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

• Esther Mba (2025-present), Ph.D. Student in Informatics, Interests: Computing Education for Youth (more to be determined)

Lab Alumni

• Doctoral Students
  • Jiaxing Zhang (2023-2025), Ph.D. Student in Informatics (co-advised with Hua Wei), Interests: data mining (Explainable AI), deep learning (LLM), and natural language processing (code analysis)
  • Kantida Nanon (2022-2024), Ph.D. Student in Informatics (co-advised with Margarita Vinnikov), Game-Based Learning with Augmented Reality
  • Yi Li (2022-2023), Ph.D. Student in Informatics (co-advised with Iulian Neamtiu), Learning Representations for Effective and Explainable Software Bug Detection and Fixing
  • 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 (Theses)
  • David Preciado (2022-2023), Informatics,
    Thesis: Technology for the Post-Pandemic Hybrid Workplace
  • Ashley Joseph (2021-2022), Informatics,
    Thesis: Digital Expungement and the Right to Digital Privacy
• Master's Students (Research)
  • Naureen Pathan (2019), Informatics
  • Saketh Ram Vemuru (2016-2017), Computer Science
  • Siddharth Arora (2015-2016), Information Systems
• Undergraduate Students
  • Michael Makar (2021-2022), 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

I am recruiting undergraduate students who are interested in computing education research for ongoing and future projects (unfortunately, I do not currently have extra funding for additional PhD students). Please take a look at our lab's recent publications and contact me, Michael J. Lee, by email, 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. I am specifically looking for those interested in topics of computing education or STEM education, preferably with some coding experience. Due to the high volume of emails I receive, I will not be able to respond to emails that do not include the information listed above.

Note: Teaching assistance (TA) and grader positions are handled at the department level (and not by individual professors), so I will not be reponding to inquiries requesting these jobs.