Mengxi Zhou

@zhoum56.bsky.social

It's the ISLS Annual Meeting time! I will be presenting two pieces of my dissertation work on Wednesday at ISLS 2026. This time last year, I had just completed data collection, so it feels meaningful now to share this work. I look forward to learning from many inspiring scholars!

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Spring 2026 teaching evaluations are out. I was nervous to check them because this semester was so busy. I’m grateful to have concluded my fourth semester of teaching with a 5/5 evaluation as an outstanding instructor. Feeling thankful! :)

PhD is done with an independent DBR dissertation, one 1st author journal in Cognition and Instruction, one 1st author journal in ILS, nine 1st author ISLS papers, and more... I think I did my best. Deeply grateful to @jdanish.bsky.social for his support and to to everyone who supported me.

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I attended the Indiana University Graduate School 2026 Award Ceremony for a small grant I received to support my dissertation work. IU’s campus is so beautiful this time of year!

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A beautiful sunny day in Bloomington today. I was glad to hold class outside and capture a few lovely moments with my students. I had wanted to do this for the past four semesters, but the weather never worked out quite right. Today was just wonderful. 😊

I won’t be attending AERA in person, but I recommend the Friday 9:45 a.m. PST structured poster session, “How Data Science Education Can Enable Exploration of Real-World Phenomena.” My poster shares one piece of my dissertation on a humanistic approach to elementary data science through embodiment.

When I was in self-doubt about the value of my dissertation, I received notifications today that one part of my dissertation was accepted as a long paper at the International Conference of the Learning Sciences, and another methodological poster was accepted as it is too!

This paper started from my AERA 2022 paper (my first research idea since I joined IU). It accompanied me through coursework, qualify exam, dissertation proposal defense, and data collection. Thank you so much to @morganavickery.bsky.social @jdanish.bsky.social. The entire STEP team is amazing!

Joshua Danish@jdanish.bsky.social · last yr.

Excited to share this new article co-authored with @zhoum56.bsky.social and @morganavickery.bsky.social: “Goals in Motion: How Emergent Embodied Goals Support Elementary Students’ Mechanistic Reasoning in Collaborative Modeling Activities" www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

#AERA24 Sat, April 13, 1:15 pm, Pennsylvania Convention Center, Floor: Level 200, Exhibit Hall A "Exploring Students' Divergent Interpretations While Studying Ecosystems in an Embodied Mixed-Reality Environment (Poster 36)