Award Archives - EduTec Science

May122026 by Heather WehnerNo Comments

Hendrik Drachsler Receives Outstanding Community Work Award from SoLAR

In recognition of his outstanding dedication to the Learning Analytics community, Hendrik Drachsler was presented with the Outstanding Community Work Award by the Society for Learning Analytics Research (SoLAR) at the 16th International Learning Analytics & Knowledge Conference (LAK26) on 30 April 2026 in Bergen, Norway. 🏆 The award recognises Hendrik’s long-standing commitment to strengthening the SoLAR community and supporting the development of Learning Analytics as an international research field. In her laudatio, SoLAR President Prof. Blaženka Divjak highlighted Hendrik’s continuous engagement with the Society for Learning Analytics Research since its early years. He has contributed to the community in many roles, including as a SoLAR Executive Committee member and Local Chair of LAK20. He has also helped create spaces for exchange and collaboration by organising and supporting workshops that…

Oct22025 by Atezaz AhmadNo Comments

PhD Defense: A Triumph in Learning Analytics: Congratulations, Dr. Atezaz Ahmad!

Award, PhD defense

The entire EduTec team warmly congratulates Atezaz Ahmad on his remarkable journey, as he has successfully defended his PhD thesis and now holds the distinguished title of Dr. Atezaz Ahmad. In a compelling and rigorous defense, Atezaz presented his groundbreaking research, titled: “Uncharted Territories: Learning Analytics Indicators from a Learning Design Perspective”. His PhD dissertation explores the intersection of Learning Design (LD) and Learning Analytics (LA) and addresses the long-standing challenge of their limited alignment. While LD focuses on structuring meaningful learning activities, LA provides data-driven insights into learning processes and outcomes, yet their connection has often remained fragmented. To bridge this gap, the thesis introduces the Learning Analytics and Design Alignment (LADA) framework, a comprehensive reference model that explicitly links LD principles with LA practices by connecting learning goals, activities,…

Mar242025 by Heather WehnerNo Comments

Best Senior Reviewer Award Presented to Hendrik Drachsler

Award, Conference, Team

At the LAK 2025 conference in Dublin, Ireland, Hendrik Drachsler was honored with the Best Senior Reviewer Award. We congratulate Hendrik for this high level of recognition for his outstanding contributions to the scientific peer-reviewing process! The Best Senior Reviewer award is not just a statement of appreciation, it represents a commitment to academic integrity, knowledge exchange and high-quality research. At a time when the peer review process is under increasing pressure, recognizing and valuing reviewers is a crucial step in maintaining the credibility and advance of Learning Analytics as a discipline. Especially in fast-moving fields like Learning Analytics and AI in education there has been a rapid increase of academic publications, which has created a large bottleneck in the peer review process. Many journals and conferences struggle to find…

Oct172024 by Atezaz AhmadNo Comments

Girls and Women in STEM Forum of the European Institute for Innovation and Technology (EIT)

Artificial Intelligence, Award, Conference, Digitalisation, Event, Transfer Activity

Our Co-Worker Dana Kube was selected to be a jury member of this year's Girls and Women in STEM Award of the European Institute for Innovation and Technology (EIT) in Budapest. Read her report: I'm still buzzing with the energy from the Women and Girls in STEM Forum 2024! It was an inspiring day filled with conversations on AI, inclusion, and the future of STEM with girls and women from all over Europe. The keynote speakers, Pia Ahrenkilde Hansen and Ilaria Tagliavini, emphasised the urgent need for more women to lead the next generation of scientists in Europe, highlighting the European Commission’s commitment to this mission through strategic plans for STEM education. Ilaria celebrated Girls Go Circular’s expansion to 32 countries, recognising the need for a mindset shift towards greater…

Sep142024 by Prof. Dr. Hendrik DrachslerNo Comments

PhD Defense: A Deep Dive into Visual Learning Analytics

Award, Higher Education, Learning Analytics, PhD defense, School

On September 13th, Hendrik Drachsler took on the esteemed role of opponent in the PhD defense of Artemis Mohseni at Linnaeus University, Sweden. The defense, which marked a pivotal moment in Artemis’s academic journey, centered around her innovative doctoral thesis titled "Development of Visual Learning Analytics Tools to Explore Performance and Engagement of Students in Primary, Secondary, and Higher Education." The evaluation commission was formed by: Associate professor Olga Viberg, Royal Institute of Technolgy, Sweden Associate professor Linnéa Stenliden, Linköpings University, Sweden Professor Johan Lundin, University of Gothenburg, Sweden Associate professor Fisnik Dalipi, Linnaeus University, Sweden Associate professor Arianit Kurti, Linnaeus University, Sweden It was an exciting defense that showcased Artemis’s research, which focuses on the potential of Visual Learning Analytics (VLA) to enhance teaching and learning by providing actionable…

