– Role: Student of Library and Information Science

Transferrable Skills

During graduate school, I conducted a research study using qualitative and quantitative research methods on how people with Autism Spectrum Disorders learn transferable social skills from video games. I analyzed over 100 responses to a survey I created to determine which skills could be learned and noted correlations between participant responses and constructed my thesis around the results. The results suggested that skills such as the importance of eye contact in social situations and the way that interactions between individuals could build relationships could be learned better through video games than through traditional teaching methods. This study caused me to become more interested in the way the learning process could be gamified and suggested to me that soft and hard skills could be learned through games. It made me wonder if such skills could be taught and learned through video games for people who were not on the autism spectrum. Maybe everyone learns better with video games than traditional teaching methods when they’re having fun. 

– Role: Technical Writer and Digital Training Librarian

Retention & Conversion

While working at Knowledge Accelerators, I analyzed user data and feedback to determine which features of our software and website people used the most and which features needed to be updated. I collaborated with other companies, like accessibility software company, Claro, to determine how our platform could be more accessible to users with disabilities. I conducted A/B testing to determine whether or not the data collected and improvements made would work for users in the real world, the data suggested that the redesign would be useful to our users. After analyzing data from the companies using our software that had the largest amount of users to see if watchtime and retention increased, it was determined that both of these statistics had increased by over 80%. 

Neural Networks & Watsonx

I was introduced to the concept of neural networks by KA’s owner who had me research how end users through power users construct queries when researching Office 365 products. This enabled me to construct questions that felt real and natural. I used neural networking models to work with IBM’s Watson (now Watsonx) to train it to recall our knowledge articles when prompted by relevant user queries. 

– Role: Digital Projects & User Experience Librarian

Library Crises

At Saint Leo, I assisted with the creation of a survey that librarians around the country took, analyzing their library’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings from this survey were published as a chapter in the anthology Managing Crises in the Academic Library: Past, Present, and Future, 2023. 

LibChat FAQs

In LibChat (an instant messaging platform for library users), I analyzed which questions were asked most often by students and compiled these questions into a webpage listing FAQs for use by library staff and students.

– Role: Technical Content Engineer

While at KnowBe4, I analyzed data from Datadog related to internal server errors. I used the data to determine the cause of these errors, communicating that to clients and developing solutions.