nagashima [at] cs.uni-saarland.de

NEWS 🎉

(Sep 2023) Won the PRESTO (“Sakigake”) grant! (€300K) We will work on participatory design research with school students and teachers in Germany and Japan to design an intelligent system with a focus on student agency.

(Aug 2023) Echo has joined the lab as a postdoc from ASU! Learn more about her.

(Apr 2023) Starting a new role as a Visiting Professor at Hokkaido University in Japan!

(Mar 2023) Gave a talk at CAIS in Bochum

(Feb 2023) Gave a talk at ETH Zürich (FLI Colloquia)

(Dec 2022) Launched the “Future+Learning” working group with Lis Sylvan and Sandra Cortesi @BKC Harvard

(Nov 2022) Moved to Germany to start my TT position at Saarland University!

(June 2021) Our ISLS paper was nominated for Best Design Paper!

(April 2021) We were at the ED Games Expo! Here’s our entry.

(Dec 2020) Won the Fred Mulder Open Education Practice Award!

(Nov 2020) Gave a talk at Keio Univ.

(Nov 2020) Won an AECT award!

(Nov 2020) Presented at OpenEd20

(Oct 2020) Made a tape diagram template (available under CC-BY-NC)

Research

1. Understanding and supporting self-regulated learning with technology

We co-design effective learning activities and technologies with school teachers and students to understand and support meaningful learning actitivies (e.g., self-regulated learning, informed choice making). My research has discovered, among others:

  • Students whose choices were supported through self-reflection on their own choice-making behaviors in intelligent tutoring software chose to use an instructional aid less frequently yet more strategically, and learned greater domain knowledge and skills
Supporting students' self-regulated choice making (2021-22)
Effort-based feedback to motivate students (2023~)
Motivational scaffolding to support strategic learner choices (2023~)

2. Understanding students' perspective on AI use in classroom

We aim to understand how students (aged 11-18) perceive and feel about the use of AI in German school classrooms, what they prefer, and why. We design AI systems based on the understanding of how students feel and what they prefer. Our research has found, among others:

  • Student agency when learning with AI in the classroom is a multi-dimensional concept, consisting of several different aspects of agency in making decisions around data, content, orchestration, and feedback/help, rather than a one-dimensional concept.
Children's understanding of AI (2023~)

3. Cognitive understanding of human learning & instruction to support it

We design effective instructional techniques using adaptive technologies to support students’ cognitive learning in STEM domains, and use participatory and learning analytics approaches to understand how learning happens. My research has discovered, among others:

  • A scaffolded self-explanation activity with diagrams in intelligent tutoring software supports effective and efficient algebra learning
  • A playful learning experience with drag-and-drop interaction and gamification features in intelligent tutoring software supports engaging and effective algebra learning during remote schooling
Playful math learning to support engaging and effective learning (2019-2023)
interactive scaffolding with concrete examples to foster conceptual learning (2023~)
Anticipatory diagrammatic self-explanation (2020-2023)
Visualizing students' errors in algebra with diagrams (2020-2021)
Diagrammatic self-explanation (2020)

4. Researcher-practitioner ecosystem

We envision the future of learning research where we will have an ecosystem that systematically allows researchers and practitioners (e.g., educators, parents, and children) to jointly conduct learning research that informs both learning theories and real-world practice. We reflect on our practice regularly and aim to develop such an ecosystem.

Rethinking classroom studies during a pandemic (2021)
Pedagogical Affordance Analysis (2020)

5. Design and evaluation of learning analytics tools

We work with educators and students to co-design and evaluate reflection tools and prompts (e.g., learning analytics dashboards) to support teaching and learning

"In-context" student-facing learning dashboard (2017)
Dashboard for supporting teaching in MOOC (2016-2018)

6. Open Educational Resources (OER)

We work with policy researchers, education researchers, and practitioners to develop policies, strategies, and materials that promote equitable access to education.

Global Open Policy Report (2015-16)
Research, Advocacy, and Consulting on OER
Tape diagram template (2020-21)