When Karen Chen’s now teenage son was in third grade, he would complain that math homework was “boring.” Chen wanted to change his perspective. She presented him with extracurricular math problems and coached him through the most challenging ones. Being a data scientist, she also recorded the sessions and rigorously analyzed the video and audio for insights about his learning experience. One of her key takeaways: Her son rode an emotional roller coaster as he worked through difficult problems. Her attentive tutoring helped him through the confusion and frustration to reach the joy at the end. 

Since the project with her son eight years ago, Chen, an assistant professor in the Department of Information Systems at UMBC, has made learning analytics a pillar of her research. The field seeks to collect and analyze data about students and their environment with the goal of improving learning outcomes. Chen recently won a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award to advance this research with a new project that puts students at the center of learning analytics—not just as subjects who supply data, but also as the designers of analytical tools and users of the insights they provide. 

Chen’s CAREER award marks the 50th time a UMBC faculty member has received the prestigious grant, which the NSF established to support early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as leaders in integrating research and education. 

“I’m really excited about this project,” Chen says. “I love teaching and interdisciplinary research and this is an excellent opportunity to combine them.”

Learning analytics, “for students, by students”

Chen’s Lab for Informatics for Human Flourishing at UMBC is dedicated to using data to improve people’s lives. “I like to center all my research on promoting human flourishing, meaning people are not just surviving, but thriving. I use this concept as a North Star,” explains Chen.

Education is a key pathway to advance human flourishing, Chen says, and she looks forward to improving student learning experiences and outcomes through her CAREER award project.

The project will start by engaging students enrolled in Foundations of Data Science (IS 296), a relatively new undergraduate course at UMBC, introduced by Vandana Janeja, information systems. IS 296 recently became a general education program course at UMBC, open to all majors with no prerequisites. 

Under Chen’s guidance, students in the class will collect data about their lives—how much sleep and exercise they get, how much time they spend talking to friends and family, how stressed they are feeling, and more. They’ll also gather information related to their classes, such as already available data about how often they log into and use the university’s learning management system, Blackboard, and track how much time they spend focusing on classwork (versus, say, becoming distracted by other open tabs on their computers.) The data will be available only to individual students and those they designate as trusted collaborators. 

Students will then work through data science activities, analyzing the information they gathered and seeing if they can gain insights to improve their well-being and academic success. At the same time, they will build a critical competency called self-regulated learning, says Chen.

Based on feedback from the class, Chen will then work with students to design and develop an online platform, called “Live Data Lab,” where a broader student community can find tools to track and analyze their own well-being while learning basic data science concepts and techniques. This platform will also provide opportunities for students to explore creative expression of data through mediums such as digital data stories, data art, data comics, or data memes. 

Left: Jennifer Posada Granados ’21, an incoming Ph.D. student in the human-centered computing program, and Karen Chen look at printed visualizations of data gathered from UMBC students. Right: Chen talks with students, from left to right, Yetunde Okueso, Kara Nguyen, Joy Ware, and Kavin Manivannan. (Marlayna Demond ’11/UMBC)

Chen will test-run the platform with around 500 students, including first-year UMBC students enrolled in a new seminar course offered by Academic Engagement and Transition Programs, as well as students enrolled in UMBC’s Department of Education pre-service teacher preparation programs. The project will also engage students from community college partners such as Montgomery College.  

Empowering students for success

UMBC is an excellent place to conduct the project, Chen says, because it has a culture of promoting student success in its diverse community by empowering students with support and tools. UMBC has also been a leader in learning analytics, already gathering data about how students use its learning management systems to improve students’ learning outcomes, and protecting that data’s privacy, Chen adds. 

“This project would not be possible without the support of the Division of Information Technology, in particular John Fritz and his team, who created the Check-My-Activity tool, a student-facing learning analytics tool that has been in operation in UMBC for more than a decade,” Chen says. The project will also be supported by information systems faculty Andrea Kleinsmith, an expert in human-centered design,and Zhiyuan Chen, an expert in data privacy, Chen adds. 

“The question driving the work is: How can we best center students’ voices and empower them in the data-driven decision-making process?” Chen says. “This project will provide many opportunities for undergraduates and graduate students at UMBC to get involved. Not only will they contribute to the research, but I hope they will also become deeply engaged with their learning and empowered to become better versions of themselves through data, scientific evidence, and reasoning.” 

Susan McDonough, associate professor of history, received a 2024 – 2025 research membership to the Institute for Advanced Studies (IAS) at the School of Historical Studies in Princeton, New Jersey. 

McDonough will join scholars from around the world in one of the leading centers for theoretical historical research. This includes research on the history of medieval, early modern, and modern Europe, the Islamic world, East Asian studies, art history, history of science, and musicology. McDonough will spend the year writing chapters of her forthcoming book about the lives of sex workers in the medieval Mediterranean and sharing her progress in weekly seminars with historians as well as mathematicians, natural scientists, philosophers, and social scientists.

“I am incredibly energized by this opportunity to immerse myself in the archival materials I’ve been gathering concerning sex workers and their communities in the medieval Mediterranean,” she shares. Previously, McDonough earned a 2019 – 2020 National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship to conduct archival research at six Mediterranean Sea ports: Barcelona, Mallorca, and Valencia in Spain; Marseille, France; and Genoa and Palermo, Italy. 

“I tell a story of movement, of community, of connection, and of resistance. Sex workers lived under the threat of forced expulsion and were usually migrants to the towns in which they sold sex,” explains McDonough. “They worked, fought, competed against each other in brothels, and left each other precious belongings in their final wills and testaments.” 

