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Paige Zalman

Recent quantitative studies have shown that students in the arts and humanities are more likely to experience mental health challenges than students in other majors (Lipson et al., 2016), yet few qualitative studies exist that can explain the nature of this phenomenon. Students in this undergraduate research course will contribute to this gap in our understanding by acting as participant-researchers in a photovoice study on their own experiences with mental health in college. Photovoice—a participatory action research (PAR) method involving photography and focus group discussions—allows students to participate in the study through contributing their own anonymized data while also serving as researchers by analyzing the data and determining how it will be shared with policymakers to foster positive change. Students will gain experience with human subjects research, literature reviews, photovoice methodology, qualitative data analysis, and research communication, while also making novel contributions to research in the field of higher education.

Jenny Chang 

What influences people’s beliefs, behavior, and choices–from the products they buy, to the policies they support? This workshop offers a collaborative, hands-on experience to investigate the psychological processes and biases that shape behavior and decision-making. Throughout the course, you will collaborate with fellow students on a group research project on a novel research question of your choosing. As a class, you will design and implement an online experiment via Qualtrics, analyze real data, and present your findings. This workshop will equip you with versatile skills relevant to various fields such as (but not limited to) policy-making, behavioral sciences, and business. You will learn how to conduct rigorous research through a behavioral lens to inform evidence-based policies that address real-world challenges. Open to all majors and students interested in human subjects research, the course is designed to allow you to tailor your experience to gain the skills and knowledge most relevant to your professional path. Possible research questions include (but are not limited to): How does the presentation or framing of information influence consumers’ purchasing intentions? How do biases in hiring practices affect the career progression of women and minorities? What behavioral interventions can increase the uptake of vaccines? Does exposure to an opposing view make a person more likely to try to convince others that his or her own view is right?

Jon Rubin & Kim Beck

This course brings together students from across the university to explore and create new art projects that look at the city as a site of research, production and exhibition. This class asks students to consider ways that art can be used as a lens to notice, reimagine, and respond to place. Students will take field trips throughout the City of Pittsburgh to learn how artists work in relation to neighborhoods, architecture, parks, streets, and everything in between. In this course, students will have space and time to develop their own unique research projects in diverse media such as photography, drawing, public sculpture, installation, performance, artists’ books, and more. Students will work individually or in groups to create a body of work and see it through over the term in conversation with each other and faculty. Students from any major or college are welcome to explore the intersection of art and place with us.

Petra Floyd

Sensational Sounds is an interdisciplinary art course that invites anyone who experiences sound to investigate its sensory and artistic dimensions. This course emphasizes the importance of creative inquiry, using sound to explore and expand our understanding of perception. We will produce two thematic projects: a special edition sound collage mixtape and a live performance with tactile transducers. Blending acoustic theory, visual art, and hands-on experimentation, we will deeply engage with sound as a medium of creative and self-reflective research. Sensational Sounds parallels academic research by focusing on collaboration, research presentations, technical skill-building, and experimentation. We will heighten our sensitivities by creating visual scores, field recording, sampling, sound editing, and audio engineering. We will engage with influential figures such as Ed Yong, Imogen Heap, Pauline Oliveros, and Sun Ra, to provide a comprehensive foundation for developing our creative and analytical skills with sound. This course is open to students of all backgrounds who are ready to share their expertise, embrace hybridity, and co-learn in an interdisciplinary environment.

Austin Z. Henley and Eduardo Feo-Flushing

This course is full and has a waitlist

This course offers students a unique opportunity to gain real-world software engineering experience while working in cross-campus teams combining students from Pittsburgh and Doha. Teams will collaborate on open-source projects guided by industry mentors, navigating the technical and cultural dynamics of global software development. Most of the students’ effort will focus on developing software for real-world projects, with regular mentor meetings to refine requirements, implement solutions, and publish contributions. Faculty-led lectures will complement this work, covering practical topics to support students throughout the experience. This course provides hands-on learning that mirrors an internship, fostering technical skills, cross-cultural collaboration, and real-world problem-solving.

Seth Wiener

This course is full and has a waitlist

Consider the phrase, “The fireman will climb the…” Before the sentence is even complete, your mind predicts the next word—likely “ladder.” Artificial intelligence works in similar, probabilistic ways. This interdisciplinary course will explore how listeners use probabilistic linguistic information in real-time by recording and analyzing eye-movements. In this collaborative, cohort-based course, students will read published studies from the field of psycholinguistics, which explores how psychological processes affect linguistic behavior. Students will work together to replicate a testable hypothesis about how a quantifiable linguistic measure affects eye-movements. Students may have the opportunity to collect data, build statistical models to evaluate the hypothesis, and compare the results to previous findings. Students will gain experience in each step of the research process and have the opportunity to submit their findings to professional conferences in humanities, social/cognitive sciences, and computing.

Elaine Fath & Jessica Hammer 

This course is full and has a waitlist

How do you design a game or experience that really changes people? And how can you tell if it’s working?

In this research studio, you’ll help refine Dear Archibald, an award-winning, digital journaling and role-playing game about rest, connection, and the myths we tell ourselves about productivity and control. Unlike most design and design research courses that focus on early-stage development, this course gives you hands-on experience applying broadly applicable user research methods on a completed game prototype—something that can be harder to find outside of industry. You’ll use qualitative research methods like usability testing, interviews, A/B testing, and co-design to analyze how players engage with the game as it exists today, and make meaningful improvements.

If you’re interested in game design, UX research, psychology, or product development, this is a chance to build real-world skills in evaluating player experience, iterating on design based on data, and using research to refine interactive experiences. Working on an established system makes it easier to focus on what really matters: making an experience that changes its players. No prior experience required—just curiosity and a willingness to dig in.

Stephen Quick

This course is full and has a waitlist

We encourage bright lighting at night to celebrate events, create festivity, and foster safety and security. But where have all the stars gone? People in urban areas cannot see the Milky Way or the thousands of stars in the night sky and the overuse of light is harming the environment and our personal health. Skyglow will study light pollution and its effects, including issues of equity, safety, and sustainability. As researchers, students will create ways to communicate light pollution issues while learning how to conduct, document, and present research. Open to students at all levels, work will be accomplished in teams or individually and directed at target audiences (schoolteachers, local officials, or uninformed adults) for responsible lighting. The class’s research will be posted on DarkSky International’s Pennsylvania website and available as resources to all those passionate about taking back the night.

Haoyong Lan

This course is full and has a waitlist

This undergraduate research course offers a unique opportunity to contribute to cutting-edge research on generative AI literacy through systematic review methodology. Students will conduct systematic reviews investigating how generative AI literacy is conceptualized, implemented, and assessed across educational and professional contexts. The cohort will collaboratively develop systematic review protocols, conduct literature searches, assess study quality, extract and synthesize data, and produce scholarly outputs. Key areas of investigation include technical skills such as prompt engineering, ethical considerations, detection of AI-generated content, and context-appropriate application of generative AI tools. This research will contribute to the emerging scholarship on generative AI literacy while providing students with hands-on experience with systematic review methodology.