News

CourseKata at the International Conference on Motivation in Bern, Switzerland

Exciting news: CourseKata’s director of research, Dr. Claudia Sutter, is heading a symposium at the International Conference on Motivation & Emotion (ICM) at the University of Bern on Aug 30! It’s gonna be an international perspective on the “Situational Nature of Motivation and Emotions in Education.” Don’t miss this insightful panel!

Datafest 2024

In April and May of 2024, over 60 universities participated in the American Statistical Association (ASA) DataFest, a celebration of data where teams of undergraduates worked tirelessly over a weekend to explore a large, complex data set from a secret source. This year, the secret data set was CourseKata’s anonymized student learning data involving 11 universities, 48 classes, and over 1600 students, which provided a rich resource for insights on introductory statistics, data science, and modeling!

Learn more about the student experience, the variety of projects showcased, and future directions that are not only informed by data but also by the perspectives of students as researcher on our CourseKata blogpost.

DREAM 2023 Reflection

Our inaugural DREAM 2023 workshop, which took place on November 2, was a big success. It served as a platform for (future) researchers to get together, learn more about ongoing research projects, and explore potential collaborations within the CourseKata researcher community. The event featured lightning talks by researchers representing 5 different institutions, making it a memorable and impactful gathering. We also launched our new coursekata researcher website, which serves the purpose of supporting and empowering researchers and students working with CourseKata data by providing (1) a central hub for all resources related to Coursekata research, (2) a platform for researchers to share out research findings and to highlight the diverse and innovative ways researchers have leveraged student data to enhance students’ experiences and to guide continuous improvement of the materials, and (3) networking and collaboration opportunities by making research more accessible and visible.

The lightning talk presenters played a pivotal role in the success of DREAM 2023. Their lightning talks provided in-depth insights into their respective research areas that all shared the common goal of using student data to either (a) improve students’ learning experiences and their attitudes towards statistics and data science - domains that are typically perceived as challenging and hard to learn, (b) support instructors in teaching that hard stuff, and (c) inform and enhance the learning materials. To further disseminate the findings of the lightning talks, we will be amplifying their work on our researcher website, again promoting the visibility and accessibility of CourseKata research.

The coursekata team will be working hard on thinking about our DREAM 2024 vision, where we can continue this journey. The road ahead is exciting, and we can’t wait to see where it leads us.

Check out our CourseKata blogpost to learn more about our DREAM 2023 event.