Doctoral students are a critical part of the research workforce of our society and a key resource to face complex global challenges from climate change or the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), to understanding how and why political orders collapse.
However, much of the potential of this workforce is never realized, as doctoral education suffers from widespread dropout and emotional health issues (e.g., anxiety, depression, stress).
These well-being and persistence problems indeed affect hundreds of thousands of PhD candidates around the world.
Recent research in doctoral education has uncovered important motivational factors that relate to these problems.
But we have no intervention strategy that is both generalizable and that takes into account the inherent uniqueness of each doctoral path and topic.
Could technology provide scalable support to tackle these problems?
The GSIC-EMIC research group at the University of Valladolid (Spain), one of the top technology-enhanced learning labs in Europe, is opening a new line of research to tackle precisely this challenge: how latest advances in analytics and AI, along with findings from psychology and doctoral education research, can support the well-being and persistence of doctoral students in a personalized manner and at scale.
One fully-funded PhD position is now available in this transdisciplinary research project.
Three kinds of profiles will be considered for this position: A person with a computer science or engineering background, including expertise in machine learning or other AI approaches, who is not afraid of talking to end users and looking at both quantitative and qualitative empirical data from them.
Expertise in human-AI collaboration would be a great bonus.
A person with psychology or learning/educational sciences background and expertise in multiple methods of qualitative and quantitative data gathering and analysis, who is not afraid to use (and study the use of) technological innovations.
Specific expertise in doctoral education and/or psychotherapeutic practice to treat emotional health issues (especially using evidence-based cognitive-behavioral approaches) would be a great bonus.
A person with a design-oriented background and expertise in engaging end users in the design of socio-technical systems (especially, educational technologies), who is not afraid to get their hands dirty and create low- and high-fidelity prototypes.
Expertise in human-centered and value-sensitive design techniques would be a great bonus.
What we offer: A vibrant transdisciplinary research community of practice made up of 20+ pre- and post-doctoral researchers from the fields of computer science, engineering, and education.
Mentorship in becoming a researcher, with easy access to a supervisory team of 2-3 senior researchers (including Dr. Luis P. Prieto) who is fully aware of the motivational and mental health challenges of a doctorate.
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