Hello! I'm Dr. Lu Lawrence!
I am an Assistant Professor at Utah State University in the Instructional Technologies and Learning Sciences program. As a learning scientist and design researcher, I explore how to include communities in design research to address critical problems of practice, and study how our resulting designs are implemented in communities. My research has been published in venues including the British Journal of Educational Technology, IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies, and Journal of Science Education and Technology and has received recognitions, such as the Best Design Award by the International Conference of the Learning Sciences.
Before joining USU, I was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California Irvine in the School of Education and Carnegie Mellon in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute. I completed my MA and PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the Digital Environment for Learning, Teaching, and Agency program, and hold a BFA in Graphic Design from Iowa State University.
RESEARCH INTERESTS:
Design-Based Research
Design Justice
Participatory Design
Learning Sciences
Collaboration
Educational Technology
GET IN TOUCH!
lu [dot] lawrence [at] usu [dot] edu
CURRENT PROJECTS
REFINING STUDENT THINKING THROUGH RESPONSIVE TEACHING IN SCIENCE CLASSROOMS
In collaboration with middle school educators in Utah, we are co-designing engineering curriculum to enable students to share and refine their thinking through responsive teaching. This project is in collaboraiton with the ASPIRE Engineering Research Center and is funded by the National Science Foundation (1941524).
Collaborators: Dr. Hillary Swanson
PROJECT UNITE:
UNIFIED NETWORKS IN TRANSITION EDUCTION
Project UNITE sets out to improve transition services for neurodivergent students. As part of a research-practice partnership with a Utah-based school district, the purpose of our project is to work in collaboration with general and special education teachers, school counselors, and school administrators to identify how we may unify efforts for transition service delivery.
Collaborator: Dr. Stephen Kwiatek
UNDERSTANDING THE EXPERIENCES OF RURAL COMMUNITY SEXUAL HEALTH EDUCATORS IN UTAH
Our goal in this project is to understand the state of community sex education in rural Utah. Specifically what curriculum and topics are being taught by community sex educators, in which settings is this occurring, best practices, and common pitfalls in conducting sex education programs in rural Utah.
Collaborators: Drs. Cris Meier & Julie Gast
HIGHLIGHTED WORK
BEST DESIGN PAPER.
Lawrence, L., Guo, B., Yang, K., Echeverria, V., Kang, Z., Bathala, V., Li, C., Huang, W., Rummel, N., & Aleven, V. (2022). Process to co-design AI-based orchestration tools to support dynamic transitions: Design narratives through Conjecture Mapping. Paper accepted at the15th Annual Conference on Computer Supported Collaborative Learning. International Society of the Learning Sciences. Hiroshima, Japan. [link] [pdf]
INVITED TALK.
Lawrence, L., (2022). Co-designing AI-based orchestration tools to support dynamic transitions. University of Pittsburgh, Virtual, March 28, 2022.
