Beck Tench
Center for Digital Thriving, Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education
About
Dr. Beck Tench is a Principal Investigator at Project Zero, where she serves as a senior researcher, designer, and co-leader of the IMAGINE AI portfolio of work at the Center for Digital Thriving. Her research explores how people find hope and digital agency, individually and collectively. Beck also teaches at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Beck earned her Ph.D. in Information Science at the University of Washington, where her dissertation focused on protecting and restoring attention. Before returning to school, she was an exhibit designer in science museums.
Assignments
Map a Moment: Reflecting on AI Experiences
Prompt students to reflect on AI use: how they used it, how it felt, and what they learned.
Align on the Line: Making Ethical Lines Visible
Encourage students and teachers to align on acceptable AI use for different classes or assignments by surfacing ethically gray areas and mapping them together.
Making AI Pressures Visible
Spark conversations about when, why, and how students might feel pressure to hide their AI use (i.e., to be “secret cyborgs”) or to use AI in ways they regret, helping to destigmatize pressures by bringing them into the open.
Values Bridge: Connecting Values to Ethical Perspectives
Help students connect personal values to real-world questions of how to practice ethical AI use in ways that encourage reflection on what matters.