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Professional Development

Professional Development Statement

My professional goal is to be an educational researcher and practitioner. My short-term goals include:

  • Expand my theoretical knowledge in the large field of LDT, meanwhile have a thorough understanding of my research topics of reflection, group learning, and reflection in group settings.

  • Actively engage in research projects to practice project management and collaboration with other researchers. 

  • Improve my communication skills, including verbal presentations and written manuscripts. 

  • Practice and take part in writing research proposals and grant proposals.

Research project: SAVE4Children

I started my doctoral study with the privilege of being connected with an international research project, Scenario-based Authentic Virtual Environment (SAVE) for Children: Child Pedestrian Traffic Safety Education (SAVE4Children) project. I participated in this project during my final year of my master's program at Central China Normal University. I was involved in this project as a graduate volunteer who had the honor to work with and learn from LDT faculty, Dr. Choi, and graduate students. I had the privilege of working in an international research team, participating in a complete research study, practicing data analysis, and writing manuscripts under the guidance of awesome scholars. Sometimes I joke with my advisor Dr. Choi, my final graduate year in China is like my pre-doctoral program. It was an intensive and valuable learning experience for me.

 

As a result, from the day I began my doctoral study, I already had some working and research experience in this project. More importantly, this project provides a fertile ground for my research inquiry. I appreciate this opportunity very much.

 

In my first-year study at the LDT program, I did not participate in many projects but was deeply involved in SAVE4Children project. Throughout my first year, I worked with my research team on a variety of tasks, including:

  • Planning for an international research experiment, include developing a data collection protocol, a research volunteer training protocol, and preparing research sites.

  • Offering a one-week research training workshop for 25 graduate students at Central China Normal University.

  • Coordinating a large-scale research experiment, which involved 169 child participants, tens of teachers and government officers, and 30 graduate researchers.

  • Organizing and analyzing data, and reporting data analysis results.

  • Writing and co-writing manuscripts.

  • Presenting at an international symposium on child pedestrian safety education in Daegu, South Korea.

  • Writing research proposals and getting accepted in 2020 AECT.

 

Currently, our research team is working on analyzing data and writing manuscripts for the study we conducted last December in China.

Publications during doctoral study

  1. Yang, T. & Choi, I. (2021, under review). Reflection as a social phenomenon: A conceptual framework toward group reflection research. submitted to Educational Technology Research and Development.

  2. Yang, T., Luo, H., & Choi, I. (2021, in progress). Exploring children’s behaviors and perceived experience in a VR-based collaborative learning environment.

  3. Luo, H., Yang, T., Kwon, S., Li, G., Zuo, M., & Choi, I. (2021). Performing versus observing: Investigating the effectiveness of group debriefing in a VR-Based safety education program. Computers & Education, 175, 104316. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2021.104316

  4. Yang, T., Luo, H., & Sun, D. (2020). Investigating the combined effects of group size and group composition in online discussion. Active Learning in Higher Education, 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1177/1469787420938524 

  5. Luo, H., Yang, T., Kwon, S., Zuo, M., Li, W., & Choi, I. (2020). Using virtual reality to identify and modify risky pedestrian behaviors amongst Chinese children. Traffic injury prevention, 21(1), 108-113.​ https://doi.org/10.1080/
    15389588.2019.1694667 

Presentations

  1. Yang, T., Choi, I., Luo, H., Zuo, M., Li, W., & Kwon, S. (2020, November). Using virtual reality to identify and modify risky pedestrian behaviors amongst Chinese children. Paper presented at the annual conference of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT’2020), Jacksonville, Fl, United States (Virtual Conference).

  2. Yang, T., Luo, H., & Choi, I. (2020, November). Exploring children’s behaviors and their perceived experiences in a collaborative reflection environment: Focusing on group debriefing on their VR-based pedestrian experience. Round-table session presented at the annual conference of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT’2020), Jacksonville, Fl, United States (Virtual Conference).

  3. Yang, T. (2019, December). Child Pedestrian Education: Trends in China. Present at 2019 RAIL International Symposium on Child Pedestrian Safety Education, Daegu, Korea. 

  4. Yang, T. (2019, October). The Impact of Discussion Group Formation on Online Case-Based Instruction: A Quasi-Experiment Research. Paper presented as a poster at the annual conference of the Association for Educational Communications & Technology (AECT’2019), Las Vegas, NV.

  5. SAVE4Children Group (2019, October). A scenario-based authentic virtual environment for children’s pedestrian safety education program (SAVE4Children): Its design, implementation, and potential impacts. The invited presentation offered in the D&D Awardees Session at the annual conference of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology, Las Vegas, NV.

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