List of publications
Conference articles
Long Paper: “I Guess it Makes Me Feel Better About Myself”: High-Achievement of Adolescent Girls in Middle School
Bernice d’Anjou, Sophie Derman and Carol Gilligan (2025)
This research explores how high-achieving middle school girls see themselves as learners and how academic performance shapes their sense of self. Aiming to provide a nuanced understanding of the stresses, pressures, and coping strategies these girls experience, the study uses the Listening Guide method, a feminist, qualitative, voice-centered approach to discovery through listening. Data include multiple interviews with 19 high-achieving middle school girls from a large city in the northeastern United States, highlighting four key narratives. The findings contribute to the larger academic discourse on the extreme levels of daily stresses these girls experience and adds novel insights to how it affects their sense of self as learners, the coping mechanisms they adopt, and the impact of rigidly adhering to a high-achieving identity.
Long Paper: Students Reasoning About Bias and Ethics When Designing Human Subjects Research Studies
Camillia Matuk, Bernice d’Anjou, Pranali Mansukhani, Julie Rissman, Felicia Zerwas, Franck Porteous, Kim Burgas, Yury Shevchenko, Suzanne Dikker (2025)
This research explores how high-achieving middle school girls see themselves as learners and how academic performance shapes their sense of self. Aiming to provide a nuanced understanding of the stresses, pressures, and coping strategies these girls experience, the study uses the Listening Guide method, a feminist, qualitative, voice-centered approach to discovery through listening. Data include multiple interviews with 19 high-achieving middle school girls from a large city in the northeastern United States, highlighting four key narratives. The findings contribute to the larger academic discourse on the extreme levels of daily stresses these girls experience and adds novel insights to how it affects their sense of self as learners, the coping mechanisms they adopt, and the impact of rigidly adhering to a high-achieving identity.
d’Anjou, B., Derman, S., & Gilligan, C. (2025). “I Guess it Makes Me Feel Better About Myself”: High-Achievement of Adolescent Girls in Middle School. In Rajala, A., Cortez, A., Hofmann, R., Jornet, A., Lotz-Sisitka, H., & Markauskaite, L. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 19th International Conference of the Learning Sciences - ICLS 2025 (pp. 368-376). International Society of the Learning Sciences. https://doi.org/10.22318/icls2025.644173
References
Matuk, C., d’Anjou, B., Mansukhani, P., Rissman, J., Zerwas, F., Porteous, F., Burgas, K., Shevchenko, Y., & Dikker, S. (2025). Students Reasoning About Bias and Ethics When Designing Human Subjects Research Studies. In Rajala, A., Cortez, A., Hofmann, R., Jornet, A., Lotz-Sisitka, H., & Markauskaite, L. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 19th International Conference of the Learning Sciences - ICLS 2025 (pp. 1025-1033). International Society of the Learning Sciences. https://doi.org/10.22318/icls2025.317593
Short Paper: High Achievement in Middle School: Is it a Blessing or a Curse for Adolescent Girls and Their Relationship with Themselves as Learners?
Bernice d’Anjou, Camillia Matuk and Carol Gilligan (2024)
This research explores how high-achieving middle school girls see themselves as learners and how academic performance shapes their sense of self. Aiming to provide a nuanced understanding of the stresses, pressures, and coping strategies these girls experience, the study uses the Listening Guide method, a feminist, qualitative, voice-centered approach to discovery through listening. Data include multiple interviews with 19 high-achieving middle school girls from a large city in the northeastern United States, highlighting four key narratives. The findings contribute to the larger academic discourse on the extreme levels of daily stresses these girls experience and adds novel insights to how it affects their sense of self as learners, the coping mechanisms they adopt, and the impact of rigidly adhering to a high-achieving identity.
