Yi-Shan Tsai is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Information Technology and a member of the Centre for Learning Analytics at Monash (CoLAM). She is also a member of the Digital Education Research Group at Monash and an associate scholar of the Centre for Research in Digital Education and the Centre for Research in Education Inclusion and Diversity at the University of Edinburgh. Before the current post, she was a research associate at the University of Edinburgh (2016-2020) where she had a lead role on several multi-national projects, collaborating with a wide range of partners in Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Australia. She is particularly known for her achievements on an award-winning project, SHEILA (Supporting Higher Education to integrate Learning Analytics), which has informed policy development for learning analytics in over 200 higher education institutions around the world. During her time in Edinburgh, she was affiliated with the Centre for Research in Digital Education and was first based in the Moray House School of Education and Sport before moving to the School of Informatics. Yi-Shan holds a PhD and an MPhil degree in Education from the University of Cambridge where she focused her research on children's engagement with multimodal texts including picturebooks and comic books. Prior to working in the higher education context, she worked extensively with children aged between 9 and 15 as a school teacher. 

 

Yi-Shan's current research aims to enhance learning, teaching, and educational environments with the adoption of digital and data technologies. In particular, she investigates social-technical issues and pedagogical implications around the use of data in education from multi-stakeholder perspectives. She is also interested in developing effective data-driven feedback and literacy based on educational theories and storytelling principles. As an interdisciplinary researcher, she has research expertise in areas including learning analytics, digital education, feedback, multimodal literacy, and reading cultures. Yi-Shan has participated as a PI or co-PI in over 10 research grants internally and externally funded grants totalling over AUD$10M.

 

Yi-Shan is a Fellow of UK Higher Education Academy (FHEA)(Advance HE) and an Honorary Fellow at the School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh. She has served as an executive member of the Society for Learning Analytics Research (SoLAR) since 2019. She is currently a Vice President of SoLAR and a co-Chair of the communication working group. During her service on the SoLAR committee, she started a podcast programme (SoLAR Spotlight: Conversations on Learning Analytics) and established the SoLAR ECR Grant Programme to support early career researchers.