Sebastian Gombert

I started to work as a doctoral researcher at the Educational Technologies group, DIPF, in 2021. Before this, I studied Linguistic and Literary Computing at TU Darmstadt. I finished with a thesis on detecting semantic uncertainty in scientific writing using pre-trained transformer language models and conditional random fields. Besides this, I worked as a teaching assistant, software developer and junior research assistant in various contexts and was active in academic self-government. When I am not busy researching, I like producing electronic music, playing the drums and hiking.

• Artificial Intelligence in Education:
  • Pedagogically Motivated Approaches to Automatic Short Answer Scoring and Automatic Essay Scoring
  • Automatic Generation of Textual Learner Feedback
• Learning Analytics:
  • Perception of Textual Learner Feedback
  • Communication Processes During Collaborative Learning Tasks
• Natural Language Processing:
  • Language Complexity
  • Detection of Hedges and Semantic Uncertainty
  • Prompt Optimization and Discovery for Generative LLMs
• Cognitive Linguistics:
  • Construction Grammar
• Research Infrastructures

• Master of Arts in Linguistic and Literary Computing, 2021, TU Darmstadt
• Bachelor of Arts in Digital Philology and Computer Science, 2019, TU Darmstadt

• 2014 – Developer @ Sanofi-Aventis Deutschland GmbH
• 2015-2017 – Developer @ Abius GmbH
• 2015-2020 – Co-founder @ mediacollective UG
• 2017 – IT Administrator @ Student Council FB2, TU Darmstadt
• 2016-2021 Teaching- and Junior Research Assistant @ Corpus- and Computational Linguistics, TU Darmstadt
• 2020 Teaching Assistant @ Ubiquitous Knowledge Processing Lab, TU Darmstadt
• 2020-2021 Developer @ AskAlbert / studiumdigitale, Goethe Universität Frankfurt

• Kubsch, M., Strauß, S., Grimm, A., Gombert, S., Drachsler, H., Neumann, K., & Rummel, N. (2025). Self-regulated learning in the digitally enhanced science classroom: Toward an early warning system. Educational Psychology Review, 37(2). doi:10.1007/s10648-025-10011-9
• Borgards, L., Karademir, O., Strauß, S., Di Mitri, D., Kubsch, M., Brobeil, M., … & Rummel, N. (2024, September). Achieving Tailored Feedback by Means of a Teacher Dashboard? Insights into Teachers’ Feedback Practices. In European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning (pp. 75-80). Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland.
• Fink, A., Gombert, S., Liu, T., Drachsler, H., & Frey, A. (2024). A hierarchical rater model approach for integrating automated essay scoring models. Zeitschrift für Psychologie.
• Vossen, L. P., Gasparini, I., Oliveira, E. H., Menzel, L., Gombert, S., Neumann, K., & Drachsler, H. (2024). Conceptual Map Assessment Through Structure Classification. In Proceedings of the First Workshop on Automated Evaluation of Learning and Assessment Content co-located with the 25th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED 2024).
• Van Vossen, L. P., Gasparini, I., Oliveira, E. H., Czinczel, B., Harms, U., Menzel, L., … & Drachsler, H. (2024, July). The Influence of Diverse Educational Contexts on Concept Map Structures. In 7th International Workshop on Culturally-Aware Tutoring Systems (CATS2024) (p. 24).
• Karademir, O., Borgards, L., Di Mitri, D., Strauß, S., Kubsch, M., Brobeil, M., … & Drachsler, H. (2024). Following the impact chain of the LA cockpit: an intervention study investigating a teacher dashboard’s effect on student learning. Journal of Learning Analytics, 11(2), 215-228.
• Gombert, S., Menzel, L., Di Mitri, D., & Drachsler, H. (2024, June). Predicting Item Difficulty and Item Response Time with Scalar-mixed Transformer Encoder Models and Rational Network Regression Heads. In Proceedings of the 19th Workshop on Innovative Use of NLP for Building Educational Applications (BEA 2024) (pp. 483-492).
• Karademir, O., Di Mitri, D., Schneider, J., Jivet, I., Allmang, J., Gombert, S., … Drachsler, H. (2024). I don’t have time! But keep me in the loop: Co-designing requirements for a learning analytics cockpit with teachers. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcal.12997
• Gombert, S., Fink, A., Giorgashvili, T., Jivet, I., Di Mitri, D., Yau, J., Frey, A., & Drachsler, H. (2024). From the automated assessment of student essay content to highly informative feedback: A case study. International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40593-023-00387-6
• Kube, D., Gombert, S., John, N., Weidlich, J., Kreijns, K., & Drachsler, H. (2024). Escaping binary gender roles: Gender diversity dynamics in a CSCL‐Escape game. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcal.12942
• Kube, D., Gombert, S., Suter, B., Weidlich, J., Kreijns, K., & Drachsler, H. (2023). Hacking gender in computer-supported collaborative learning: The experience of being in mixed-gender teams at a computer science hackathon. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcal.12905
• Menzel, L., Gombert, S., Weidlich, J., Fink, A., Frey, A., & Drachsler, H. (2023). Why You Should Give Your Students Automatic Process Feedback on Their Collaboration: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment. In Responsive and Sustainable Educational Futures. EC-TEL 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14200. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-42682-7_14
• Gombert, S., Di Mitri, D., Karademir, O., Kubsch, M., Kolbe, H., Tautz, S., Grimm, A., Bohm, I., Neumann, K., & Drachsler, H. (2022). Coding energy knowledge in constructed responses with explainable NLP models. In Journal of Computer Assisted Learning. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcal.12767
• Gombert, S. (2022). Methods and perspectives for the automated analytic assessment of free-text responses in formative scenarios. In Proceedings of the Doctoral Consortium at the Seventeenth European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning (EC-TEL 2022), Toulouse, France, September 12th-16th, 2022
• Daniele Di Mitri, Sebastian Gombert, & Onur Karademir (2022). Reflecting on the Actionable Components of a Model for Augmented Feedback. In Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Multimodal Immersive Learning Systems (MILeS 2022) At the Seventeenth European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning (EC-TEL 2022), Toulouse, France, September 12th-16th, 2022 (pp. 45–50). CEUR-WS.org.
• Böttger, F., Cetinkaya, U., Di Mitri, D., Gombert, S., Shingjergji, K., Iren, D., & Klemke, R. (2022). Privacy-Preserving and Scalable Affect Detection in Online Synchronous Learning. In Educating for a New Future: Making Sense of Technology-Enhanced Learning Adoption. EC-TEL 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13450. Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16290-9_4
• Menzel, L., Gombert, S., Di Mitri, D., & Drachsler, H. (2022). Superpowers in the Classroom: Hyperchalk is an Online Whiteboard for Learning Analytics Data Collection. In Educating for a New Future: Making Sense of Technology-Enhanced Learning Adoption. EC-TEL 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13450. Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16290-9_37
• Gombert, S. (2021). Twin BERT Contextualized Sentence Embedding Space Learning and Gradient-Boosted Decision Tree Ensembles for Scene Segmentation in German Literature. In Proceedings of the Shared Task on Scene Segmentation co-located with the 17th Conference on Natural Language Processing (KONVENS 2021), Düsseldorf, Germany, September 6th, 2021 (Vol. 3001, pp. 42–48). CEUR-WS.org.
• Gombert, S., & Bartsch, S. (2021). TUDA-CCL at SemEval-2021 Task 1: Using Gradient-boosted Regression Tree Ensembles Trained on a Heterogeneous Feature Set for Predicting Lexical Complexity. In Proceedings of the 15th International Workshop on Semantic Evaluation (SemEval-2021) (pp. 130-137). Association for Computational Linguistics.
• Gombert, S. & Bartsch, S. (2020). MultiVitaminBooster at PARSEME Shared Task 2020: Combining Window- and Dependency-Based Features with Multilingual Contextualised Word Embeddings for VMWE Detection. In Proceedings of the Joint Workshop on Multiword Expressions and Electronic Lexicons (pp. 149–155). Association for Computational Linguistics.

