Thesis supervision

If you are interested in writing a bachelor/master’s thesis in the lab, please read this page carefully and complete the thesis interest form below.Tomo and postdocs/PhD students have access to your response to this form, we meet every month to discuss thesis applications. One of us will contact you within 4-6 weeks if we find a good match.

Requirements

There are no strict prerequisites for writing a thesis in the lab, but to write a good thesis, it is important that you have a background (e.g., degree, coursework, past research project…) in one or more of the fields below:

Learning Sciences/Education Science/Educational Technology (e.g., experience of designing instructional materials and tools)
Human-Computer Interaction/Computer Science (e.g., web development skills, user research skills and experiences)
Psychology/Cognitive Science (e.g., statistical analysis skills, advanced modeling, knowledge of measurements, experience conducting lab studies)

Also, it is recommended that you take one or more of our courses before or during the semester in which you will do the thesis seminar. Once we decide to work on a thesis together in the lab, you will need to take a bachelor/master seminar (graded – unless you are a student from the EduTech program) as part of your thesis writing. In this seminar, we meet once a month with other thesis-writing students to share progress and get feedback. We would also meet individually about 1-2 times a month to discuss the project. During this phase, you will define a research question, identify prior work, and learn about its theoretical basis. After this phase, you will decide on the method you will use and make a clear plan to collect and analyze data. Once you complete the seminar, your “writing period” will start. Note that doing a thesis (seminar + the writing period) in my lab typically takes 8-12 months. Also, please note that we almost always submit thesis projects to conferences and journals for publication (either you as a first author or co-author), and that means you have to put significant effort into the thesis research! Past thesis work has been published at leading HCI and Learning Sciences venues. Here are some example papers we co-authored with thesis students:

Types of thesis

In my lab, students write a thesis of one (or more) of the following types:

Design-focused (you’d engage in iterative (co-)design research with practitioners/community members to produce digital artifacts, which would be followed by user testing and/or simple evaluations. Or you would engage with community members to develop a deeper understanding of stakeholder views on certain topics in HCI/LS)
Experiment-focused (you’d design some kind of instructional principle or activities using technology and conduct an experiment to test its effectiveness, or use an existing system to test your own RQ by conducting an experiment)
Data analysis-focused (you’d analyze (existing) learning data and test hypotheses)

Thesis Topics

Mirella Hladký

5 open

Emotion-sensitive learning technologies and learning technologies that support emotion regulation Multiple types possible — click for details ↓

Preferred background: Psychology/HCI/Design/Learning Sciences, CS welcome if you have a strong interest in Psychology

In this open project, you can bring in your ideas on researching how to design learning technologies that consider learners’ emotional states, that foster a socio-emotionally supportive learning experience and/or support adaptive emotion regulation during learning. If you’re interested in these topics, please include your ideas in your motivation letter.

Math anxiety and learning technologies that support math anxiety regulation Multiple types possible — click for details ↓

Preferred background: Psychology/HCI/Design/Learning Sciences, CS welcome if you have a strong interest in Psychology

In this open project, you can bring in your ideas on researching the concept of Math Anxiety and/or how to design technologies that support Math Anxiety regulation. If you’re interested in these topics, please include your ideas in your motivation letter.

Emotional sharing with an LLM-based learning assistant Multiple types possible — click for details ↓

Preferred background: Psychology/CS/HCI/Design/Learning Sciences, must have technical skills to implement functional prototype

You will investigate how social sharing of emotions (as a form of interpersonal emotion regulation or co-regulation) with an LLM-based learning assistant can improve learner’s well-being and performance. The scope of this project is open to shaping (e.g., target group, learning context, visual appearance and other characteristics of assistant, different control conditions to test effectiveness of assistant, …). If you’re applying for this thesis topic, please include your concrete interests or ideas in your motivation letter.

Students’ shame regulation strategies in shame-eliciting learning-related contexts Experiment-focused — click for details ↓

Preferred background: Psychology or related fields; must have interpersonal skills to interview and attend to study participants

You will explore what Shame Regulation Strategies do school or university students apply in learning/studying contexts that elicit the self-conscious emotion shame. For that, you will investigate what shame-eliciting situations students experience (and potentially design shame-eliciting situations to which study participants will be exposed). In in-depth interviews, you will investigate student’s applied Shame Regulation Strategies and analyze them using Qualitative Content Analysis. If you’re interested in this topic, please familiarize yourself with the Compass of Shame by Nathanson (1992).

