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Nicole Mills' research intersects the fields of psychology of language learning and teaching, educational technology and virtual environments in language learning, artificial intelligence, curriculum development, & language program evaluation. Her recently published book Perspectives on Teaching Language and Content (2020) (with Stacey Katz Bourns and Cheryl Krueger, Yale University Press) aims to create links between foreign language pedagogy and meaningful content through the intersection of innovative theories, approaches, and practices. Collaboratively written by scholars with expertise in theoretical linguistics, literary and cultural studies, and education, the book provides guidelines and models that prepare instructors to teach in a rapidly changing and evolving field (book review). Mills' research has also been featured in the Modern Language Journal, Foreign Language Annals, the Computer Assisted Language Instruction Consortium (CALICO) Journal, Language Learning, the International Journal of Applied Linguistics, and various edited volumes. She was honored to receive the Innovation in Language Program Direction Award in 2020 for her efforts to implement online teaching as director of Language Programs in RLL at Harvard during the pandemic from the American Association of University Supervisors, Coordinators, and Directors of Language Programs.
In curriculum design, her aim is to move away from more traditional classroom structures and include experiential, virtual, and AI driven learning contexts. The Beginning French II course is contextualized around Paris and its arts, media, neighborhoods, and housing and students immerse themselves virtually in Parisian life. With the support of a grant from the Harvard Initiative for Learning and Teaching (HILT) (2017-2018), she collaboratively developed a virtual reality (VR) project for this course that immerses students in the lives of four diverse Parisians who live in the same quarter of Paris (in collaboration with Rus Gant, Chris Dede, and Wonda VR). She has been invited to speak about the initiative at various conferences and institutions including Yale, Princeton, MIT, Bennington, and Columbia and the project was featured in Boston.com (What we learned at Hub Week 2018) and the Educause Review (Three Examples from the Field AR and VR in Teaching and Research). The teaching team and Mills were fortunate to receive the ABL Connect award for Teaching Innovation from Harvard's Center for Teaching and Learning (2018) for this VR program and its accompanying pedagogical materials. Details on this project are featured in a chapter entitled "Engagement and Immersion in Virtual Reality Narratives" (2020, Multilingual Matters) and an article entitled "Culture and Vision in Virtual Reality Narratives" (2020, Foreign Language Annals). Expanding on the work from this project, we received an additional HILT grant to support virtual reality pedagogical initiatives across Harvard (2019-2020) (with Susan Berstler & Rus Gant). In collaboration with Wonda, Mills has also engaged in several curricular design initiatives exploring artificial intelligence in language education with generous funding from the Course Innovation fund from Harvard’s Office of Undergraduate Education as well as the Provost Fund for Interfaculty Collaboration. These initiatives explore the intersection of digital literacy with creative AI Pedagogies and their transformative possibilities as well as their pitfalls. She has been invited to present (or will present) on this topic at Princeton University, Harvard University, the University of Calabria, Northeastern University, Northwestern University, and Villanova University as well as at the CALICO and MLA conferences.
Mills has also had the opportunity to work in the realm of digital humanities as one of the co-founders of the Charlie Archive at Harvard Library, a multimedia collection of printed and digital materials produced in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris. The idea of creating such a collection emerged from a conversation among a literature scholar, two librarians (who specialize in digital preservation, Western Europe, and political ephemera) and Mills. The support from the Lasky-Barajas Fund for Digital Arts & Humanities has allowed this digital humanities project to grow, and it now includes a collection of diverse donations from around the world. The archive, intended for both scholarly and pedagogical purposes, has collected various materials such as photos, cartoons, personal narratives, paintings, independent films, and blogs. In January 2017, we curated an interactive exhibit of digital and ephemeral materials from the Charlie Archive at the French Cultural Center in Boston. The archive was also featured in the popular press (Le Monde, TV5 Monde, L'Obs, and the Harvard Gazette).