Beyond Theory: Learning from Design-Based Research cycles in action

Beyond Theory: Learning from Design-Based Research cycles in action

📅 Wednesday 20/05 10:30-12:00h

📍 Workshop Space A

🔎 Needs Analysis

“The Sandbox Student” uses AI as a relational agent capable of modelling resistance while remaining modelable through effective scaffolding. By engineering “productive friction,” we create a safe-to-fail laboratory for training the human side of teaching (e.g., patience and de-escalation). Hence, this workshop aligns with TEL by merging Human-AI Interaction with Critical Reflective Practice by proposing LLMs as reflective mirrors for practising high-stakes human interactions. Participants compare soft-coded personas (emergent AI behaviour) with hard-coded social logic (rule-based constraints), allowing them to analyse the limitations of predictive modelling in social interaction. This addresses a critical question in TEL: how to design replicable, data-rich simulations for non-linear human behaviours. PhDs will discuss the ethics of emotional simulation, weighing the benefits of a scalable, faithful training tool against the ethical costs of oversimplifying human reality.

📒 Session Description

At the beginning, we will split the participants into small groups and we will give them a deck of downface cards. Then, we will begin the presentation. As the presentation of the three conducted DBR cycles progresses, participants will be asked to take a card from the provided deck and discuss, for a few minutes, how they would have solved the challenges we encountered in the Play My Math DBR use cases. Next, the groups will briefly share with all participants how they think they could have solved the challenges. Finally, we will tell the participants how we solved (or not) the faced challenges we encountered in the respective phases and activities of the three DBR cycles.

💡 Learning Objectives

By the end of the workshop, participants will know:

• Design-Based Research (DBR) phases and principles
• Parallel activities in DBR
• The importance of qualitative and quantitative data for informing an EdTech tool development
• Best practices for conducting DBR research
• Planning studies in DBR cycles
• Common challenges and tips for concluding DBR cycles
• Creating partnerships for development & studies
• Negotiating with institutions for conducting your research
• Financial challenges when conducting DBR in multicultural contexts
• How to sustain an EdTech project beyond the PhD