The Gidget (Gender Inclusive Design, Game, and Educational Technology) Lab is a research group in the Department of Informatics at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, devoted to research on building, testing, and improving educational technologies to increase participation in STEM. It is directed by Michael J. Lee.

Research Areas

Our research focuses on projects exploring new technologies for people to interact and learn (especially online). Our current research addresses the following problem areas:

• Teaching STEM online at scale. How can we make current and future technologies for learning more engaging for a wide-range of learners (while showing measurable learning gains)? Can we achieve this online, without human teacher intervention?
• Increasing participation and diversity in STEM. How can we work with community partners to create sustainable STEM/computing programs for underserved and underrepresented youth? How can we ensure that these programs increase diversity and participation in STEM?
• Teaching STEM using mixed-reality How can we use the latest in virtual, augmented, and mixed reality technologies to engage and teach novices various STEM topics?

Publications

See our list of recent publications.

Current Students and Projects

• David Eisenberg (2022-present), Ph.D. Student in Informatics (co-advised with Frank Biocca), Increasing innovation and learning
• Kantida Nanon (2022-present), Ph.D. Student in Informatics (co-advised with Margarita Vinnikov), (description forthcoming)

Student Collaborators

• Adam Spryszynski (2018-2020), Ph.D. Student in Informatics, Educational games

Lab Alumni

• Doctoral Students
  • Ruiqi Shen (2018-2021), Ph.D. student in Informatics,
    Dissertation: Improving Programming Learners' Experience Through Interactive Computer Tutor Based MOOCs
  • Eric Nersesian (2017-2021), Informatics (co-advised with Margarita Vinnikov)
    Dissertation: Impact of User Traversal on Performance of STEM Learners in Immersive Virtual Environments
  • Yu Xu (2015-2020), Informatics
    Dissertation: Supporting User Interaction and Social Relationship Formation in a Collaborative Online Shopping Context
  • Joseph Chiou (2018-2020), Informatics
• Master's Students
  • Naureen Pathan (2019), Informatics
  • Saketh Ram Vemuru (2016-2017), Computer Science
  • Siddharth Arora (2015-2016), Information Systems
• Undergraduate Students
  • Michael Makar (2021-), Information Technology
  • Michael Mobilio (2019), Information Technology
  • Ulysee (Bo) Thompson (2017), Information Technology
  • Liem Ho (2016), Biology
  • Matthew Maravilla (2015-2016), Information Technology

Organizational/Community Partners

• Newark Public Schools
• Urban League of Essex County
• NJIT Center for Pre-College Programs
• NJIT Albert Dorman Honors College

How to Get Involved

We are recruiting undergraduate and PhD students who are interested in computing education research for ongoing and future projects. Please take a look at our recent publications and contact Michael J. Lee by e-mail, indicating your research interests, projects that you have worked on (e.g., ePortfolio, app, website, Github repositories), and why you think you might be a good fit for our lab. We are specifically looking for those interested in topics of computing education or STEM education, preferably with some development experience and/or statistics. Due to the high volume of emails we receive, we will not be able to respond to emails that do not include the information listed above.