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Regular version of the site

Meeting with Dr. Rene F. Kizilce

On October 23, 2017, at one of the ongoing research SESL seminars, we had a meeting with Dr. Rene F. Kizilcec of Stanford University. He is the director of the Digital Learning Research Stanford University and a co-founder of the interdisciplinary Lytic Lab.

Dr. Kizilcec got his Bachelor's degree in 2011, and since then he has published his papers in such highly cited journals as Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Journal of Educational Psychology, Computers in Human Behavior, and Computers & Education. He presented results of his research at a number of prestigious conferences.His studies are focused on socio-cultural and psychological factors that affect online learning: how psychological barriers hinder academic progress; various strategies of self-regulation; and their different efficacy for different cultures.At our seminar, Rene told us about his recent research on interventions aimed at increasing the involvement of the MOOCs students and reducing their drop-out during the course of studies. According to Kizilcec and his co-authors, one of the important factors that causes MOOCs students to drop out is a stereotype threat (risk of conforming to their social stereotype). It is a psychological phenomenon that, in some situations, makes people feel that the others judge them by a negative stereotype commonly attached to their social group, and because of this they start worrying about doing something that might reinforce this stereotypical image. Most often this happens in situations that a person perceives as important, e.g. a test, or an exam.An overwhelming majority of online courses developed in leading universities of the world are taught in English. Students from developing countries may feel uncomfortable in this environment, both due to language differences, and due to cultural differences; students may perceive that such courses are aimed at a different audience.Studies on social psychology suggest a number of ways to combat the negative stereotype threat. For example, students may compensate their shortcomings in some areas by their strong sides in other fields. Kizilcec and his co-authors conducted an experiment in which students from China were offered different questions: one group was receiving questions related to the course program, and the questions posed to the other group were related to their life and family values. It was found out that the end course grades were substantially higher in the second group.At the end of the seminar Rene also told us that his group was trying to publish results of these studies in several journals on psychology but their paper got rejected; eventually, they published their findings in Science.