LI Lab – Learning Informatics Lab

LIL at ISLS 2023

Faculty and graduate students from the Learning Informatics Lab, along with their collaborators, will be presenting this week at the annual meeting of the International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS) in Montréal, QC, Canada!

Please see the schedule of presentations below, and look out for their to-be-published conference proceedings!

Tuesday, June 13th, 10:30 AM – 12:00 PM
John Molson – 3.445
L-LAAI1 – Advancements in Self-Regulated Learning and Educational Technologies
Andres, J.M.A.L., Baker, R.S., Hutt, S.J., Mills, C., Zhang, J., Rhodes, S., DePiro, A. (in press). Anxiety, Achievement, and Self-Regulated Learning in CueThink. In 17th International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS) 2023. Montreal, Canada: International Society of the Learning Sciences.

Wednesday, June 14th, 2:30 PM – 4:00 PM
John Molson – 9 – Room A
Practitioners Session 4
Wilson Vasquez, A., DeLiema, D., Goeke, M., & Bye, J. K. (in press). Debugging debugging pathways: A research-practice partnership in K-8 computer science education. In 17th International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS) 2023. Montreal, Canada: International Society of the Learning Sciences.

Thursday, June 15th, 10:30 AM – 12:00 PM
John Molson – 5.215
S-EMO2 – Emotion, Ideology, and Collaboration in Learning
Carpenter, Z., & DeLiema, D. (in press). Learning through play at the intersection of problem-solving, epistemic (un)certainty, and emotion. In 17th International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS) 2023. Montreal, Canada: International Society of the Learning Sciences.

*LIL members in bold

Announcing the 2023 LIL Summer Fellows

The Learning Informatics Lab (LIL) would like to congratulate the four LIL Summer Fellows for 2023. Püren Öncel will be researching engagement and affect during learning with LIL Co-Directors Pani Kendeou and Caitlin Mills. Lauren Flynn will explore scaffolding in open-ended debugging with LIL core faculty David DeLiema, Meixi, and Laura Allen. Jasmine Kim will examine epistemic themes in peer review with Laura Allen and David DeLiema. Justine Scattarelli will research people’s knowledge and data sharing behavior with Xiaoran Sun, Pani Kendeou, and Caitlin Mills.

LIL Co-Director Pani Kendeou and Colleagues Receive IES Grant for iCODE Project

Panayiota (Pani) Kendeou, Guy Bond Chair in Reading in the Department of Educational Psychology, Danielle Dupuis, director of the Research Methodology Consulting Center, and colleagues have been awarded a three-year, $1.9 million grant from the Institute of Education Sciences (IES). The project is called iCODE: Investigating and Scaffolding Students’ Code Comprehension Processes to Improve Learning, Engagement, and Retention. The researchers aim to develop an innovative educational technology that teaches coding to computer science (CS) and non-CS majors. Read more.

LIL Affiliates Present at ICLS

Faculty, postdoctoral researchers, and graduate students from CEHD’s Department of Educational Psychology (Ed Psych), Department of Curriculum & Instruction (C&I), and Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development (OLPD) presented at the 2022 International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS) June 6 – 10.

LIL Faculty Presenters

Bodong Chen, associate professor, C&I
David DeLiema, assistant professor, Ed Psych
Meixi, assistant professor, Comparative and International Development Education, OLPD

LIL Graduate Student Presenters

Megan Goeke, PhD student, Ed Psych
Ashley Hufnagle, PhD student, Ed Psych
Shelby Weisen, PhD student, Ed Psych
Gina Ristani, PhD student, Ed Psych
Tayler Loiselle, PhD student, Ed Psych
Samuel Bullard, PhD student, Ed Psych
Joseph Burey, PhD student, Ed Psych
Xinran Zhu, PhD student, C&I
Hong Shui, PhD student, C&I

Accepted Presentations

Baker, J., & DeLiema, D. (2022). Mathematizing embodied play and failure. In A. Simpson, C. Williams-Pierce, E. Shokeen, & N. Katirci (Co-organizers), The nature(s) of embodied mathematical failure.

Bullard, S. J., & Varma, K. (2022). Cognitive Processing in Online Communities of Inquiry.

Burey, J., Kim, J., McMaster, K.L., Kendeou, P. (2022) Does it work for everyone?The effect of ELCII on kindergarteners’ inference skill development.

Chen, B. (2022). Connectivity for knowledge building: A framework of socio-semantic network motif analysis.

DeLiema, D., Goeke, M., Hussein, B., Valerie, J., Anderson, C., Varma, K., Chen, B., Salehi, S., & Bernacki, M. (2022). Playful learning following deviations: A mixture of tinkering, causal explanations, and revision rationales.

Goeke, M. & DeLiema, D. (2022). Attenuation and amplification of agency through goal announcements in a makerspace.

Goeke, M. & Loiselle, T. (2022). Do current visions of engineering literacy capture family engineering practices? A microgenetic analysis of engineering learning in a museum makerspace.

Meixi., Marin, A., Nzinga, K., Palomar, M., Elliott, E., Elliott, S., Eagle Shield, A., Shaw, M., Scott, M., Zuniga-Ruiz, S. (2022). Storytelling and storylistening towards collective learning and relational becoming [Symposium].

