Richard is Assistant Faculty Specialist in Human-Computer Interaction at the Center for Language & Technology. His focus areas are on online learning environments for language instruction and research. He also serves as the Assistant Director of Technology at the National Foreign Language Resource Center at the University of Hawaiʻi. Richard was previously assistant professor of Computer Science in the Department of Computer and Mathematical Sciences at New Mexico Highlands University from 2015 – 2019. During his time at NMHU, he was principal investigator on an S-STEM grant funded by the National Science Foundation and co-directed numerous graduate research projects in data science and cyber security. Prior to his tenure at NMHU, he was the IT Specialist at the CLT from August 2008 until July 2015. He has published extensively on the topic of technology mediated representational practices in computer supported collaborative learning settings.  His Ph.D. dissertation examined how inscriptions in online environments become representations through participants’ emerging practices.

Selected Publications

Medina, R. (2013). Cascading inscriptions and practices: Diagramming and experimentation in the Group Scribbles classroom. In D. D. Suthers, K. Lund, C. P. Rose, C. Teplovs, & N. Law (Eds.), Productive Multivocality in the Analysis of Group Interactions. New York: Springer.

Medina, R., & Suthers, D. D. (2013). Inscriptions becoming representations in representational practices. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 22(1), 33–69.

Tschudi, S., Medina, R., & Hiple, D. (2011). Interactive tag clouds: A tool for supporting new possibilities for dialog in online language learning. Presented at the The Computer Assisted Language Instruction Consortium, University of Victoria, BC, Canada.

Suthers, D. D., & Medina, R. (2011). Tracing interaction in distributed collaborative learning. In S. Puntambekar, G. Erkens, & C. Hmelo-Silver (Eds.), Analyzing Interactions in CSCL: Methodology, Approaches and Issues, Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning Series (pp. 341–366). Springer US.

Suthers, D. D., Dwyer, N., Medina, R., & Vatrapu, R. (2010). A framework for conceptualizing, representing, and analyzing distributed interaction. International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, 5, 5–42.

Medina, R., Suthers, D. D., & Vatrapu, R. (2009). Representational practices in VMT. In G. Stahl (Ed.), Studying Virtual Math Teams (pp. 185–205). Springer.

Suthers, D. D., Vatrapu, R., Medina, R., Joseph, S., & Dwyer, N. (2008). Beyond threaded discussion: Representational guidance in asynchronous collaborative learning environments. Computers & Education, 50(4), 1103–1127.