Postdoctoral Researcher in the Educational Technologies Group at DIPF
Information Center for Education
Rostocker Straße 6, 60323 Frankfurt am Main
+49 (0) 69 24708 478
j.weidlich [at] dipf.de

Website – Google Scholar – Twitter – ResearchGate

Joshua Weidlich is a postdoctoral researcher in the Educational Technologies Group at DIPF. An educational researcher by training, his research interests are at the intersection of education, technology, and psychology. He received his doctorate on the topic of social presence in online distance learning environment in 2021 from the FernUniverstität in Hagen, the largest German distance education university. He has worked as research staff at the Department of Instructional Technology & Media at FernUniversität in Hagen as well as the Department of Technology-Enhanced Learning at Heidelberg University of Education. In 2022, he received the Outstanding Dissertation Award by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Hochschuldidaktik. He is part of an international emerging field group (EFG, part of EARLI) on social presence and telepresence in online learning. He maintains a curated list of Open Access journals in Educational Technology.
  • Social Presence in online learning environments
  • Feedback & Feedback Literacy
  • Computer-supported collaborative learning
  • Causal Inference & Directed Acyclic Graphs
  • Trust toward automated systems in Education
  • HIKOF
  • IMPACT
  • LAMASS@DiLea
  • PhD in Educational Technology, FernUniversität in Hagen
  • M.A. in E-Learning and Media Education, Heidelberg University of Education
  • B.A. in Educational Science, Chemnitz University of Technology

Selected Publications

  • Weidlich, J., Yau, J., & Kreijns, K. (2023). Social presence and psychological distance: A construal level account for online distance learning. Education and Information Technologies, 1-23.
  • Woitt, S., Weidlich, J., Jivet, I., Orhan Göksün, D., Drachsler, H., & Kalz, M. (2023). Students’ feedback literacy in higher education: an initial scale validation study. Teaching in Higher Education, 1-20.
  • Weidlich, J., & Kalz, M. (2023). How well does teacher education prepare for teaching with technology? A TPACK-based investigation at a university of education. European Journal of Teacher Education, 1-21.
  • Weidlich, J., Hicks, B., & Drachsler, H. (2023). Causal reasoning with causal graphs in educational technology research. Educational technology research and development, 1-19.
  • Weidlich, J., Gasevic, D., & Drachsler, H. (2022). Causal Inference and Bias in Learning Analytics: A Primer on Pitfalls using Directed Acyclic Graphs. Journal of Learning Analytics 9(3), 1-17.
  • Kube, D., Weidlich, J., Jivet, I., Kreijns, K., & Drachsler, H. (2022). “Gendered differences versus doing gender”: a systematic review on the role of gender in CSCL. Unterrichtswissenschaft, 1-28.
  • Weidlich, J., Göksün, D. O., & Kreijns, K. (2022). Extending social presence theory: social presence divergence and interaction integration in online distance learning. Journal of Computing in Higher Education, 1-22.
  • Rosar, M., & Weidlich, J. (2022). Creative students in self-paced online learning environments: an experimental exploration of the interaction of visual design and creativity. Research and Practice in Technology Enhanced Learning, 17(1), 1-24.
  • Weidlich, J., & Bastiaens, T. J. (2022). Pathway to presence: An investigation of ambient awareness in online learning environments. Interactive Learning Environments, 30(2), 262-275.
  • Fominykh, M., Weidlich, J., Kalz, M., & Hybertsen, I. D. (2022). What do they TEL (L)? A systematic analysis of master programs in technology-enhanced learning. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, 19(1), 1-25.
  • Weidlich, J., Kreijns, K., & Bastiaens, J. (2021). Individual differences in perceptions of social presence: Exploring the role of personality in online distance learning. Open Education Studies
  • Weidlich, J. & Kalz, M. (2021). Exploring Predictors of Instructional Resilience during Emergency Remote Teaching. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education
  • Wollny, S., Schneider, J., Di Mitri, D., Weidlich, J., Rittberger, M., & Drachsler, H. (2021). Are we there yet?-A Systematic Literature Review on Chatbots in Education. Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, 4, 89.
  • Kreijns, K., Henderikx, M. & Weidlich, J. (2021). Measuring social space in online group learning: Preliminary validation of the social space scale using the Rasch analysis approach. In Proceedings of EdMedia + Innovate Learning (pp. 445-458). United States: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE)
  • Kreijns, K., Xu, K.M., & Weidlich, J. (2021). Social Presence: Conceptualization and Measurement. Educational Psychology Review
  • Kreijns, K., Bijker, M., & Weidlich, J. (2020). A Rasch Analysis Approach to the Development and Validation of a Social Presence Measure. In Rasch Measurement (pp. 197-221). Springer, Singapore.
  • Weidlich, J., & Bastiaens, T. J. (2019). Designing sociable online learning environments and enhancing social presence: An affordance enrichment approach. Computers & Education, 142, 103622.
  • Weidlich, J., Kreijns, K., Rajagopal, K., & Bastiaens, T. (2018, June). What Social Presence is, what it isn’t, and how to measure it: A work in progress. In EdMedia+ Innovate Learning (pp. 2142-2150). Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE).
  • Weidlich, J., & Bastiaens, T. J. (2018). Technology matters–The impact of transactional distance on satisfaction in online distance learning. International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 19(3).
  • Weidlich, J., & Bastiaens, T. J. (2017). Explaining social presence and the quality of online learning with the SIPS model. Computers in Human Behavior, 72, 479-487.