Quantifying Constructivist Learning in Studio-Based Education

Data science methods that quantify learning in design studio education — measuring cognitive breakthroughs, engagement, and teaching effectiveness during live critiques.

Headline result: Live-critique learning signals quantified.

Papers: 7
Years: 2021–2026
Co-authors: 6

Overview

Design education is fundamentally different from traditional instruction — learning happens through making, critiquing, and iterating, not through tests. We develop data science methods that quantify these learning moments in real-time, giving educators and students objective insight into creative development.

Research Focus

Measuring Cognitive Breakthroughs — NLP and speech analysis that detect breakthrough moments in recorded studio sessions, quantifying their frequency, depth, and context.
Engagement & Learning Quality Analysis — Multi-modal signals (speech patterns, interaction turns, topic shifts) that identify conditions correlating with high-quality learning outcomes.
Student–Mentor Interaction Modeling — Analysis of scaffolding dynamics that identifies effective coaching patterns to improve critique structure and mentor training.

Applications

For Educators — Session-level dashboards showing which students are disengaged, which topics generate confusion, and where critiques most effectively generate learning.
For Students — Personalized learning path analysis understanding individual growth trajectories based on objective behavioral signals rather than subjective grades.

Impact

Methods validated in live architecture and industrial design studios at Israeli universities. The framework is generalizable to other constructivist disciplines — law clinics, medical simulations, and project-based STEM education.

In plain words

Explainers of this line's papers for readers outside the field.

Design education How a design critique sounds In the design studio, students learn in critiques: short conversations with a tutor about their work. With Hadas Sopher and John Gero, we use language models...

People on this line

The 6 most frequent of 6 co-authors on this line since 2021.

Ranked by joint papers in this line. The bar under each name spans their years on it, 2021 to 2026. Everyone on the Lab page

Papers

7 publications, newest first.

All publications

2026

Learning through Concept Generation: The Case of Academic and Practitioner Teaching in the Design Engineering Studio

Hadas Sopher, Chen Hajaj, and John S Gero

ConferenceProceedings of the International Conference on Design, Computing and Cognition (DCC 2026)

Whether engineering design should be taught by academic or practitioner tutors remains a debatable topic. This paper examines this debate by comparing design learning behaviours through concept introduction in design engineering critiques given by academic and practitioner tutors. Taking a syntactic approach, the study applies natural language processing techniques to track the generation of design concepts, identified by the first occurrence of nouns and their reoccurrences by each speaker in each session. The tutor’s first occurrences reflect her demonstration. Once repeated by a student, they reflect learning through imitation. These learning behaviours are further examined by analysing the semantic distance between students’ and tutors’ concepts, reflecting convergence of conceptual alignment through semantic proximity. The method is demonstrated by analysing the protocols of a natural case study involving two groups (n = 30) across five consecutive sessions. Results revealed differences between the cohorts. Academic-taught students exhibit a higher rate of first occurrences, compared to practitioner-taught students. While tutors showed similarity in repeating students’ concepts, students’ imitation of academic tutors was at a higher rate compared to that of practitioner tutors. Practitioner tutors drifted further distant from student concepts, whereas students in both groups maintained a semantic proximity to their tutors, reflecting the role of the tutor in leading the educational process. Temporal analysis revealed a decrease in semantic distance throughout the course, indicating greater alignment. This study lays the foundation for articulating critique pedagogies empirically to improve learning behaviours in studio-based education.
```
@inproceedings{sopher2026learning_dcc,
  author = {Sopher, Hadas and Hajaj, Chen and Gero, John S},
  title = {Learning through Concept Generation: The Case of Academic and Practitioner Teaching in the Design Engineering Studio},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the International Conference on Design, Computing and Cognition (DCC 2026)},
  year = {2026},
  month = jun,
  address = {Paris, France},
  month_numeric = {6}
}
```

2025

Sentiment Analysis of Student-Tutor Interactions in VR Design Crits

Hadas Sopher, Chen Hajaj, and John S Gero

ConferenceThe Association for Computer-Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia (CAADRIA) CORE C

DOI Explainer

This research evaluates the effectiveness of using immersive VR media in tutor-student interactions in design studio crits as they progress by generating new concepts. Crit interactions, a core educational component in design education, encourage learner-centredness in concept generation. However, the interaction is often tutor-centric, resulting in sentiments that may hinder participation. Immersive VR media offer a new opportunity for design crits to interact at a tangible real-scale display of the design, potentially altering participants’ sentiments. Research lacks evidence on the cognitive effect of this high-end technology on design learning. This gap produces limitations: assessing the effectiveness of immersive media to improve concept generation and understanding the role of sentiments in this process. We conducted a natural experiment comparing crits given to ten students in immersive and non-immersive media. We then employed natural language processing techniques to measure the distribution and temporal distribution of new concepts generated within either positive or negative sentiment for each medium. Findings exhibit significant differences in concept generation per sentiment within the medium used, with a higher rate of concepts in immersive VR. These demonstrate its role in enhancing stimuli to support learner ideation and advance design studio education.
```
@inproceedings{sopher2025sentiment,
  doi = {10.52842/conf.caadria.2025.1.429},
  title = {Sentiment Analysis of Student-Tutor Interactions in VR Design Crits},
  author = {Sopher, Hadas and Hajaj, Chen and Gero, John S},
  year = {2025},
  booktitle = {The Association for Computer-Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia (CAADRIA)}
}
```

