A. Kellogg. “Mobile Applications for the Next Billions: A Social Computing Perspective.” Human-Centered Computing in International Development (HCI4D) at ACM CHI 2009 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, April 2009.
Catalina Danis, Mark Bailey, Jim Christensen, Jason Ellis, Thomas Erickson, Robert Farrell, Christine Halverson, and Wendy A. Kellogg. “Social Computing Applications for the Next Billion Users.” Position paper for Designing Future Mobile Software for Underserved Users Workshop at ACM CSCW 2008 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, November 2008.
Farrell, R., Shah, H., Erickson, T., and Kellogg, W.A. A Design Evaluation of a User Interface for Tending Long-Term Tasks. In Extended Abstracts, CHI 2009. April 4-9, 2009.
Thomas, John C. and Farrell, R.G. “HCI Techniques from Idea to Deployment: A Case Study for a Dynamic Learning Environment”. CHI 2006.
Farrell, R. Liburd, Soyini, and Thomas, J. (2004) “Dynamic Assembly of Learning Objects”, Proceedings of the 14th World-Wide Web conference (WWW ’04) New York City, NY.
Farrell, R. , Fairweather, P., & Synder, K.(2001) Summarization of Discussion Groups. ACM Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM 2001). Atlanta, GA.
Farrell, R. Fairweather, P., and Breimer, E. (2000) A Task-based Architecture for Application-Aware Adjuncts ACM Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI ‘2000). New Orleans, LA.
Farrell, R. (1996) 60 Minute Guide to CGI Programming with Perl 5. IDG Books.
Farrell, R. and Lefkowitz, L. (1995) “Supporting Development of On-line Task Guidance for Software System Users.” In Facilitating the Development and Use of Interactive Learning Environments, Bloom & Loftin, (Eds.).
Farrell, R. (1988) “Facilitating Self-Education by Questioning Assumptive Reasoning,” Proceedings of the Eighth Annual Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-88), St. Paul, MN.
Brownston, L., Farrell, R., Kant, E. and Martin, N. (1985) Programming Expert Systems in OPS5. Addison-Wesley.
Farrell, R., Anderson, J., and Reiser, B.J. (1984) “An Interactive Computer-based Tutor for LISP,” Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-84). Austin, TX.
Anderson, J.R., Farrell, R., and Sauers, R. (1984) “Learning to Program in LISP.” Cognitive Science, 8, 87-129.