d’Anjou, B., Matuk, C., & Gilligan, C. (2024). High Achievement in Middle School: Is it a Blessing or a Curse for Adolescent Girls and Their Relationship with Themselves as Learners?. In Lindgren, R., Asino, T. I., Kyza, E. A., Looi, C. K., Keifert, D. T., & Suárez, E. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 18th International Conference of the Learning Sciences - ICLS 2024 (pp. 1478-1481). International Society of the Learning Sciences. https://doi.org/10.22318/icls2024.729318
References
Short Paper: Tools to Support High School Students' Creativity in Scientific Research: Creativity Support Tools for Research
Camillia Matuk, Bernice d’Anjou, Pranali Mansukhani, Franck Porteous, Kim Burgas, Felicia Zerwas, Yury Shevchenko, Suzanne Dikker (2024)
As a creative endeavor, scientific research requires inspiration, innovation, exploration, and divergent thinking. Yet, in K-12 settings, it is often viewed as rigid and formulaic. MindHive is a web-based platform designed to facilitate student-teacher-scientist partnerships in research on human behavior. Features support research phases (e.g., question finding, study design, peer review, iteration), and their creative dimensions, including exploration, expressiveness, collaboration, and enjoyment. Interviews with teachers and students who used MindHive show how learners describe their experiences as creative agents. This work illustrates how educational technologies can broaden STEM participation by being authentic to methodical and creative aspects of STEM research.
Matuk, C., d'Anjou, B., Mansukhani, P., Porteous, F., Burgas, K., Zerwas, F., Shevchenko, Y., & Dikker, S. (2024). Tools to Support High School Students' Creativity in Scientific Research: Creativity Support Tools for Research Proceedings of the 23rd Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference, Delft, the Netherlands. https://doi.org/10.1145/3628516.3659369
References
Short Paper: Unpacking Instructors’ Analytics Use: Two Distinct Profiles for Informing Teaching
Qiujie Li, Yeonji Jung, Bernice d’Anjou, Alyssa Friend Wise (2022)
This study addresses the gap in knowledge about differences in how instructors use analytics to inform teaching by examining the ways that thirteen college instructors engaged with a set of university-provided analytics. Using multiple walk-through interviews with the instructors and qualitative inductive coding, two profiles of instructor analytics use were identified that were distinct from each other in terms of the goals of analytics use, how instructors made sense of and took actions upon the analytics, and the ways that ethical concerns were conceived. Specifically, one group of instructors used analytics to help students get aligned to and engaged in the course, whereas the other group used analytics to align the course to meet students’ needs. Instructors in both profiles saw ethical questions as central to their learning analytics use, with instructors in one profile focusing on transparency and the other on student privacy and agency. These findings suggest the need to view analytics use as an integrated component of instructor teaching practices and envision complementary sets of technical and pedagogical support that can best facilitate the distinct activities aligned with each profile.
Best Short
Paper Award
References
Li, Q., Jung, Y., d’Anjou, B., & Wise, A. F. (2022). Unpacking Instructors’ Analytics Use: Two Distinct Profiles for Informing Teaching. In LAK22: 12th International Learning Analytics and Knowledge Conference (pp. 528-534). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 528–534. https://doi.org/10.1145/3506860.3506905
Long Paper: The Connected Qualities of Design Thinking and Maker Education practices in Early Education: A Narrative Review
Annemiek Veldhuis, Bernice d'Anjou, Tilde Bekker, Ioanna Garefi, Panagiota Digkoglou, Georgia Safouri, Silvia Remotti, Emer Beamer Cronin, Madalina Bouros (2021)
Design Thinking (DT) and Maker Education (ME) are fairly new approaches that aim to equip students with skills for the 21st century. As DT and ME both involve a design process, these might be combined. To guide design processes that aim to combine DT and ME in early education, we review 28 formal and non-formal educational practices aimed at children 8 to 14 years old that have incorporated DT or ME over the past 10 years. We analyse their qualities in terms of their Objectives, Learning Activities, the Teacher’s Role, and Assessment Activities. From our findings, we develop an overview that showcases the connections between these qualities within the selected practices. We found that not all components were aligned well. Therefore, we outline the DT and ME Curriculum Blueprint, a tool aimed to support reflection on the alignment between these components in the development of DT and ME practices in early education.
