MIT’s Caitlin Morris: Bridging Technology, Education, and Human Connection in Online Learning
MIT Morningside Academy for Design (MAD) Fellow Caitlin Morris, an architect, artist, researcher, and educator with a background in psychology, is dedicated to enhancing digital learning platforms. Her work focuses on the intersection of technology, education, and human connection, driven by her observations and community engagement.
Growing up in rural upstate New York, Morris developed a hands-on approach to learning from a young age, mastering skills like sewing, cooking, and woodworking. When faced with new challenges, she turned to project-based communities rather than traditional textbooks. She taught herself coding through community-oriented platforms, where she could see the code behind the objects people created.
“For me, that was this huge, wake-up moment of feeling like there was a path to expression that was not a traditional computer-science classroom,” she says. “I think that’s partly why I feel so passionate about what I’m doing now. That was the big transformation: having that community available in this really personal, project-based way.”
Morris is actively involved in community-based learning, co-organizing the MIT Media Lab’s Festival of Learning, leading creative coding community meetups, and participating in open-source software development.
“My years of organizing learning and making communities — both in person and online — have shown me firsthand how powerful social interaction can be for motivation and curiosity,” Morris said. “My research is really about identifying which elements of that social magic are most essential, so we can design digital environments that better support those dynamics.”
Her artistic contributions include large art installations that combine movement, sound, imagery, and lighting to create immersive experiences reflecting nature. These installations, often created with the artist collective Hypersonic, aim to focus the mind and evoke calmness.
Morris’s academic journey includes a BS in psychology and a BS in architectural building sciences from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, followed by an MFA in design and technology from the Parsons School of Design at The New School. She has also taught design, coding, and other technologies at various educational levels.
Morris explains, “I think what kind of got me hooked on teaching was that the way I learned as a child was not the same as in the classroom,” Morris explains. “And I later saw this in many of my students. I got the feeling that the normal way of learning things was not working for them. And they thought it was their fault. They just didn’t really feel welcome within the traditional education model.”
Her current doctoral work with the MIT Media Lab’s Fluid Interfaces Group focuses on the personal space and emotional gaps in online and AI-assisted learning. She is developing a framework that combines AI-driven behavioral analysis with human expert assessment to study social learning dynamics.
“I’m developing a framework that combines AI-driven behavioral analysis with human expert assessment to study social learning dynamics,” she says. “My research investigates how social interaction patterns influence curiosity development and intrinsic motivation in learning, with particular focus on understanding how these dynamics differ between real peers and AI-supported environments.”
Morris aims to identify the elements of social interaction that AI cannot replace and build a prototype platform for experiential learning. This involves tools that track observable behaviors and capture learners’ subjective experiences.
“I’m creating tools that can simultaneously track observable behaviors — like physical actions, language cues, and interaction patterns — while capturing learners’ subjective experiences through reflection and interviews,” Morris explains. “This approach helps connect what people do with how they feel about their learning experience.
Her work aligns with the MIT MAD Fellowship’s mission to foster creativity, critical thinking, and collaboration to prepare students for real-world challenges. Morris plans to help community organizations navigate the rapid changes in AI-powered education after completing her doctorate in 2026, addressing the divide between physical and virtual learning spaces.