May62024 by Sebastian WollnyNo Comments

Dr. Daniel Schiffner Receives the First Edutec Award

Award, Team

The newly created Edutec Prize was awarded to Dr. Daniel Schiffner, a leading supporter of the Edutec team. He has shown exceptional commitment to keeping the educational technologies up and running and restoring the systems after the cyber attack. [caption id="attachment_6284" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Hendrik Drachsler and the Edutec team congratulate Dr. Daniel Schiffner on this achievement.[/caption] A Trailblazer in Education Technology Dr. Daniel Schiffner serves as the Arbeitsbereichsleiter (Head of Department) for Bildungsinformatik (Educational Informatics) at the DIPF | Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education. His work focuses on leveraging technology to enhance teaching and learning processes. Dr. Schiffner’s expertise lies at the intersection of education, data science, and digital tools. Together with his team, he enables educational researchers to make use of state of the art technologies.…

Apr112024 by Sebastian GombertNo Comments

Team led by Sebastian Gombert wins one of two tracks at BEA 2024 shared task on predicting Item Difficulty and Item Response Time

Artificial Intelligence, Assessment, Award, Computational Psychometrics, Conference, Higher Education, New Pub, Workshop

For standardized exams to be fair and reliable, they must include a diverse range of question difficulties to accurately assess test taker abilities. Additionally, it's crucial to balance the time allotted per question to avoid making the test unnecessarily rushed or sluggish. The goal of this year's BEA shared task (competition) was to build systems which could predict Item Difficulty and Item Response Time for items taken from the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE). EduTec member Sebastian Gombert designed systems which are able to predict both variables simultaneously. These placed first out of 43 for predicting Item Difficulty and fitfth out of 34 for predicting Item Response Time. They use modified versions of established transformer language models in a multitask setup. A corresponding system description paper titled Predicting Item…

Dec142023 by Prof. Dr. Hendrik DrachslerNo Comments

PhD defense on Technological Responses to Distracting Media Multitasking in Digital Learning Environments

Award, Higher Education, Learning Analytics, PhD defense, School, Self-Regulation

Today, we proudly acknowledge the remarkable achievement of our team member, Daniel Biedermann, in successfully defending his PhD thesis to become Dr. Biedermann. Woohoo, congratulations! In our modern world, the reality of digital distractions through the attention economy cannot be denied. Countries like the Netherlands, for instance, are planning to ban mobiles from classrooms starting from 2024. Daniel's PhD work centered on the complex challenges of digital media distraction, a phenomenon that's prevalent largely due to our pervasive use of social media and notification systems on our phones, PCs, and tablets. Presented in his disputation, Daniel argued the need for a context-sensitive system to gain a more profound understanding of digital media distraction. In addition, Daniel addressed the crucial subject of digital self-control tools (DSCTs). His research, which provided a…

Mar202023 by Atezaz AhmadNo Comments

Best Short Paper Award Nomination @LAK23

Award, Conference, Conference, Higher Education, Learning Analytics

The protection of students’ privacy in learning analytics (LA) applications is critical for cultivating trust and effective implementations of LA in educational environments around the world. However, students’ privacy concerns and how they may vary along demographic dimensions that historically influence these concerns have yet to be studied in higher education. Gender differences, in particular, are known to be associated with people's information privacy concerns, including in educational settings. Building on an empirically validated model and survey instrument for student privacy concerns, their antecedents and their behavioral outcomes, we investigate the presence of gender differences in students’ privacy concerns about LA. We conducted a survey study of students in higher education across five countries (N = 762): Germany, South Korea, Spain, Sweden and the United States. Using multiple regression analysis,…

Sep162022 by Sebastian GombertNo Comments

EC-TEL2022 best demo award goes to EduTec

Award, Conference

The demo paper Superpowers in the Classroom: Hyperchalk is an Online Whiteboard for Learning Analytics Data Collection and the corresponding tool Hyperchalk by Lukas Menzel, Sebastian Gombert, Daniele Di Mitri and Hendrik Drachsler were awarded the best demo award at the European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning 2022. Hyperchalk allows hosting collaborative whiteboards which can be used to collaborate in real-time. It collects rich user data which can be used to conduct learning analytics. Hyperchalk was initially developed for the ALICE project.