- Bridging the gap: Training for trustworthy, policy-relevant science
Together with colleague Amélie Quesnel-Vallée (McGill University) and multiple institutional and organizational partners, I am working to co-develop an interdisciplinary training initiative that equips the next generation of researchers to become trusted translators of data into impact. By fostering meaningful engagement with decision-makers, communities, and the media, and grounding learning in experiential, real-world partnerships, the program strengthens the societal relevance of evidence and reinforces public confidence in science. Importantly, our program will prepare young researchers to use AI as a force multiplier for evidence-informed decision-making, while building the ethical reflexes, governance literacy, and critical thinking needed to navigate the complex risks and responsibilities associated with these technologies.
- Supporting pedagogical sense-making through iterative field testing of the Course Insights learning analytics dashboard
Building on our original “IKEA model” dashboard for Canvas learner activity data (Macfadyen & Myers, 2023), UBC’s central learning analytics team has worked to develop an in-house, streamlined and Canvas-integrated version of this dashboard, now named Course Insights. However, we still know relatively little about how experienced instructors actually use learning analytics dashboards to reason about teaching and learning design, and there is a need for evidence-based studies that illuminate just how LA-guided interventions in teaching and in learning design decisions can positively or negatively influence learners (Macfadyen et al., 2020). Alongside launch of the new Course Insights dashboard, I am partnering with UBC’s Learning Technology Innovation Centre (LTIC) to lead an an iterative field test of this new tool to examine how instructors make pedagogical sense of dashboard representations of learner activity and discussion participation.
Holding pedagogy and AI systems in productive tension: Designing sociotechnical practices for AI-mediated learning
Colleagues at UBC have developed the HelpMe chatbot, which operates as a retrieval-augmented, collaboratively overseen AI grounded in curated course materials and instructor validation workflows (Wang & Lawrence, 2024; Wang et al., 2025). Treated as an evolving sociotechnical artifact (Zeivots et al., 2025), HelpMe enables the study of AI literacy as it is actively constructed in authentic course curriculum (Lang & Gurpinar, 2025). I am collaborating with colleague Rachel Horst on a SSHRC-funded project to document how students and instructors design, negotiate, and enact disciplinary AI literacies through pedagogical routines and interactions with this course-embedded AI system.
References
Lang, G., & Gurpinar, T. (2025). AI-Powered learning support: A study of retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) chatbot effectiveness in an online course. Information Systems Education JournalISEDJ, 23(2), 4. https://isedj.org/2025-23/n2/ISEDJv23n2p4.html
Macfadyen, L. P., & Myers, A. (2023). The “IKEA Model” for pragmatic development of a custom learning analytics dashboard. In T. Cochrane, V. Narayan, C. Brown, K. MacCallum, E. Bone, C. Deneen, R. Vanderburg, & B. Hurren (Eds.), People, partnerships and pedagogies. Proceedings ASCILITE 2023 (pp. 482-486). ASCILITE. https://doi.org/10.14742/apubs.2023.465
Macfadyen, L. P., Lockyer, L., & Rienties, B. (2020). Learning design and learning analytics: Snapshot 2020. Journal of Learning Analytics, 7(3), 6-12. https://doi.org/10.18608/jla.2020.73.2
Wang, K., & Lawrence, R. (2024). HelpMe: Student help seeking using office hours and email. Proceedings of the 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 1, 1388–1394. https://doi.org/10.1145/3626252.3630867
Wang, Z., Chai, C.-S., Li, J., & Lee, V. W. Y. (2025). Assessment of AI ethical reflection: The development and validation of the AI ethical reflection scale (AIERS) for university students. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, 22(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41239-025-00519-z
Zeivots, S., Casey, A., Winchester, T., Webster, J., Wang, X., Tan, L., Smeenk, W., Schulte, F. P., Scholkmann, A., Paulovich, B., Muñoz, D., Mignone, J., Mantai, L., Hrastinski, S., Godwin, R., Engwall, O., Dindas, H., van Dijk, M., Chubb, L. A., … Hayes, S. (2025). Reshaping higher education designs and futures: Postdigital co-design with generative artificial intelligence. Postdigital Science and Education, 7(4), 1334–1374. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-025-00595-4
Leah P. Macfadyen 