Songhee Han

Songhee Han is a doctoral student in the Learning Technologies program. Prior to her life at UT Austin, she has worked at public elementary schools for seven years. Songhee has been a team member of a research & development project (Alien Rescue, AR) since 2018 under Dr. Min Liu's supervision. In the program, she published her first first-authored peer-reviewed journal article (journal impact factor: 2.46) about graduate students' online learning in a virtual environment focusing on their learning process evolving toward authentic learning through online communities in 2020 (Han & Resta, 2020).

Outside of the program, She has worked as an innovation fellow in the instructional design of the OnRamps program developing online courses for Texas high school students and OnRamps staff. In addition, she has worked as a conference administrator assisting "STEM in the Technopolis" conference and as a graduate research assistant assisting a book project called "STEM in the Technopolis: The Power of STEM Education in Regional Technology Policy" for IC² Institute at UT Austin. In this book project, she co-authored Chapter two, "Regional Industry Clusters: A STEM Center of Gravity for Educators, Industry, Government and Non-Profits," in this book project. Since 2019, she has worked for the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas at Moody College of Communication, developing self-directed online courses and researching strategies to provide equitable massive open online courses.

With a strong belief that educational entities need to focus on all students, not just a small number of outstanding achievers with sufficient accessibility when implementing new technology in a course, she offered which aspects to consider when adopting new technologies in online courses to provide an inclusive learning experience in an article (Han & Lee, 2022) which was published in one of the most prestigious journals in the educational technology discipline (journal impact factor: 8.54). This research project also led her to an opportunity to dig deeper into student-AI agent interactions based on the chatbot log data and the students' self-reports and the manuscript for a second paper is currently under peer-review with another prestigious journal in the discipline.

Since she started her graduate study in the Learning Technologies program at the College of Education five years ago, her research focus has been on the proper implementation of new technologies to promote equitable learning experiences. Considering that learning environments vary according to learners' demographics and situational factors, her research questions always start with investigating what target learners need most in their own learning contexts. Her current target learners are adults categorized as informal students who seek online modalities to keep learning. She firmly believes providing an inclusive learning environment is extremely important considering the distinctively broad spectrum of the online course student population.

Min Liu (Supervisor)
Areas of expertise include designing and developing immersive, media-rich environments for learners at all age levels and research the effects of them using mixed-methods; studying the effect of other emerging technologies on learning and motivation; focusing on problem-based learning, project-based learning, and game-based learning pedagogical approaches; learning analytics in serious games and other online environments, and understanding MOOCs as an emerging online learning tool.

Han, S. & Lee, M. (2022). FAQ Chatbot and Inclusive Learning in Massive Open Online Courses. Computers & Education, 179. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2021.104395.

Han, H. & Resta, R. (2020). Virtually Authentic: Graduate Students' Perspective Changes toward Authentic Learning while Collaborating in a Virtual World. Online Learning, 24(4). doi:10.24059/olj.v24i4.2326.

Zintgraff, Z., Han, H. & Butler, B. (2020). Regional Industry Clusters: A STEM Center of Gravity for Educators, Industry, Government and Non-Profits. STEM in the Technopolis: The Power of STEM Education in Regional Technology Policy (pp. 27–50): Springer.

Alien Rescue is an online problem-based 3D immersive learning environment for sixth-grade science. It combines best practices from educational research with innovative technologies to deliver an engaging learning experience. Songhee works on the mission database in this project.

This qualitative case study investigates graduate students' perspective changes apropos their cross-national collaborative learning experience while participating in an online teaching and learning course jointly taught by graduate schools in the United States and Israel. The participants met virtually, on a weekly basis between November and December 2018, on a platform called Second Life, to design and participate in collaborative learning activities. On completion of the course, interviews were conducted with a small sample of student-participants regarding their experiences. During the design phase, participants' dominant perceptions of their learning experiences were characterized by genuine excitement at the novelty of collaborating virtually with colleagues on the other side of the world. Their initial perceptions evolved during the participation phase to realization as learning communities emerged and students' roles expanded beyond the scope of mere participants. In this study, the authors argue that participants' construction of new knowledge resulted in authentic learning from the standpoints of social constructivism and online collaborative learning theory and further discuss the factors that enabled the participants' authentic learning experience.

