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METALS StudentsMETALS Students Showcase Innovative EdTech at the Festival of Learning in Seoul

In the summer of 2026, six students from our Master of Educational Technology and Applied Learning Sciences (METALS) program in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University attended the Festival of Learning in Seoul, South Korea, where they presented their research at the AIED and ACM Learning @ Scale conferences. Corina Luca Focsan gave an oral presentation evaluating how classroom discourse analysis tools generalize to one-on-one multimodal tutoring. She also presented a Learning @ Scale demo of a mobile app designed to teach art using chat-based interactions and a predict-observe-explain framework. The project was co-authored with two other METALS students, Phoebe Zhang and Monica Xu, who were unable to attend. Additionally, Gaode Gao and Erika Xiang hosted live interactive demos for ASL Master, a webcam-based computer-vision tool designed to scaffold fingerspelling practice for American Sign Language beginners.

The cohort also highlighted how AI and large language models can support learning and teaching. Miina Koyama, Sarah Lim and Teresa Tang hosted a live interactive demo for Prompt Mentor, an AI-powered tutoring system that helps novices master prompt engineering. Furthermore, Miina demonstrated PromptDecipher—co-authored with Ruiwei Xiao (an HCII PhD student) and John Stamper (an HCII associate professor and director of the METALS program)—a system designed to help educators easily author and test AI tutoring chatbots.

Our students had an incredible week exchanging ideas with global edtech leaders, connecting with alumni and showcasing HCII’s pioneering work on the international stage!

norilla-2026NoRILLA Wins Global Competition

Carnegie Mellon HCII researchers won the prestigious global Tools Competition in the Transform category for their mixed-reality educational system, “NoRILLA: AI-Enhanced Hands-On Science Learning.” Developed by Nesra Yannier, Ken Koedinger, and Scott Hudson, the intelligent station bridges physical and virtual worlds to teach critical thinking. The award will help the team integrate new AI features and expand its reach to broader audiences, including partnering with the National Girls Collaborative Project to encourage girls in STEM.

Design TweaksDesign Tweaks That Keep Students LearningNoRILLA Wins Global Competition

Researchers Amy Ogan and Paulo Carvalho in the HCII found that small, psychology-inspired design changes in online tutoring platforms can help students push through their mistakes and keep learning. By testing subtle interface interventions—like an encouraging written prompt and a highlighted visual “nudge”—the study successfully increased student persistence after failure by 11%. The project perfectly demonstrates how learning engineering can merge human-computer interaction and behavioral psychology to change educational outcomes. 

LearnViaCMU Launches Learnvia to Scale AI-Driven Learning Engineering

CMU Launches Learnvia to Scale AI-Driven Learning Engineering
Carnegie Mellon has launched Learnvia, a free, mobile-friendly platform designed to reduce failure rates in gateway college courses. Backed by the Gates Foundation, the initiative integrates interactive activities and on-demand AI tutoring into a structured digital environment built entirely on CMU’s learning science research. By providing educators with real-time data dashboards to target student struggles, Learnvia represents a massive milestone for learning engineering—translating data-driven HCI innovations into real-world student success.

EmpoweringLearningEMPOWERING FUTURES: How Educational Technology is Revolutionizing Africa’s Learning Landscape

EMPOWERING FUTURES: How Educational Technology is Revolutionizing Africa’s Learning Landscape
Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science is partnering with the Mastercard Foundation to support educational technology startups across Africa through incubators that provide training in learning science and product development, aiming to address educational gaps in a rapidly growing continent where technology offers unprecedented opportunities to improve access to quality education.

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