🙋 How is Taking Classes At CMU as a PhD different from Undergrads?

We tend to spend more time on research than on courses, so we take classes that can help us with research projects. There is much less pressure on grades as well. So far, Experimental design for social and behavioral science (36-309) is my favorite class. This is the class for both Undergrads, Masters, and PhDs. The class is very structured, and I learned lots of basic statistics methods, which helped me get more systematic knowledge of R and data analysis.

🙋What is your Research Direction? Any cool/latest research project?

Human-AI Co-Orchestration. We research into designing tools to focus on transitioning between different learning activity. The motivation is that previous research shows teachers may spontaneously team up students to work together. We wonder if such dynamic transition between group and individual is helpful for learning. If yes, how can we develop tools to help with the transition? Now we designed tools and were running classroom studies to validate them.

🙋Why PhD in Educational Technology?

I was intrigued by its interdisciplinary nature and have more potential to resolve problems in education, such as equity and personalized learning. I’ve worked with Vincent during my master program (METALS), and found that our working style match pretty well, so I went ahead and joined his lab later. I got involved in many research opportunities during master times, and had strong interest in them, so decided to pursue more as a PhD.

🙋What Future Potentials can you foresee in Educational Technology?

A main field is about using learning analytics, such as log data, to power learning tools (e.g: dashboard) to guide teacher’s decision making, such as distributing teacher’s attention. Suppose there are 50 people in class, we are thinking about data-driven ways to find out who needs help, and promotes equality in classroom.

Personalized learning is another potential field, as different people has different learning pace. We can use learning modal to assess your knowledge and give personalized feedback and practices.

🙋What should undergrads know before they start in research fields?

It depends on their goals. Many things at first are open-ended and exploratory, and there is no exact to-do. There are so many uncertainties that we need to mentally adapt to them. For undergrads, however, such uncertainties are much less than PhDs.

Preparations are project-specific, but in general, work with mentor, get some advice from mentor, and read more background literature.