• Fink, A., Gombert, S., Liu, T., & Frey, A., (2024, April). The integration of automated essay scoring models using hierarchical rater models. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME), Philadelphia, USA.
• Menzel, L., Jivet, I., Gombert, S., Drachsler, H., Giorgashvili, T., Schmitz, M. (2024). 2nd Workshop on Highly Informative Learning Analytic (HILA), Learning Analytics and Knowledge Conference 2024, Kyoto, Japan.
• Fink, A., Gombert, S., & Frey, A. (2023). Using natural language processing to automate the assessment of student essay content. Paper presented at the Frontier Research in Educational Measurement – FREMO 2023, Oslo, Norway.
• Fink, A., Gombert, S., & Frey, A. (2023). Automatisierte Inhaltsanalyse von Essays mittels Transformern [Automated analysis of essay content using transformer models]. Paper presented at the 16th meeting of the Methods and Evaluation Division of the DGPs, Constance, Germany.
• Gombert, S., & Karademir, O. (2023). KI in der Bildung: Chancen und Risiken für die Gesellschaft. @ Common Purpose.
• Gombert, S., & Kube, D. (2023). Virtueller Kaffeetalk zum Thema ChatGPT in der Bildung. @ Digitaltag 2023.
• Gombert, S., & Menzel, L. (2023). Hyperchalk – How to Implement Self-hosted Whiteboard Tasks. @ Seventeenth EATEL Summer School on Technology Enhanced Learning.
• Gombert, S., Menzel, L., & Di Mitri, D. (2023). Large Language Models for Feedback Generation. @ Seventeenth EATEL Summer School on Technology Enhanced Learning.
• Karademir, O., Gombert, S., & Di Mitri, D. (2023). Teacher Dashboard Supported by AI-generated Feedback. @ Seventeenth EATEL Summer School on Technology Enhanced Learning.
• Di Mitri, D., Schmitz, M., Jivet, I., Gombert, S., Ahmad, A., Drachsler, H. (2023). Hi, LA! – Highly Informative Learning Analytics. @ 13th International Learning Analytics and Knowledge Conference.
• Fink, A., Frey, A., Liu, T., & Gombert, S. (2022). Nutzung von Natural Language Processing zur automatisierten Kodierung von Essays in digital gestützten Großveranstaltungen an Hochschulen. @ 52nd Conference of the German Psychological Society (DGPs).
• Gombert, S. (2022). Workshop: Assessing constructed responses with explainable natural language processing. @ Sixteenth EATEL Summer School on Technology Enhanced Learning.
• Gombert, S., Bhattacharya, S., Di Mitri, D., Drachsler, H. (2022). Interpretierbare maschinelle Sprachverarbeitung für die Identifikation konzeptionellen Wissens in energiephysikbezogenen deutschsprachigen Kurzantworten. @ Symposium: Komplexität nicht nur bewältigen, sondern zu Nutze machen: Log- und Textdaten im Educational Assessment. 9. Tagung der Gesellschaft für Empirische Bildungsforschung.