research team

Erin Ottmar (Principal Investigator) is an Associate Professor of Learning Sciences and Technologies at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. She co-developed the game "From Here to There" with the goal of innovating and promoting math teaching and learning. She has been Principal Investigator (PI) and Co-PI on numerous IES, NSF, and Spencer-funded projects (totaling more than $7 million) focusing on STEM education, perceptual learning related to math, and design, development, and evaluation of educational technologies. She is a recent NSF CAREER awardee.

Ji-Eun Lee (Co-Principal Investigator) is a research scientist at WPI who has expertise in educational data mining and learning analytics, including data management and preprocessing and instructional technology. Lee received the 2020 AERA Best Paper award for Instructional Technology for her work in predicting student performance by modeling discussion-based participation data in online math courses.

Caroline Byrd Hornburg (Co-Principal Investigator) is an Assistant Professor of Human Development and Family Science at Virginia Tech, and the director of the Learning and Development Lab. Her research program focuses on children's learning, primarily in the domain of mathematics, from PreK to 6th grade. She focuses on skills that are foundational for understanding of later math concepts, as data on early skills can provide insight into identification of children at risk for later difficulties. Her research also provides a framework for optimal design of interventions to improve children’s understanding. 

Avery Harrison Closser (Co-Principal Investigator) is a postdoctoral learning scientist at Purdue University. Her expertise is on using experimental design to examine the effects of perceptual cues on arithmetic problem solving in online platforms. Closser has previously published on some effects of spacing cues which helps motivate the current project.

Jeffrey K. Bye (Consultant) is a cognitive scientist conducting research on algebra teaching and learning. He is particularly interested in how students' intuitions help them make sense of abstraction, and how teachers can use concrete experience to help students learn abstract representations, especially in the areas of algebra notation, statistical concepts, and programming methods. Bye is an expert in designing online studies in JavaScript and using the Pavlovia platform.

Isabel Valdivia is a PhD student in the Human Development and Family Science program at Virginia Tech. She graduated from Pontificia Universidad Catolica, Chile, where she majored in Biology. After that she taught in a high school as part of Teach for Chile, part of the Teach for All network. Hoping to know more about the learning process, she went to Harvard University and got a MEd in Mind, Brain, and Education. She then opened a PK-12 charter school in a rural area of Chile meant to serve low-income students and prepare them to succeed in college by achieving academic excellence and developing socioemotional skills. Being a former Vice Principal in that school led to broadening her interest from practice to research in order to better understand how executive functions interplay with emotions throughout the learning process in childhood and adolescence.

Maegan Reinhardt is a PhD student at Virginia Tech, studying Human Development with a concentration in Child and Adolescent Development. Before beginning as a PhD student, she served public school students in pre-K through 12th grade as a speech-language pathologist, where she developed an interest in the interplay between language and development of other cognitive skills. She is interested in exploring approaches that help caregivers and educators support cognitive-linguistic development in children of all abilities.

Alena Egorova is a PhD student in the Learning Sciences & Technologies program at WPI. Her current research interests include affect dynamics in learning and digital interventions targeting cognitive and metacognitive skills. In one of her recent studies, she examined if perceptual cues impact students' performance through directing their eye movements.

Neil Heffernan (Co-Founder of ASSISTments) is a Professor of Computer Science at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. He and Cristina Heffernan developed ASSISTments, an online homework system, that aims to promote learning and research in classrooms.