PhD researcher in educational technology

at  KU Leuven

PHD RESEARCHER IN EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY

(ref. BAP-2024-712)
Laatst aangepast: 15/11/24
The Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences at KU Leuven Campus Kulak houses a lot of researchers within the broader topic of Educational Sciences, Methodology, and Psychology.
The Faculty is strongly intertwined with itec, which is a research group of KU Leuven, and imec, Flanders’ high-tech research and innovation hub for nanoelectronics and digital technologies.
Itec conducts interdisciplinary research on the design, development, and evaluation of personalized and adaptive digital solutions, with applications mostly in the domain of technology-enhanced educational and training, but also in media and in health.
Furthermore, the PhD researcher will be part of the Research Unit Education & Training, Center for Instructional Psychology & Technology (CIP&T) , which aims at understanding and improving teaching and learning processes at the microlevel, among others through the integration of educational technology, and of the Jan Palfijn Anatomy Lab of the Faculty of Medicine.
The supervisors of the project are Fien Depaepe, Annelies Raes and Evie Vereecke. Fien Depaepe and Annelies Raes both have a background in educational technology, with a special interest in the instructional design and the evaluation of technology-enhanced learning environments. Evie Vereecke is a professor of anatomy at the Faculty of Medicine at Campus Kulak and has a strong expertise in human anatomy, medical imaging and computational modeling.
Website van de eenheid

INSIDE:INSIGHT is an interdisciplinary project aimed at developing, evaluating and implementing technology-enhanced learning environments within a medical education context. Innovative technologies, such as Mixed (MR), Augmented (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR), together referred to as eXtended Reality (XR), can revolutionize the way we learn and teach, also in the domain of medical education. However, the rapid evolution in this domain has created a gap that has left both learners and educators wondering how to best use these tools in an educational setting. INSIDE:INSIGHT targets this knowledge gap by providing a training network for Doctoral Candidates (PhD students) to make them versed in digital skills in an educational environment, while at the same time conducting research into the development, effectivity, efficiency and usability of technology-enhanced learning environments. The project is composed of 12 project partners spread around nine countries and involves 10 PhD projects.
The current PhD project (DC1) will focus on the educator’s role in virtual learning environments for anatomical and clinical skills training.
This project has the following objectives:
(1) To design guidelines for the development of a teacher dashboard for (individual) VR environments, based on instructional design principles and stakeholders interviews.
(2) To evaluate the impact of debriefing on cognitive and non-cognitive learning outcomes in immersive learning (both in an individual and a collaborative setting).
(3) To investigate the effectiveness of dashboard implementation in providing feedback (both in an individual and collaborative setting).
(4) To develop guidelines for providing effective feedback and facilitating meaningful dialogue when using VR.
You will be responsible for designing and conducting the research and analyzing the results, with a focus on quantitative and qualitative data analysis. You will carry out your research within the interdisciplinary research team itec, at campus Kulak in Kortrijk, and collaborate with the Faculty of Medicine at Kulak, and other project partners. In view of this Horizon Europe project INSIDE:INSIGHT, you are willing to participate in international workshops on a regular basis.
Moreover, you are prepared to do a secondment of several months at three other participating European institutes (TU Graz, Austria; University of Oulu, Finland University of Twente, the Netherlands).
Your research is fundamental in nature with a strong emphasis on theory building. You will publish in scientific journals and present the results of your research at international conferences.
You write a PhD dissertation on this topic and will be supervised by prof. dr. Fien Depaepe, prof. dr. Annelies Raes, and prof. dr. Evie Vereecke.