Prof. Dr. Oleksandra Poquet
Professur für Learning Analytics
Department of Educational Sciences
Facts:
- favorit book: Phosphorescence: On Awe, Wonder and Things That Sustain You When the World Goes Dark von Julia Baird
- favorit item: My tablet
- since januar 2023 at TUM
Interview
1. Who are you and what are you doing at SOT?
I am a scientist interested in human development, social interactions, and complex systems. At TUM I lead the activities of the Professorship for Learning Analytics.
2. What are your research fields and what fascinates you about them?
My research field is learning analytics where we study how to improve educational outcomes using data recorded by different technologies during the learning activity. These data can be about learners, their activities, and learning environments and they can be very diverse, such as digital traces, human interactions, speech, written text, movement, physiological data. I like learning analytics because it is inherently interdisciplinary, so to address its research problems one must negotiate the boundaries and restrictions between the different disciplines it needs to draw from. I find it fascinating because it requires thinking about human development in educational settings as a system that considers different elements and processes and how they interact together.
3. What are the currently important subject areas in your research? How have these changed in the last few years and do you have any ideas about how these will change in the next two years?
I have always studied interpersonal processes during learning and how relationships form through digitally mediated communication. Now I also work on other areas that I think are very important, largely driven by acceleration of the use of artificial intelligence in educational settings. For instance, we are looking at how people use AI for learning and work to understand how to equip them with cognitive tools to make choices as to when using AI is to their benefit and when it is not. Another important direction that the professorship is developing is on creating new ways to help people make informed decisions around the data they submit to the educational technologies. I think this tension between the agency that people can exercise and the wide benefits that come with submitting data and decision making to technology will only become more prominent.
4. How did you become a professor and why at TUM?
I have a long path that brought me to TUM but details aside, I have followed my curiosity and looked for opportunities that allow me to apply it to areas that fascinate me.
5. What can a degree program achieve today and why should people study with you?
I teach subjects useful to anyone interested in technology and learning.
Our educational technology courses explain history of edtech and how to judge new types of devices critically from the position of what has been there for decades. Early teaching machines are almost hundred years old. So, with this knowledge when the next round of ‘ground-breaking’ and ‘pioneering’ technologies comes around, one can make an informed judgement as to whether this is just a hype or not, and what to do about it.
I also teach a range of data science subjects for people interested in computational analyses of data from educational environments. We target students without technical background and our courses help understand data and computational techniques to improve data literacy. These courses also allow students to carve a specialization within their degree.
6. From whom have you learned the most in your life?
I have been privileged to meet many brilliant and generous people and I continue to learn from them.
7. Which sentence would start your biography?
Difficult to say. There are still so many things I hope to do and who knows how that would go!
8. What might your daily life look like without work?
Run, cook, read, think, walk, and wander, and look around.
9. Is there an item that you wouldn't want to be without in your life? If yes, which and why?
My tablet. I like taking notes and reading on it and I do not imagine that I can last without that for a long time.
10. What is your favorite book and why would you recommend it?
There are many books I like. Among the books I read this year, I enjoyed ‘Phosphorescence: On Awe, Wonder and Things That Sustain You When the World Goes Dark’ by Julia Baird. She is a well-known Australian journalist. It is non-fiction but not a heavy scientific book type, just the series of personal essays. I enjoyed it because it talks about some positive things that are so fundamentally human.