Professional Biography
Dr. Ocumpaugh has been working in the field of Learning Analytics for over a decade. She is currently serving as the Associate Director of the Penn Center for Learning Analytics, where she uses her prior training in sociolinguistics to better understand both human-to-human and human-to-computer interaction, as well as affective and motivational constructs that are relevant to learning. She is also using this training to help improve issues related to algorithmic fairness.
Dr. Ocumpaugh’s work centers around the development of use of automated detectors of student engagement. She has contributed to the development of several suites of engagement detectors for different learning systems, many of which were developed without sensors using the Baker Rodrigo Ocumpaugh Monitoring Protocol—a method which she helped to formalize using her training in sociolinguistic fieldwork. This method has now been adapted to seven different countries, using culturally sensitive frameworks.
More recently, she has begun to develop and formalize strategies for data-driven classroom interviewing (DDCI). In these studies, previously developed detectors of student affect and engagement-related behaviors are used to trigger in situ interviews with students. In this way, interviews can take place in-the-moment, allowing us to better understand what is driving the student engagement patterns that were captured by the detectors. Ocumpaugh and her colleagues can then use these interviews to develop actionable insights about the detector data.
