In December, I always take the time to sit down and reflect on the past year and on what my team and I have accomplished. As I now sit at my desk and review the past year’s events, I am interrupted by my stomach, which is growling. And on my desk before me is a nicely wrapped bag of mixed Christmas cookies.
Every year around this time, local schools, kindergartens, sports clubs, etc. have bake sales to collect money for a good cause. I am always happy to help with such efforts, and so, of course, I bought a package. And here it is right in front of me, while my stomach is growling … Maybe just a peek inside my stomach tells me … Maybe try a cookie … or two … (mmmm…)
These bags are always a bit of a surprise package, a gamble if you will. Sometimes the cookies I think I will like the best are a bit disappointing. Sometimes I am completely surprised by how some boring-looking cookies can be so uncannily delicious (and this one here really is… mmmm).
While carefully trying to put the fancy bag fixture back on (which is not working) and while carefully removing the crumbs from my desk (what crumbs?), I start to think: Wasn’t this past year, 2025, for the EduTec team also a bit like a bag of mixed cookies? The mixed bag was put together by many different people, just as all members of my team contributed to the events of this year piece by piece, cookie by cookie. We put a lot of effort into this year, and looking back, quite a few of them turned out to be uncannily special.
Here are some of the “tastiest” morsels from the past year:
Awards & Accomplishments:
To start off with one of the fruitful ones: this past fall, Atezaz successfully defended his PhD! After his many years of hard work, we are proud to now call our dear colleague Dr. Atezaz Ahmed.
In March, Hendrik Drachsler was honored with the Best Senior Reviewer Award at the LAK25 in Ireland. This award was a significant recognition of his outstanding contributions to the scientific peer-review process and demonstrates Hendrik’s commitment to academic integrity, knowledge exchange, and high-quality research.
We also saw the fruit of our work, as many publications were made throughout the year. Published were a total of 7 conference papers, 1 doctoral thesis, 11 journal articles and 1 project data set and study report from the LAMASS project.
Projects & Activities
We are excited to be part of the newly launched Collaborative Research Centre [in:just] in collaboration with the Goethe University. Hendrik will be leading two of the upcoming projects at this center: “Educational Science Methodologies of Participation Challenged by Digital Technologies” [in:just:MetaPART] and “Scientific Services and Data Processing” [in:just:INF].
The GREAT project also had an eventful year: In February, they had a consortium meeting in Frankfurt and participated in the European Conference on Games-Based Learning 2025.
The ML2MT project was at the “AI and the Future of Society” Symposium, where it presented key findings from its research on human-machine collaboration.
Conferences & Presentations
In the summer, many team members attended the EATEL JTELL Summer School in Crete, Greece. Gianluca Romano and Jan Schneider, for example, conducted the workshop “Current Trends and Future Possibilities for Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) for Psychomotor Skills”. Sebastian Gombert gave the Workshop “Introduction to Language Technology and Language Modeling for Education”.
Hendrik Drachsler presented at the IWM Lectures in November and argued that we need more research into Didactical Intelligence – a framework for understanding when, how, and for whom AI and Learning Analytics truly improve learning, and when they do not.
The team also participated in the EduNext25 conference, hosted by studiumdigitale at Goethe University Frankfurt. The conference was dedicated to the future of digitalization and AI in higher education and addressed how technology can transform teaching and learning. At the end of the event, we celebrated the 20-year anniversary of studiumdigitale.
Team & Guests
And last, but most importantly, I highlight the year’s greatest delight: my team. Unfortunately, we had to say goodbye to some members; others were here only for a short stay, and others have just recently joined us. But all of these members are the people who make this group the incredible group that it is. A group I am proud to be a part of.
With a mix of sad and happy tears in our eyes, we had to say farewell to Dana Kube, Stefan Hummel, and Daniele Di Mitri. We are very sad to have to say goodbye to them and will miss working with them all. We are excited for them as they embark on the journeys ahead. Stefan will continue his PhD, Dana has moved on to a new position in Switzerland, and Daniele has started as a Professor in Multimodal Learning Technologies at the German University of Digital Science (German UDS).
We also had the pleasure of getting to know and collaborating with guest researchers visiting us at DIPF this year: Paola Pavone Salafia and Yildiz Uzun.
Our team had grown, and we welcomed five new team members into our EduTec family: Zhifan Sun, Sricharan Sammeta, Hruday Kumar Kolla, Leon Camus, and Fabiola Goncalves C. Ribeiro. We have already welcomed you into our hearts and look forward to working with you in the years ahead.
I am thankful for all our new members, as well as for all the “older” members of our team. All of you are really great people: You demonstrate your collegiality, professionalism, and diligence on a day-to-day basis. You are team players with commitment to one another. Despite busy schedules, you still take the time to meet for lunch, help out spontaneously when someone has a problem or question, or make someone laugh when they need it most.
You are all unique individuals, and when you are all put together in one team, you create the most excellent mixed cookie bag of 2025 I could ever have wished for.