Veldhuis, A., d'Anjou, B., Bekker, T., Garefi, I., Digkoglou, P., Safouri, G., Remotti, S., Beamer Cronin, E., & Bouros, M. (2021). The Connected Qualities of Design Thinking and Maker Education practices in Early Education: A narrative review. In Proceedings of 5th FabLearn Europe / MakeEd Conference 2021 Article 3466729 (ACM International Conference Proceeding Series). Association for Computing Machinery, Inc. https://doi.org/10.1145/3466725.3466729
References
Long Paper: The TA Framework: Designing Real-time Teaching Augmentation for K-12 Classrooms
Pengcheng An, Kenneth Holstein, Bernice d'Anjou, Berry Eggen, Saskia Bakker (2020)
Recently, the HCI community has seen increased interest in the design of teaching augmentation (TA): tools that extend and complement teachers' pedagogical abilities during ongoing classroom activities. Examples of TA systems are emerging across multiple disciplines, taking various forms: e.g., ambient displays, wearables, or learning analytics dashboards. However, these diverse examples have not been analyzed together to derive more fundamental insights into the design of teaching augmentation. Addressing this opportunity, we broadly synthesize existing cases to propose the TA framework. Our framework specifies a rich design space in five dimensions, to support the design and analysis of teaching augmentation. We contextualize the framework using existing designs cases, to surface underlying design trade-offs: for example, balancing actionability of presented information with teachers' needs for professional autonomy, or balancing unobtrusiveness with informativeness in the design of TA systems. Applying the TA framework, we identify opportunities for future research and design.
An, P., Holstein, K., d'Anjou, B., Eggen, B., & Bakker, S. (2020). The TA Framework: Designing Real-time Teaching Augmentation for K-12 Classrooms Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Honolulu, HI, USA. https://doi.org/10.1145/3313831.3376277
References
Long Paper: How Peripheral Data Visualisation Systems Support Secondary School Teachers during VLE-Supported Lessons
Bernice d'Anjou, Saskia Bakker, Pengcheng An, Tilde Bekker (2019)
Through the integration of technology-enhanced learning (TEL) in the classrooms, there is an increase in Virtual Learning Environment-supported classes in secondary schools, which brings unintentional complexities in terms of monitoring for teachers [25]. To support secondary school teachers during VLE-supported lessons, a peripheral data visualisation system was designed and implemented in a three-week field study. Both qualitative and quantitative data were gathered and analysed through methodological triangulation in order to get an in-depth understanding about the use of the system by teachers. The key findings from our study were that the peripheral data visualisation tool, by being a distributed, highly visible system, was well integrated in the teachers' practice. The peripheral visualisation served as a trigger for teacher interventions where the teacher could confront the student's level of concentration and provide support when a student needs it. Furthermore, by offloading the secondary tasks of checking the students' level of concentration and progress to the visualisation, most teachers experienced more peace of mind and space to manage their primary teaching practice. Lastly, approximately 95% of 89 students experienced the data visualisation as neutral or motivating, while 5.7% of the students experienced violation of privacy by this medium.
d'Anjou, B., Bakker, S., An, P., & Bekker, T. (2019). How Peripheral Data Visualisation Systems Support Secondary School Teachers during VLE-Supported Lessons Proceedings of the 2019 on Designing Interactive Systems Conference, San Diego, CA, USA. https://doi.org/10.1145/3322276.3322365
References
Long Paper: Developing an Online Authoring Tool to Support Teachers in Designing 21st Century Design Based Education in Primary School
Tilde Bekker, Ruurd Taconis, Saskia Bakker, Bernice d’Anjou (2019)
Design Based learning (DBL) as an educational approach which is emerging in primary education. Because of the limited availability of prescribed teaching materials for DR, learning activities are often developed by instructors themselves. However, it is often difficult for teachers to develop DBL activities. The paper investigates how primary school teachers can be supported in developing successful DR learning activities, in which pupils can develop both core curriculum objectives and 21st century skills. The research questions are: How can teachers be supported in the design of DBL activities aimed at concrete learning objectives? Are teachers able to apply the DBL creation tool as intended; to follow the design strategy offered, to reflect on the DBL activities using the tool and to improve the design iteratively? Are teachers able to successfully develop DBL learning activities using the tool?