Highly personalized math tutor Multiple types possible — click for details ↓

Preferred background: CS/HCI/Design, must have technical skills to implement prototype

You will design, implement and evaluate a highly personalized math tutor that is based on a student’s individual characteristics (personality, interests, preferences, …). This thesis will be embedded in a project where we investigate students’ desire for agency in technology-supported learning environments and co-design an AI-based learning tool (with both German and Japanese school students) that considers these findings. We consider the students’ desire for personalization as a desire for indirect control over the learning content and process.

Shintaro Sato

2 open

Human-AI hybridity in feedback giving in the classroom Multiple types possible — click for details ↓

Preferred background: Design/HCI/Learning Sciences

The project explores how we might support effective orchestration between human teachers and AI systems in school classrooms. You may design feedback messages in an AI-based tutoring system and/or conduct a school-based experiment to capture the role of human teachers in feedback giving in the classroom. Native-level German skill is required.

Understanding types of effective feedback messages within intelligent tutoring software Design-focused — click for details ↓

Preferred background: Learning Sciences/Psychology/HCI/Design

In this project, you will explore how to design effective feedback messages on ITS to enhance student learning and motivation. You will conduct a survey with storyboards to understand what kinds of feedback school teachers would give in several different situations, and design and implement a variety of feedback messages within an existing intelligent tutoring system.

Dr. Bingyi Han

1 open

Understanding Human-GenAI Learning Interactions that promotes critical thinking – Designing conversational AI systems for meaningful self-directed learning and reasoning Multiple types possible — click for details ↓

Preferred background: You love statistics and running experiments to see how human behave or respond differently to various AI interaction designs

In this type of project, you may work on prompt engineering with LLMs (or design simple conversational AI interaction prototypes), run experimental studies with real users, and develop evaluation measures for learning-related elements.
My broader research interest focuses on how conversational AI reshapes human learning, reasoning, agency, and decision-making during self-directed learning processes. Possible project directions may involve topics such as: learning agency and autonomy, trust and reliance on AI, human–AI co-reasoning, critical thinking and reflection, learning motivation and habits.
If you are interested in working with me, please include a brief initial research idea in your cover letter. This does not need to be fully developed, but it should include: your research aims or question, a possible research method (and how your background is relevant to that), and a rough timeline or plan. You can think of this as a mini research proposal. If you are unfamiliar with writing one, please do some initial self-learning and preparation before applying. (A tip: this is how you tell me what question you are curious about and convince me why it is an interesting and important research question to investigate.)
I will be happy to discuss and brainstorm with you once there is a concrete starting point.
You will gain hands-on experience in designing behavioural experiments with AI systems and studying how people learn with AI. If you are considering doing a PhD afterwards, please also mention this in your cover letter, so I can better support you in shaping a project that may grow into a PhD direction or prepare you for paper publication.

Prof. Dr. Tomohiro Nagashima

4 open

Conducting tutor log data analysis to find patterns of students’ choice-making behaviors during learning Data analysis-focused — click for details ↓

Preferred background: Data science/Psychology

In this project, you will use existing log data from a tutoring system to find meaningful patterns in student behaviors when they interact with the software. It involves some advanced statistical analyses, including but not limited to, linear regressions, logistic regressions, ML, and multi-level modeling.

Understanding teachers’, students’, and parents’ perspectives on the use of (generative) AI in the classroom/home environment Design-focused — click for details ↓

Preferred background: HCI/Design, Qualitative research experience is ideal

In this project, you will work with community members to understand how they view the use of (generative) AI in the classroom or home environment for teaching and learning. Native-level German skill is a plus.

Embodied emotion regulation: Investigating the interplay between students’ emotion regulation and their bodily state/reactions during learning Multiple types possible — click for details ↓

Preferred background: LS/HCI

In this project, you would investigate the role of embodiment in emotion regulation, how it helps students during learning, and may design an intervention that helps learners effectively regulate their negative emotions through embodiment. In collaboration with Prof. Dr. Julia Chatain at UniDistance Suisse.

Designing and testing an instructional intervention to promote metacognitive or domain-level learning in CS education Multiple types possible — click for details ↓

Preferred background: LS/Instructional Design/Design

In this collaborative project with the Machine Teaching Group at MPI-SWS, you will design and test (with students in Germany) an instruction intervention that aims to promote metacognitive or domain-level learning in the context of CS education (using https://www.blocksandpython.com/). Web dev skills are a plus, but not required.

Thesis Alumni

Students who completed their thesis in the lab and publications based on their thesis.