EVENT REPORT

Report on the 6th International andInterdisciplinary Perspectives on Children &Recommender and Information Retrieval
Systems (KidRec 2022) Workshop at ACM IDC
2022: Information Retrieval Systems forChildren in the COVID-19 Era
Theo Huibers

Maria Soledad Pera

Emiliana Murgia

University of Twente
The Netherlands

TU Delft
The Netherlands

University of Milano Bicocca
Italym.s.pera@tudelft.nl

Monica Landoni

Jerry Alan Fails

Università della Svizzera Italiana
Switzerland

Boise State UniversityUSAAbstract
We summarize the outcomes of the most recent KidRec Workshop (June 2022), which washeld for the first time in a hybrid, synchronous mode. The focus of the workshop was tounderstand the impact of the COVID-19 era on the design, development, and evaluation ofInformation Retrieval Systems for which children are the primary stakeholders.
Date: June 27, 2022.
Website: https://kidrec.github.io/.

1

Introduction

Ever since the first International and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Children & Recommenderand Information Retrieval Systems (KidRec), co-located with ACM RecSys in 2017, we haveaimed to bring researchers and (industry) practitioners together to build community around Information Retrieval Systems (IRS) designed with and for children. Thus far, we have sought toadvance the understanding of what is good when it comes IRS for children including stakeholder
perspectives (e.g. teachers) on how these systems can support children in leisure and educational
contexts [Huibers et al., 2021; Fails et al., 2022]. This year we focused on the COVID-19 era
and how the pandemic years affected children’s interactions and expectations of IRS, promptedchanges related to the design and evaluation of IRS for children, and resulted in new facets andcontexts to consider which are inherent to this unusual time [Pera et al., 2022].
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2Workshop Organization & Presentations

ACM IDC, during which KidRec has been co-located since 2018, has provided a forum whereexpertise in Human-Computer Interaction, Child-Computer Interaction, Information Retrieval,Education, and Industry, to name a few, converge. Hence, as workshop organizers, a guiding
principle has been to foster active interaction among the diverse participants. The first few years
that was seemingly easier, as we met fully in person. At the core of the pandemic–2020 and 2021–
we hosted the workshops online, taking advantage of Zoom and Miro1 to facilitate engagement.
For the first time, in this edition, we adopted a synchronous hybrid model where some participantsjoined online a group of attendees who were collocated in the same room. With that in mind, wereorganized the workshop to last only for half a day and invited short presentations of acceptedcontributions. In this way, we could accommodate differing time zones and avoid Zoom fatigue.
We also invited short talks from experts to entice attendees to further share their perspectives on
the impact the pandemic has had on children and research.
The two accepted contributions sparked discussion on children’s perceptions and how theirdata is (mis)used. Beelen et al. [2022] encouraged attendees to think about the concept of trustand its relationship with children interacting with conversational robots in their quest for digital
information; particularly when robots are perceived in this context more as friends than teachers. Wang and Zhao [2022] argued for the need to carefully consider and critically evaluate thedatification practices of social platforms (Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok), especially practices
surrounding data about children and from child users.
The invited presentations examined the impacts of the COVID-19 era from different lenses:
research, policy, and education. Emma Nicol (University of Strathclyde) presented a framework to
examine, compare, and learn about the effects of past analogous crises on children’s lives to better
comprehend the various ways that children are affected by COVID-19. Stephane Chaudron andRossana Di Gioia (European Commission-Joint Research Centre) shared findings about children’s
use of digital technology during the pandemic, specifically outcomes from a workshop they run
involving 18 teenagers and young people from nine European countries discussing how to ensurechildren’s rights, safety and security when searching online and interacting with tools empoweredby artificial intelligence [Chaudron et al., 2022; Lobe et al., 2021]. Emiliana Murgia (University ofMilano, Bicocca) discussed insights that arose from her work in the primary school classroom including personal observations of how children’s approach to using technology for learning revealed
new deficiencies in the wide range of tools currently used to support classroom instructions.

3Discussion & Takeaways

Throughout the day, we relied on a Miro board so that, regardless of the attendance modality ofparticipants, we could collaboratively interchange ideas inspired by the presentations as well as
thoughts on the impact of COVID-19 on search and recommendation systems for children. We
summarize inferences made from this board below.
Opportunities. Some positive observations referred to obvious matters such as the extended
use of technology during the COVID-19 era, in terms of users and the amount of time they used1

