Ralph Vacca

PhD, Educational Communication & Technology, New York University
MA, Educational Leadership, New York University
BBA, Entrepreneurship Management, Baruch College CUNY

Ralph studies how the co-design of technology, with groups historically not included in the process, can support equity in education and mental health.

Vacca, R. (2024). Algorithmic counterspaces: exploring Afro-Latino youth information practices using TikTok. Information and Learning Sciences.

Matuk, C., Vacca, R., Amato, A., Silander, M., DesPortes, K., Woods, P. J., & Tes, M. (2024). Promoting students’ informal inferential reasoning through arts-integrated data literacy education. Information and Learning Sciences, 125(3/4), 163-189.

Vacca, R., DesPortes, K., Tes, M., Silander, M., Amato, A., Matuk, C., & Woods, P. J. (2022, June). What do you meme? Students communicating their experiences, intuitions, and biases surrounding data through memes. In Proceedings of the 21st Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference (pp. 212-224).

Vacca, R., DesPortes, K., Tes, M., Silander, M., Matuk, C., Amato, A., & Woods, P. J. (2022, April). ” I happen to be one of 47.8%”: Social-Emotional and Data Reasoning in Middle School Students’ Comics about Friendship. In Proceedings of the 2022 CHI conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 1-18).

Vacca, R. (2019, June). Brokering data: Co-designing technology with latina teens to support communication with parents: Leveraging cultural practices of latinx youth through co-design. In Proceedings of the 18th ACM International Conference on Interaction Design and Children (pp. 197-207).

Vacca, R. (2017). Biculturalism: Examining Adolescent Latinas’ Perspectives on Social Technologies for Emotional Support. Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI Interaction Design & Children Conference. Stanford, California.

DTEM 2411: Digital Research Methods
DTEM 2417: Data Visualization
NMDD 3450: User Experience Design for Empowerment
DTEM 2413: Participatory Methods
NMDD 3150: Creative Coding