Her research is developing a more inclusive understanding of women’s experiences during this period. “To have the freedom to refine and deepen my ideas in the company of some of the most exciting thinkers, writers, and scholars—many of whose ideas have already been foundational in my conceptualization of this book—is extraordinarily lucky.” 

McDonough is the second faculty member at UMBC to receive an IAS membership. Constantine Vaporis, professor of history, received a 2020 – 2021 IAS membership to work on his upcoming book, Sword and Brush: Portraits of Samurai in Early Modern Japan, 1600 – 1868.

Learn more about UMBC’s history department.

Written by Richard Forno, principal lecturer in computer science and electrical engineering, UMBC

The attempted assassination of Donald Trump on July 13, 2024, added more fuel to an already fiery election season. In this case, political violence was carried out against the party that is most often found espousing it. The incident shows how uncontrollable political violence can be – and how dangerous the current times are for America.

Part of the complication is the contentious and adversarial nature of American politics, of course. But technology makes it more difficult for Americans to understand sudden news developments.

Gone are the days when only a handful of media outlets reported the news to broad swaths of society after rigorous fact-checking by professional journalists.

By contrast, anyone today can “report” news online, provide what they claim is “analysis” of events, and combine fact, fiction, speculation and opinion to fit a desired narrative or political perspective.

Then that perspective is potentially made to seem legitimate by virtue of the poster’s official office, net worth, number of social media followers, or attention from mainstream news organizations seeking to fill news cycles.

And that’s before any mention of convincing deepfake audio and video clips, whose lies and misrepresentations can further sow confusion and distrust online and in society.

Today’s internet-based narratives also often involve personal attacks either directly or through inference and suggestion – what experts call “stochastic terrorism” that can motivate people to violence. Political violence is the inevitable result – and has been for years, including attacks on U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, the 2017 congressional baseball practice shooting, the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection, and now the attempted assassination of a former president running for the White House again.

When bullets and conspiracies fly

As a security and internet researcher it was entirely predictable to me that within minutes of the attack, right-wing social media exploded with instant-reaction narratives that assigned blame to political rivals, the media, or implied that a sinister “inside job” by the federal government was behind the incident.

But it wasn’t just average internet users or prominent business magnates fanning these flames. Several Republicans issued such statements from their official social media accounts. For instance, less than an hour after the attack, Georgia Congressman Mike Collins accused President Joe Biden of “inciting an assassination” and said Biden “sent the orders.” Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, now Trump’s nominee for vice president, also implied that Biden was responsible for the attack.

The bloodied former president stood up and delayed his Secret Service evacuation for a fist-pumping photo before leaving the rally, and his campaign issued a defiant fundraising email later that evening. This led some Trump critics to suggest the incident was a “false flag” attack staged to earn a sympathetic national spotlight. Others claimed the incident fits into Trump’s ongoing messaging to supporters that he’s the victim of persecution.

From a historical perspective, it’s worth noting former Brazil right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro survived an assassination attempt in 2018 to become the country’s next president in 2019.

It’s long been known that internet narratives, memes and content can spread around the world like wildfire well before the actual truth becomes known. Unfortunately, those narratives, whether factual or fictional, can get picked up – and thus given a degree of perceived legitimacy and further disseminated – by traditional news organizations.

Many who see such messages, amplified by both social media and traditional news services, often believe them – and some may respond with political violence or terrorism.

Can anything help?

Several threads of research show that there are some ways regular people can help break this dangerous cycle.

In the immediate aftermath of breaking news, it’s important to remember that first reports often are wrong, incomplete or inaccurate. Rather than rushing to repost things during rapidly developing news events, it’s best to avoid retweeting, reposting or otherwise amplifying online content right away. When information has been confirmed by multiple credible sources, ideally across the political spectrum, then it’s likely safe enough to believe and share.

In the longer term, as a nation and a society, it will be useful to further understand how technology and human tendencies interact. Teaching schoolchildren more about media literacy and critical thinking can help prepare future citizens to separate fact from fiction in a complex world filled with competing information.

Another potential approach is to expand civics and history lessons in school classrooms, to give students the ability to learn from the past and – we can all hope – not repeat its mistakes.

Social media companies are part of the potential solution, too. In recent years, they have disbanded teams meant to monitor content and boost users’ trust in the information available on their platforms. Recent Supreme Court rulings make clear that these companies are free to actively police their platforms for disinformation, misinformation and conspiracy theories if they wish. But companies and purported “free speech absolutists” including X owner Elon Musk, who refuse to remove controversial, though technically legal, internet content from their platforms may well endanger public safety.

Traditional media organizations bear responsibility for objectively informing the public without giving voice to unverified conspiracy theories or misinformation. Ideally, qualified guests invited to news programs will add useful facts and informed opinion to the public discourse instead of speculation. And serious news hosts will avoid the rhetorical technique of “just asking questions” or engaging in “bothsiderism” as ways to move fringe theories – often from the internet – into the news cycle, where they gain traction and amplification.

The public has a role, too.

Responsible citizens could focus on electing officials and supporting political parties that refuse to embrace conspiracy theories and personal attacks as normal strategies. Voters could make clear that they will reward politicians who focus on policy accomplishments, not their media imagery and social media follower counts.

That could, over time, deliver the message that the spectacle of modern internet political narratives generally serve no useful purpose beyond sowing social discord and degrading the ability of government to function – and potentially leading to political violence and terrorism.

Understandably, these are not instant remedies. Many of these efforts will take time – potentially even years – and money and courage to accomplish.

Until then, maybe Americans can revisit the golden rule – doing onto others what we would have them do unto us. Emphasizing facts in the news cycle, integrity in the public square, and media literacy in our schools seem like good places to start as well.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article and see more than 250 UMBC articles available in The Conversation.