Research projects
AI-EmpaTe:AI-Empowered Teaching
Funded by the European Commission under Erasmus+, this project aims to equip teacher education students and primary and secondary teachers with the fundamental knowledge, skills and competence to organize AI as teaching content in education. The project’s main goal is to design an open online course which includes several modules for the teacher education students, in-service and pre-service primary and secondary school teachers to assist them in planning, preparing, and implementing AI as teaching content from scratch.
EffecTive: Efficiency and Effectiveness of Training for Teachers’ Pedagogical Digital Competence
Funded by the European Commission under Horizon Europe, this project aims to develop and refine a methodology to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of different teacher Pedagogical Digital Competence training policies on teachers' practice and student learning, and validate the methodology in 12 teacher training interventions in five countries (Estonia, Finland, Austria, Germany, Israel) to prevent inequalities and promote equal opportunities for students.
Moti Bot: SRL training by a Gen-AI chatbot
Students often struggle to regulate their own learning, both in terms of cognitive strategies and motivational control. Supported by the Office of the Chief Scientist of the Israeli Ministry of Education, this research explores the interaction between K–12 students and a dedicated chatbot developed in our lab for SRL training. By providing guiding prompts, hints, and feedback during problem-solving tasks, Gen-AI chatbots for SRL training address these challenges. The interaction helps students plan, monitor, and reflect, thereby strengthening self-regulated learning processes and enriching their overall learning experience.
Human-AI interaction
Evaluating teachers’ knowledge is a complex challenge that traditional assessment tools often fail to address. This study demonstrates how human–AI interaction can provide a solution by supporting the development of innovative assessment methods. Through collaboration between researchers and a Gen-AI chatbot, a Situational Judgment Test (SJT) was created to assess knowledge. The process revealed how human expertise and AI-generated input complement each other, resulting in richer and more effective instructional tools.
Effective learning with ATFs (Automated Testing and Feedback system) in online programming courses
In programming courses, practicing of writing and running code is the basis for acquiring programming language. Getting timely, detailed and accurate feedback on the correctness and quality of the code is a crucial element of the learning process. In large scale courses, and especially in online courses, it is almost impossible for instructors to assess the great volume of submissions and to provide feedback on each exercise. Thus, Automated Testing and Feedback systems (ATFs) are often suggested, providing students an immediate feedback on their code exercises and allowing short learning cycle. In our study, we are examining the impact of embedding an ATF system in online and hybrid programming courses from pedagogical point of view and in terms of achieving learning goals
Levels of L2 Chinese contextualized mobile assisted language learning: impact on students’ language learning motivation
Contextualized Mobile Assisted Language Learning (CMALL) is highly valued as a means to achieve meaningful learning. However, although the role of high quantities of CMALL is prominent, MALL literature discusses contextualization dichotomously, rather than measuring it and relating to its potential levels, without considering affective outcomes theoretically. Although evaluating contextual activities and their outcomes is challenging, we quantitatively evaluate CMALL’s level and associate it with motivation using a model we developed in previous empirical studies for CMALL measurement, based on real world place and real life activity contexts. The hypothesis of CMALL influence on motivation is based on our developed theoretical CMALL-motivation framework. The difficult Chinese language makes it an appropriate candidate for examining CMALL relation to motivational outcomes.
Personality-based tailored learning paths using learning analytics for raising satisfaction level in online academic courses
Exploring an academic online course that will offer the students variety of techno-pedagogical learning solutions. Their satisfaction with each learning solution is measured as well as their connection to personality types (using the "Big-five" personality model). Some behaviors are connected to human's personality, so we believe that one's personality can be identified based on his digital "tracks" while using the learning management system. Our study aims to identify the learner's personality type using learning-analytics methods, and then to adjust personality-based learning path, which will help to design online learning courses, and perhaps to raise the learners' satisfaction level.
Creativity & Computational thinking from ‘Scratch’
A central challenge is integrating computational thinking with creativity in non-STEM subjects. This study shows how Scratch enables students to design projects in areas like arts and humanities, combining coding with imagination. In doing so, Scratch expands computational thinking beyond science and math, fostering creativity and computational thinking through coding across disciplines.
SRL online video-based training program for secondary schools
The COVID-19 crisis emphasizes the importance of Self-Regulated Learning (SRL) as one of today's most useful skills. This study focuses on research & development of an online intervention program based on short online interactive videos was developed to promote SRL skills. The research explore students' use of SRL skills and grades, and whether four key pedagogical processes (teacher-student relationships, collaboration, autonomy, and feedback),are mediators for SRL strategies’ use and grades.
Open Educational Resources for Informal Personalized Learning
Institutions, organizations and policymakers strive to use Open Educational Resources (OER) to promote student equity and social inclusion. The global COVID-19 crisis and its side effects, among them a massive wave of layoffs alongside the need to adjust to new workplace environments, have sharpened the need for lifelong learning and have underscored the importance of the higher education system in this endeavor. Most studies examining online learning do not challenge the assumption that online courses are the primary way to provide online educational content. Our study describes informal learning through OER among adults during the COVID-19 crisis, distinguishing between employed and unemployed individuals and between professional and personal development.
Creating a Cyberspace Community: The COGI Model
A strong partnership project between Israel and Germany, in which students experience a unique multilingual, multicultural academic online course in the field of learning technologies. A research collaboration between TAU's Advanced Learning and Technology Research Lab, The University of Kassel in Germany, and the Kibbutzim College of Education, Technology and the Arts in Tel Aviv. This unique collaboration brings together students from different backgrounds to create online academic collaboration as a booster for international partnerships in research, schools, and workplaces.
Learning Technologies: Updated version (MOOC in Hebrew)
An open course that invites learners to discover the unlimited possibilities of integrating technologies in teaching, and adapting learning to 21st-century skills, all through a journey between the basic technological concepts, educational theories and models, and other innovative elements included under the title "Learning Technologies".