This study investigates the effects of mass customization (MC) techniques used in industry towards the efficient development of Mass Open Online Course (MOOC) targeting working professionals. We examined the MOOC development process and the degree of the students' satisfaction of the courses at a distance learning center from April to May 2020 which serves working professionals in journalism. Data sources used in this study include Slack messages, survey responses, and course completion rates. The preliminary result revealed that applying the MC techniques in developing MOOCs not only enhance the efficiency of course development but also satisfy a diverse range of learners, which is an important goal for MOOC providers' survival in the market.

The goal of this report is the development of a new maker course syllabus and course plan for the Learning Technologies program at the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin). This course will provide hands-on making experiences for graduate students in 'The Foundry' (UT Makerspace) and subsequently bridge those experiences to K-12 makerspaces in Austin. This report contains four major sections. First, the report begins with a literature review of makerspaces and learning, making and assessment, and making in both K-12 and higher education, supported by a review of empirical studies and web-based articles. Second, the context for the development of a graduate level maker course is explained through the analysis of The Foundry's support for graduate students' making activities and the summary of my visits to K-12 makerspaces in Austin, Texas. Third, existing maker courses from three different universitiesTeaching for Creativity and Innovation (University of Wisconsin-Stout), Critical Making (University of California, Berkeley), and Introduction to Design and Making (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)are analyzed to gather ideas for a new maker course syllabus. Additionally, I analyze current courses offered by the Learning Technologies program to evaluate the justification for a new maker course for graduate students. Finally, the fourth section details the new maker course syllabus I created.

STEM in the Technopolis is a book about secondary STEM education and regional technology policy. In the book, we: - Highlighted cases where secondary STEM education is robustly and explicitly part of regions' technology development plans - Explored the quantitative impact of secondary STEM education on regional development - Showed how trends in educational philosophy, teaching methods, workforce needs, and the drive for digital equity have set the stage for secondary STEM as integral to policy - Shared strategies and tactics for integrating the concerns of secondary STEM education into robust regional technology policy

Friday, April 5, 2019, The University of Texas at Austin AT&T Hotel and Conference Center, 1900 University Ave. The conference explored the following questions: - What does it mean to integrate STEM education policy into regional economic development and technology policies? - What is the specific role for K-12 STEM education policies in regional development? - What STEM policy elements should educators, political leadership, and the business community adopt to build a technopolis in their community? - How do we recognize STEM policy success?

University Graduate Continuing Fellowship, Graduate School, The University of Texas at Austin (2022 - 2023)

Long Joe and Teresa Graduate Fellowship, College of Education, The University of Texas at Austin (2021 - 2022)

PhD Career Pathways Fellowship, Texas Career Engagement, The University of Texas at Austin (2021 - 2022)

Connect Program Fellowship, RGK Center for Philanthropy and Community Service, The University of Texas at Austin (2021 - 2021)

ISSS General Financial Award, The University of Texas at Austin (2019)

Empowering Teachers through Professional Development Program and Online Learning Community, Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education (SITE), Online (2021)

Mass Customization for MOOC Development: A Case Study, American Educational Research Association (AERA), Online (2021)

Micro:bit Enabled Circuit Blocks: A Modular Approach to Computational Tinkering, Connected Learning Summit (CLS), Online (2021)

MathHappens: Making Math Personal, Connected Learning Summit (CLS), Online (2021)

Addressing a Global Urgent Need for Accessible Professional Development: An Analysis of Massive Open Online Courses for Journalists during the Pandemic, Orbicom International Congress and Meeting, Online (2021)

Using Learning Analytics to Support Teaching and Learning in Higher Education: A Systematic Focused Review of Journal Publications from 2016 to Present, Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE), Online (2020)

Examining a Childs Play Behaviors through Self-Produced Videos on YouTube, UT/AISD Collaborative Research Forum, Austin, TX (2020)

Designing Learning Activities with Cross-National Collaborators through a Virtual World in Higher Education, American Educational Research Association (AERA), Virtual (2020)

Investigating Effective Teaching Practices for MOOC Instructors through a TPACK Lens, Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE), Virtual (2020)

A Foreign Language School Going Online (Case Study), Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT), Virtual (2020)

Bridging Experiences between the UT Campus Makerspace and K-12 Makerspaces in Austin, Texas, Play Make Learn, Madison, WI. (2019)

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