ISLS 2026 Agenda

Tuesday, June 16 · 11 sessions

8:00 AM

1 option

Pre-Con. Workshop · ALP

Pre-Conference Workshops - Half Day

Half-day pre-conference workshops centered on AI's impact across CSCL and learning sciences research, alongside career sessions and the doctoral consortium. Threads include rethinking assessment in the generative AI era, co-designing AI for collaboration and agency, building a shared CSCL taxonomy, and hands-on interaction network analysis (HINA).

Higher Education & Undergraduate Learning in a talk

11 talks

2:30 PM

8 options scroll

Short Paper · ALP 1100

Collaborative learning with sociocultural considerations

Short papers on collaborative learning shaped by cultural and social context, from board-game redesign grounded in distributed cognition and culturally relevant pedagogy to belonging for minority computer science students. Several examine partnership-based work, including student-AI problem-solving, cross-disciplinary mentorship, and a 16-year Japanese lesson-study RPP.

Higher Education & Undergraduate Learning in a talk

5 talks

Short Paper · ALP 1120

Learning processes in Higher education

Short papers on learning processes in higher education, spanning engineering improvisation under uncertainty, support for first-generation biology students, and curiosity and metacognition in productive failure. Others examine primary source projects in undergraduate math and fair measurement of metacognitive regulation in online STEM.

Higher Education & Undergraduate Learning in a talk

5 talks

Long Paper · ALP 2100

Knowledge Advancement

Long papers advancing methods and theory for collaborative knowledge building and convergence. Contributions include transitional spaces between group and individual learning, NLP-based semantic analysis of discourse, multimodal reflective assessment of socio-emotional interaction, and quantifying convergence via word-abstractness change detection.

Higher Education & Undergraduate Learning in a talk

4 talks

Short Paper · ALP 2200

AI Human Interaction

Short papers on how learners interact with AI across higher education and accessible STEM contexts. Topics include student-AI relationships and shared agency, generative AI for design iteration, accessible games for blind and low-vision learners, and AI-enabled dialogic leadership training.

Higher Education & Undergraduate Learning in a talk

5 talks

Short Paper · ALP 2500

Support for Collaborative Learning

Short papers on tools and designs that scaffold collaborative learning, with a strong emphasis on self- and socially-shared regulation. Approaches include TA awareness of pre-class reports, game-based simulations like MetaSim, generative-AI chatbots and the MIRACLE multi-agent system, plus a scoping review of AI-supported knowledge creation.

Higher Education & Undergraduate Learning in a talk

5 talks

Long Paper · ALP 2600

Communities and Contexts

Long papers examining learning across communities and contexts, from high schoolers cultivating future-oriented identities to digital accountability in new-teacher mentoring dialogue. Additional work probes youth authority in environmental engineering curriculum co-design and reconceptualizes psychometrics to treat context as intrinsic to learning.

Higher Education & Undergraduate Learning in a talk

4 talks

Short Paper · ALP 2700

Arts, Expressions, Identity

Short papers exploring how the arts support identity work, wellness, and disciplinary learning, from artmaking with youth and non-judgmental art pedagogy to reconstructing disabled identities in undergraduate courses. Other talks link art-making to computational thinking, integrate arts with science teaching, and examine trans* body politics in sport.

Higher Education & Undergraduate Learning in a talk

6 talks

Long Paper · ALP 3610

Dialogue and Collaboration

Papers on dialogue and collaboration across varied settings, including relational attunement in making, medical students shifting from cooperation to true collaboration, and parents revoicing to guide children's computational thinking. Further talks examine how language shapes access to tools and how productive confusion unfolds during VR collaboration.

Higher Education & Undergraduate Learning in a talk

5 talks

4:30 PM

2 options scroll

Long Paper · ALP 1100

Analyzing Student Explanations

Researchers analyze how students articulate and develop their reasoning across science and math, drawing on knowledge-in-pieces and responsive teaching to trace intuitive resources in electromagnetism and evolution. The session also covers participation in optional self-explanation tasks and NGSS-aligned formative assessments that make first graders' life-science reasoning visible.

Higher Education & Undergraduate Learning in a talk

4 talks

Short Paper · ALP 2700

Complex Systems

Short papers applying complex-systems and network perspectives to learning, from higher-order network analysis of PISA data to a complexity-informed model for educating creators. Other talks examine students' difficulties with dynamic equilibrium, systems thinking via the Venus flytrap, online course ecologies, and causal reasoning through drawing.

Higher Education & Undergraduate Learning in a talk

6 talks