Meixi., Dorr, S., Keefe, D., Diaz, V. (2022). Designing mixed reality with canoe relationalities, Indigenous technologies, and embodied knowledges.

Ristani, G., Varma, K., Van Boekel, M., & Varma, S. (2022). Understanding the factors influencing persistence: What can novices learn from experts?

Weisen, S., Hufnagle, A. S., & Van Boekel, M. (2022). Investigating students’ memory for feedback in a naturalistic classroom.

Chan, J. Y.-C (2022) Cognitive developmental mechanisms of mathematical learning.

Zhu, X., Shui, H., & Chen, B. (2022). Connecting social reading and writing: A social annotation synthesizer tool.

Wiebe, J., Slotta, J., Smørdal, O., Amundrud, A., Rasmussen, I., Zhang, J., Chen, M., Hod, Y., Rahmian, L., Kashi, S., Kalir, J., Zhu, X., Shui, H., & Chen, B., Joshi, I. (2022). A cross-cutting introduction to technologies for learning communities.

LIL Faculty Dr. Xiaoran Sun Receives University Research Grant

Xiaoran Sun, assistant professor in the Department Family Social Science, has received a University of Minnesota Grants-in-Aid of Research, Artistry and Scholarship for the project “Examining Teenagers’ Overnight Smartphone Use and Its Implications for Well-Being with High-Intensity Smartphone Data.” During her postdoc at Stanford University, Dr. Sun led the collection of a new, innovative data set as a part of the Human Screenome Project. Now, Dr. Sun will use this data to better understand how teenagers use smartphones overnight and what implications overnight smartphone may have on their well-being. Read more.

LIL Faculty Drs. Varma & Konstan receive President’s Award for Outstanding Service

The President’s Award for Outstanding Service recognizes University of Minnesota faculty for going above and beyond their regular duties to provide exceptional service to the University community.

Dr. Keisha Varma, associate professor in Educational Psychology and associate vice provost for the Office of Equity and Diversity, and Dr. Joseph A. Konstan, professor in Computer Science and Engineering and associate dean for research of the College of Science and Engineering, are 2022 recipients of the prestigious University-wide award.

Show Students Their Data: Making Learning Analytics Actionable with Dr. Stephanie Teasley (University of Michigan & National Science Foundation)

Student-facing Learning Analytics Dashboards (LADs) provide visualizations of behavior and performance directly to students. They serve as meta-cognitive tools that enable awareness, self-reflection, and sensemaking. In this talk Dr. Stephanie Teasley provides a general overview of Learning Analytics and how it is currently being used by the University of Michigan, with a focus on their LAD, My Learning Analytics (MyLA). Using both qualitative and quantitative methods, this presentation addresses research questions such as:1) What are the characteristics of the students who choose to use MyLA?, 2) How do these students make use of MyLA?, and 3) What different patterns of use characterize MyLA users? The findings highlight the importance of understanding students’ experience with the dashboard and demonstrate that one size does not fit all in the design of learning analytics tools. Watch the recording below.

LIL Postdoc Mengchen Su presents at the Association for Education Finance and Policy Conference

In March, 2022, Learning Informatics Lab Postdoctoral Associate Mengchen Su presented a study in poster session at the 47^th Association for Education Finance and Policy (AEFP) conference (Denver, CO). Her poster, titled “Head or Heart? Revisioning School Accountability for Whole Child development,” builds on the premise that children’s cognitive abilities and emotional and social capabilities are vital for their school and lifelong success. As such, her study examines the relationship between multilayered protective factors (family, school) and adolescents’ academic, social, and emotional well-being. Study results highlight the importance of building a connected, positive community involving both family and school for adolescents to flourish under the Every Student Success Act (ESSA).

Hacking Online Virality with Dr. Fil Menczer & PhD Students (Indiana University)

Seminar

As social media become major channels for the diffusion of news and information, it is critical to understand how the complex interplay between cognitive, social, and algorithmic biases triggered by our reliance on online social networks makes us vulnerable to manipulation and disinformation. Dr. Filippo Menczer, Luddy Distinguished Professor of Informatics and Computer Science at the Indiana University School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, overviews ongoing network analytics, modeling, and machine learning efforts to study the viral spread of misinformation and to develop tools for countering the online manipulation of opinions.

Demos

Indiana University School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering PhD students Matthew Deverna, Kaicheng (Kevin) Yang, and Christopher Torres-Lugo followed the talk with demonstrations of three analytic tools developed in their lab: Covaxxy, Botometer, and Hoaxy. Covaxxy is a dashboard that allows everyone to visualize the relationship between COVID-19 vaccine adoption and online (mis)information on Twitter. Botometer is a machine-learning-based social bot detection tool. Hoaxy visualizes the spread of articles online. Articles can be found on Twitter, or in a corpus of claims and related fact checking. Together, these tools can detect, represent, and examine how information spreads on social media.

First LIL Research Symposium

The Learning Informatics Lab hosted its inaugural Research Symposium Wednesday, March 16, 2022. Featured research ranged from educational technologies to assess and support online learning, to self-directed learning in game and maker-space contexts. For a full list of research topics and presenters, see here.