Chenglu Li

University of Utah | UOU · Department of Educational Psychology

Mathematical stories can enhance students' motivation and interest in learning mathematics, thereby positively impacting their academic performance. However, due to resource constraints faced by the creators, generative artificial intelligence (GAI) is employed to create mathematical stories accompanied by images. This study introduces a method for...

Interactive question-answering (QA) with a tutor is an effective learning method for middle school math students. The flexibility and emergent capabilities of generative large language models (LLMs) have sparked significant interest in automating this process to deepen conceptual understanding of mathematical learning. However, the issue of LLM hal...

While mathematical creative writing can potentially engage students in expressing mathematical ideas in an imaginative way, some elementary school-age students struggle in this process. Generative AI (GenAI) offers possibilities for supporting creative writing activities, such as providing story generation. However, the design of GenAI-powered lear...

Ongoing advancements in Generative AI (GenAI) have boosted the potential of applying long-standing learning-by-teaching practices in the form of a teachable agent (TA). Despite the recognized roles and opportunities of TAs, less is known about how GenAI could create synergy or introduce challenges in TAs and how students perceived the application o...

This work aims to develop a fairness-aware model while maintaining competitive predictive accuracy in online learning environment. We retrieved a large dataset that included 3,145,728 video watch log entries and 893,189 assessment results from 14,252 students on an online learning platform. Six classic machine learning (ML) models were built to pre...

Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated significant potential in enhancing online learning through features like automated question-answering systems. These systems can identify and respond to prevalent learner queries, thereby personalizing and enriching the online educational experience. However, there remains a notable gap in research reg...

In recent years, the pre-training of Large Language Models (LLMs) in the educational domain has garnered significant attention. However, a discernible gap exists in the application of these models to mathematics education. This study aims to bridge this gap by pre-training LLMs on authentic K-12 mathematical dialogue datasets. Our research is struc...

While virtual learning environments (VLEs) are widely used in K-12 education for classroom instruction and self-study, young students’ success in VLEs highly depends on their self-regulated learning (SRL) skills. Therefore, it is important to provide personalized support for SRL. One important precursor of designing personalized SRL support is to u...

Previous literature has associated math literacy with linguistic factors such as verbal ability and phonological skills. However, few studies have investigated linguistic synchrony, shown in mathematical discussions. This study modelled math literacy and examined the relationship of math literacy with linguistic synchrony between students and facil...

A virtual problem-based learning (PBL) environment can generate large amounts of textual or time-series usage data, providing instructors with opportunities to track and facilitate students' problem-solving progress. However, instructors face the challenge of making sense of a large amount of data and translating it into interpretable information d...

Mathematical discussions have become a popular educational strategy to promote math literacy. While some studies have associated math literacy with linguistic factors such as verbal ability and phonological skills, no studies have examined the relationship between linguistic synchrony and math literacy. In this study, we modeled linguistic synchron...

Video analysis tools such as Tracker are used to study mechanical motion captured by photography. One can also imagine a similar tool for tracking thermal motion captured by thermography. Since its introduction to physics education, thermal imaging has been used to visualize phenomena that are invisible to the naked eye and teach a variety of physi...

As instruction shifts away from traditional approaches, online learning has grown in popularity in K-12 and higher education. Artificial intelligence (AI) and learning analytics methods such as machine learning have been used by educational scholars to support online learners on a large scale. However, the fairness of AI prediction in educational c...

After nationwide school closures due to COVID-19, virtual learning environments (VLE) have seen tremendous increase in usage. The current study identified teacher activities for orchestration using an Algebra VLE during school closures, and whether these activities were related to student achievement. In May 2020, we collected survey data on how 21...

In this design case, we describe our experience of designing and creating a teacher’s dashboard as an accompanying tool to support sixth-grade teachers who implement a technology-supported problem-based learning program on sixth-grade space science in their classrooms. We describe in detail the background of this design case, our motivation to crea...

A discussion forum is a valuable tool to support student learning in online contexts. However, interactions in online discussion forums are sparse, leading to other issues such as low engagement and dropping out. Recent educational studies have examined the affordances of conversational agents (CA) powered by artificial intelligence (AI) to automat...