2024

Exploring the Role of Sentiment in Tutor-Student Interaction. The Case Study of CS and Architecture Formative Studio Critiques

Hadas Sopher, Chen Hajaj, and John S Gero

Conference2024 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE) CORE C

DOI Explainer

This work-in-progress research presents a novel approach to assessing tutor-student interactions in design studio critiques, thereby advancing studio assessment methodologies. Following constructivist theories, students learn by practicing professional design behaviors. They introduce new concepts and progress according to the tutor’s feedback and demonstration. Despite their principal role, critique interactions are often tutor-centric and ambiguous, resulting in negative sentiments that may hinder participation. Current methods measure solely learners’ performance of design practices while neglecting the cognitive actions involved, such as the learner’s sentiment. This gap limits assessing the effectiveness of the interaction. In this study, we measure the effect of sentiment on introducing new design concepts, identified as first occurrences (FOs). We demonstrate the approach in two natural case studies comprising six critiques of three CS students and three Architecture students. NLP algorithms are developed to quantify the distribution of FOs generated by students and tutors within positive and negative sentiment environments. Changes in the sentiment throughout critiques measure the temporal role of sentiment in generating FOs. Observations exhibit differences in sentiment between CS and Architecture students. In both courses, more learner-centric FOs occurred in a positive sentiment environment. Using explicit assessment methods opens new possibilities for establishing real-time feedback systems, leading studio-based education to its next step in reshaping constructivist pedagogy.
```
@inproceedings{sopher2024wip,
  title = {Exploring the Role of Sentiment in Tutor-Student Interaction. The Case Study of CS and Architecture Formative Studio Critiques},
  author = {Sopher, Hadas and Hajaj, Chen and Gero, John S},
  booktitle = {2024 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)},
  pages = {1--4},
  year = {2024},
  organization = {IEEE},
  doi = {10.1109/fie61694.2024.10893114}
}
```

Exploring Student Perspectives of the Impact of VR in ESP

Brigitta R. Schvarcz and Chen Hajaj

WorkshopTESOL

@inproceedings{schvarcz2024exploring,
  title = {Exploring Student Perspectives of the Impact of VR in ESP},
  author = {Schvarcz, Brigitta R. and Hajaj, Chen},
  booktitle = {TESOL},
  year = {2024}
}

2023

Online Temporary Learning Groups in Higher Education–Interactions, Compensation, and Maximisation of Achievements in an Israeli Case Study

Uzi Ben-Shalom, Chen Hajaj, Nitza Davidovich, and Corinne Berger

JournalJournal of Education Culture and Society SJR Q1

DOI

Thesis. This article provides an analysis of online social interactions in two online Temporary Learning Groups (TLG) and their correlates with both pre-admissions scores and academic achievements. Concept. The function of Social Networking Systems (SNS) use on academic achievements is most often indirectly assessed through surveying attitudes of students and teachers. Contrary to this approach, we directly assessed the content on a TLG and paired it with objective admission scores and academic achievements. Results and conclusion. The results reveal that the content of the discussions on the TLGs is practical, immediate, and focuses on the allocation of information required for academic achievements. The users of the TLGs are usually students with lower admission scores and academic achievements. They use these platforms as a compensating mechanism to improve their achievements. In addition, some of the TLG users serve as maximising agents of other students’ achievements. TLGs’ implications for teaching, class-attendance and level of schooling must be recognised by teachers. Originality. While researchers focus on the presence of SNSs in class and its hampering of schooling by multitasking the effect of TLG activity must also be addressed.
```
@article{ben2023online,
  title = {Online Temporary Learning Groups in Higher Education--Interactions, Compensation, and Maximisation of Achievements in an Israeli Case Study},
  author = {Ben-Shalom, Uzi and Hajaj, Chen and Davidovich, Nitza and Berger, Corinne},
  journal = {Journal of Education Culture and Society},
  volume = {14},
  number = {1},
  pages = {619--633},
  year = {2023},
  doi = {10.15503/jecs2023.1.619.633}
}
```

2022

Selected: Patterns of Activity in Temporary Digital Learning Groups and Their Correlation with Academic Achievement Among University Students in an Israeli University

Corinne Berger, Uzi Ben‐Shalom, Chen Hajaj, and Nitza Davidovich

JournalSocial Issues in Israel

DOI

@article{berger2022patterns,
  author = {Berger, Corinne and Ben‐Shalom, Uzi and Hajaj, Chen and Davidovich, Nitza},
  title = {Patterns of Activity in Temporary Digital Learning Groups and Their Correlation with Academic Achievement Among University Students in an Israeli University},
  journal = {Social Issues in Israel},
  year = {2022},
  doi = {10.26351/siii/31-2/7},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.26351/siii/31-2/7}
}

2021

Online Temporary Learning Groups in Higher Education: Interactions, Compensation, and Maximization of Achievements in an Israeli Case Study

Uzi Ben-Shalom, Chen Hajaj, Nitza Davidovich, and Corinne Berger

ConferenceThe 1st International e-Conference on Teacher Education. Generation Next: Perspectives, Opportunities and Challenges

@inproceedings{benshalom2021online,
  title = {Online Temporary Learning Groups in Higher Education: Interactions, Compensation, and Maximization of Achievements in an Israeli Case Study},
  author = {Ben-Shalom, Uzi and Hajaj, Chen and Davidovich, Nitza and Berger, Corinne},
  booktitle = {The 1st International e-Conference on Teacher Education. Generation Next: Perspectives, Opportunities and Challenges},
  year = {2021}
}

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