Website: https://www.daplab.education.uci.edu/
Lab Name: Design & Partnership Lab (daplab)
Department: Education
Research interests: Learning Technologies, Participatory Design, Learning Sciences, Research Practice Partnerships, Design-Based Research, Systems Change, Improvement Science
In what ways have your undergraduate students made a significant impact on your work?
I am so proud of the undergraduate students in the daplab. The students come to my lab from a wide variety of backgrounds such as software engineering, informatics, UX and education. They have been able to contribute to different projects in the lab. For example, our software engineering team collaborates closely with our UX team to design new educational technologies and AI tools for education. Our daplab students also join my research teams to help collect data about how the technologies we prototype, impact teachers, students and our partners.
We partner with school districts and communities in Orange County to codesign our work and to do our studies. So, the tools that the undergraduate students in the daplab build are actually used by thousands of teachers and students. One example is an AI assessment tool that we have been co-designing with the Anaheim Union High School district for the last three years. The students helped build our AI models, software platforms, data dashboards and our APIs. Right now, nearly 1,000 teachers and almost 25,000 students are using the platform, and our group is finalizing several manuscripts that the students will co-author with me. I’ve been so energized by how capable our undergrad students are, their deep level of curiosity, and how much energy they bring to learning new things and making an impact in the world.