The paper describes the development of a tool that supports primary school teachers in creating DBL teaching materials. A web-based tool has been realized iteratively by means of design research. The resulting supports the teachers in developing 21st century education and encourages the teacher to reflect, even if it does not yet produce complete teaching materials for the classroom. However, in order to be effective in promoting DBL, there is a need to integrate the underlying concepts of DBL (such as incorporating design generations into the course material) even more extensively into the tool and to supplement it with an explicit pedagogical strategy and concrete assessment procedures.
Bekker, T., Taconis, R., Bakker, S., & d’Anjou, B. (2019). Developing an online authoring tool to support teachers in designing 21st century design based education in primary school. In B. M. McLaren, R. Reilly, S. Zvacek, & J. Uhomoibhi (Eds.), Computer Supported Education - 10th International Conference, CSEDU 2018, Revised Selected Papers (pp. 142-165). (Communications in Computer and Information Science; Vol. 1022). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21151-6_8
References
Journal articles
Examining theory use in design research on fantasy play
Helle Marie Skovbjerg, Tilde Bekker, Bernice d’Anjou, Aakash Johry, Keila Kari Perez Quinones (2022)
Play is an essential activity in children’s lives. In the Child Computer Interaction (CCI) field, many authors refer to play and play theories when they describe their work. Play theories can come from many different disciplines, such as psychology, sociology and learning sciences. Theories from different disciplines can provide interpretations and inspiration sources when designing for play. In this study, we explore what theory clusters authors use and how they are used when design researchers report on design work for fantasy play. Based on 19 artefact-centred papers from the ACM digital library from the period 1999–2018, we analyse four components of reported theory use: design intention, design argumentation, design decisions and design evaluation. This paper provides a list of theory clusters that designers report on, showing that different clusters also indicate different conceptualisations of play. Furthermore, it describes three common strategies of theory cluster use: for contextualising the value of play, for highlighting the outcome of play and using design cases as ‘theory’ for supporting making design decisions. The paper concludes by providing reflective questions about how to report on the use of theory in designing for fantasy play. The questions can be used in order for future work in the Child Computer Interaction community to be precise and transparent about theory use in order to make it easier to build upon each other’s work.
Skovbjerg, H. M., Bekker, M. M., d'Anjou, B., Johry, A., & Perez Quinones, K. (2022). Examining theory use in design research on fantasy play. International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction, 32, Article 100400. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijcci.2021.100400
References
List of presentations
d’Anjou, B. (2025, June). “I Guess it Makes Me Feel Better About Myself”: High-Achievement of Adolescent Girls in Middle School. The 19th International Conference of the Learning Sciences - ICLS 2025, Helsinki, Finland.
d’Anjou, B. (2024, October). High Achievement in Middle School: Is it a Blessing or a Curse for Adolescent Girls and Their Relationship with Themselves as Learners? Educational Communication and Technology Brown Bag Presentation, Brooklyn, NY, United States.
d’Anjou, B. (2024, June). High Achievement in Middle School: Is it a Blessing or a Curse for Adolescent Girls and Their Relationship with Themselves as Learners?. The 18th International Conference of the Learning Sciences - ICLS 2024, Buffalo, NY, United States.
Li, Q. & d’Anjou, B. (2022, February). Unpacking Instructors’ Analytics Use: Two Distinct Profiles for Informing Teaching. The 12th International Learning Analytics and Knowledge Conference 2022, Online.
d’Anjou, B. (2019, June). How Peripheral Data Visualisation Systems Support Secondary School Teachers during VLE-Supported Lessons. Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2019, San Diego, CA, United States.