Help-seeking is a valuable practice in online discussion forums. However, the asynchronicity and information overload of online discussion forums have made it challenging for help seekers and providers to connect effectively. This study formulated a new method to provide fair and accurate insights toward building a peer recommender to support help-...

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many students lost opportunities to explore science in labs due to school closures. Remote labs provide a possible solution to mitigate this loss. However, most remote labs to date are based on a somehow centralized model in which experts design and conduct certain types of experiments in well-equipped facilities, with...

Background With the increasing popularity of distance education, how to engage students in online inquiry‐based laboratories remains challenging for science teachers. Current remote labs mostly adopt a centralized model with limited flexibility left for teachers' just‐in‐time instruction based on students' real‐time science practices. Objectives T...

Digital sensors allow people to collect a large quantity of data in chemistry experiments. Using infrared thermography as an example, we show that this kind of data, in conjunction with videos that stream the chemical phenomena under observation from a vantage point, can be used to construct digital twins of experiments to support science education...

There has been a long-standing issue of sparse discussion forums participation in online learning, which can impede students’ help seeking practices. Researchers have examined AI techniques such as link prediction with network analysis to connect help seekers with help providers. However, little is known whether these AI systems will treat students...

In this paper, we demonstrate how machine learning could be used to quickly assess a student's multimodal representational thinking. Multimodal representational thinking is the complex construct that encodes how students form conceptual, perceptual, graphical, or mathematical symbols in their mind. The augmented reality (AR) technology is adopted t...

Augmented reality (AR) as an emerging technology has gradually been incorporated into educational contexts; however, the cases that incorporate AR into early childhood contexts are underrepresented and especially scant in the literacy domain. Aiming to measure the impact of AR on early childhood learning and motivation in the literacy domain, this...

Research has repeatedly proven the importance of social interactions in online learning contexts such as Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), where learners often reported isolation and a lack of peer support. Previous studies of social presence suggested that the ways learners present themselves socially online affect their learning outcomes. In o...

Low engagement has been a longstanding problem in MOOCs. How- ever, engagement is crucial in social learning contexts. To further understand learners’ engagement in MOOC discussion forum, this study focuses on the perspective of social presence, an important factor that mediates learners’ positions within a learning network. To tackle the challenge...

Among all the learning resources within MOOCs such as video lectures and homework, the discussion forum stood out as a valuable platform for students’ learning through knowledge exchange. However, peer interactions on MOOC discussion forums are scarce. The lack of interactions among MOOC learners can yield negative effects on students’ learning, ca...

Integrating engineering design into K-12 curricula is increasingly important as engineering has been incorporated into many STEM education standards. However, the ill-structured and open-ended nature of engineering design makes it difficult for an instructor to keep track of the design processes of all students simultaneously and provide personaliz...

Literature on MOOCs has shown that understanding learners’ perspectives in taking MOOCs is critical if a MOOC needs to be successful. Now that MOOCs have been in wide use, in this study we took an updated look at learners’ perspective of taking MOOCs designed for working professionals and course aspects that these MOOC participants found beneficial...

Literature has documented the benefits of problem-based learning (PBL), but also shown significant barriers to using PBL in K–12 education. Yet, the research describing why and how K–12 teachers implement PBL is insufficient. In this qualitative study, using semi-structured interviews, we investigate why 25 middle school teachers chose to implement...

More research is needed on how to best use analytics to support educational decisions and design effective learning environments. This study was to explore and mine the data captured by a digital educational game designed for middle school science to understand learners’ behavioral patterns in using the game, and to use evidence-based findings to i...

In this study, we investigated how participants in a MOOC designed for working professionals interacted with various key course components of the MOOC (e.g., discussion forums, readings, videos, quizzes, optional resources) and the usage patterns connected to participants’ profiles and perceptions. The results showed an overall declining trend of u...

Most of the previous problem-based learning (PBL) studies have been conducted with gifted or regular education students and have shown successes. However, little research on PBL exists for disadvantaged middle school students, especially students who are considered to be at risk of failing academically. In this study, we examined the use of a multi...