https://miro.com/

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technology. While this could potentially have some negative consequences, there are advantages inseeing younger children and parents being supported in having better access to technology. Children noted that IRS supplied easy access to knowledge. Participants recognized a more systematicand increased use of technology for educational purposes. This, along with the predictability ofwhat children were searching for, permitted identifying child usage and uses, which could in turndirect the future design of IRS that can adapt to meet children’s needs. In addition, few of thechildren appreciated having some form of private space away from their peers while feeling safeand enjoying the comfort of their homes. Therefore, it is worth exploring interfaces for IRS togrant and foster children a similar sense of comfort, friendship, and support even when working
independently from home without and away from parental or teacher supervision.
Drawbacks. The pandemic highlighted that the technological divide has not vanished and,in some cases, has exacerbated issues for children. Teachers carried a large burden–including theheavy responsibility of trying to help children figure out how to use the technology effectively during the pandemic. The increased use of technology resulted in a loss of autonomy, with technology
use limiting the scope and range of creative activities, pedagogies, and practices that teachers wereable to employ in helping children learn. The burden on teachers was not confined to technical andeducational aspects, but also bubbled over to providing emotional support for children (and sometimes their parents). Moreover, it was not just educational material that children had increased
access to: exposure to undesirable material, commercial content, and societal pressures to accesspopular platforms not designed for children (e.g. social media platforms) were indeed factors tobe mindful of. Education mediated via technology evinced privacy concerns among adults, but itis worth remarking that children are worried about privacy issues as well [Vasiliki et al., 2022].
Design. The pandemic seemed to have further spotlighted teachers (and parents) as major
stakeholders and with that the need to involve them explicitly in the design, assessment, anddeployment of IRS, particularly systems intending to support learning. It also emerged from thediscussions the importance to give a voice to children in the design process while being attentive
to children that would be interacting with IRS without support or mediators (peers, parents, orteachers). Ethical concerns have long been an aspect guiding the involvement of children in thedesign of technology to and for them. Nevertheless, the pandemic revealed new considerations inthe area, connected to the use of microphones and videos not only during the design phase buton the IRS systems themselves.
The Search Experience. Miscellaneous notes and observations revolved around the needto–above all else–make systems usable by children, i.e., make sure they met their specific usability
requirements. There were suggestions for implementing questionnaires to evaluate each child’slevel of trust in the system itself and the information it retrieves. Better support for query formulation and reformulation were approached by brainstorming ways that children could effectively
be prompted for clarification concerning their information request. This led to a discussion ofdifferent modes of interacting with IRS, such as using intermediaries like a robot or using conversational search approaches. These research areas would benefit from future exploration, mainly
in seeking to support children in their information discovery tasks.
Learning from Uncertainty. A pivotal aspect repeatedly mentioned throughout the workshop was uncertainty. What happens “after” the pandemic with IRS for children? Looking at theeducation domain, attendees wondered whether IRS (and other educational technologies) would
be relegated or, instead, incorporated to support instruction regardless of the teaching modality
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(e.g. online vs. traditional in-person classroom). What have the various stakeholders learned fromthis experience that will assist them in dealing with future crises or major changes? As a community of researchers and practitioners, are we now ready to study the dynamics and impact of whathappened, perhaps even compare effects across countries adopting different coping strategies, anddecide how and what to focus on and share to foster growth and resilience?

4

Let’s Continue the Conversation

Creating a framework that could guide the design and evaluation of IRS for children has always
been one of the main goals of KidRec. With each iteration, we have incorporated pillars to reflect
the multiple considerations and stakeholders influencing this matter. Inspired by observations fromworkshop attendees on the COVID-19 era, we identified salient dimensions requiring attention to
be considered to expand the framework in future KidRec editions:• Explore the context in which IRS are used and how that influences future design strategies.
• Privacy and safety in the context of research of IRS for children. Not just at data collection
stages to guide design but also once systems are deployed.
• Adoption and the many factors that influence it; from stakeholder’s perceptions to costs ofinvesting in new tools.
• Look beyond the technology itself towards the digital competences needed to best takeadvantage of IRS.
• Emotions triggered in children by increased exposure to undesirable online material, such aslack of trust and fear of their privacy being violated. Children have experienced decreased
levels of autonomy due to them being over-supported by parents when searching online athome, which was aggravated by the forced distance from their peers, inducing a sense ofvulnerability teachers and parents need to address with the aid of suitable scaffolding tools.
• Usability and accessibility are central in the path towards making children independent intheir learning of how to search. Usability encompasses easy-to-use tools to support children
to elicit and express their information needs, as well as intuitive SERP to guide them towards“good” resources. Attention should be paid when defining facets of usability to be accounted
for to avoid a one-size-fits-all approach and instead focus on children’s different development
stages, abilities, skills, and preferences, along with innovative interfaces beyond GUI.
• Inclusivity is paramount as inequality is one of the side effects of the COVID-19 crisis thathas made the digital divide even wider. Consequently, it is imperative to train teachers torespond to children’s needs while ensuring children’s right to have access to relevant digitalcontent is actively pursued by including inclusivity as part of the overall concept of relevance.
We aim to continue to discuss open issues, dilemmas, and possibilities related to IRS forchildren. Archival material can be found on the KidRec website2 . Moreover, you can join theconversation or share these of interest for future worship editions at: kidrec-group@boisestate.edu.
2https://kidrec.github.io/

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