School of Information Sciences

Koh group presents youth maker learning research at summit

Kyungwon Koh
Kyungwon Koh, Associate Professor and Director of the Champaign-Urbana (CU) Community Fab Lab

PhD student Lo Lee will present work from Associate Professor Kyungwon Koh's research group at the Connected Learning Summit 2019, which will be held October 2-5 at the University of California, Irvine. The mission of the summit is to "fuel a growing movement of innovators harnessing emerging technology to expand access to participatory, playful, and creative learning." The program includes presentations and workshops ranging from speculative design, to game walkthroughs, sharing work in progress, and research panels.

Lee will present the paper, "Fostering Information Literacy through Autonomy and Guidance in the Inquiry and Maker Learning Environments," which she coauthored with Koh and researchers and practitioners from the University of Oklahoma and Norman Public Schools. Their study investigated high school students' information practices and educators' guidance in inquiry-based maker learning environments. The researchers found that students in that learning environment benefit from guidance that is flexible and not too restrictive. The ongoing research investigates the "optimal environments for learners to exercise autonomy over their information practices and learning while feeling supported and guided."

Lee is a third-year PhD student who is interested in human information behavior, especially information behavior of creative people such as crafts hobbyists. She is also interested in the maker movement and how it influences library and museum programs. Lee earned her MS in library and information science from Illinois and BA in foreign languages in literature from National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan.

Koh's areas of expertise include digital youth, the maker movement, learning and community engagement through libraries, human information behavior, and competencies for information professionals. Koh earned her MS and PhD in library and information studies from Florida State University and BS in library and information science from Yonsei University in South Korea.

Updated on
Backto the news archive

Related News

PhD student Meng Li wins iSchool T-shirt design contest

PhD student Meng Li's research focuses on neuro-symbolic AI, with an emphasis on using syntactic analysis and large language models (LLMs) to understand Python notebooks. This cutting-edge research keeps Li "super busy" for much of the term, but in August, she took a brief break from her work and shifted her focus to designing the winning entry for the iSchool T-shirt contest.

While the idea of the design "just popped into my mind," Li has been thinking about the contest for years.

Meng Li wears the T-shirt with her winning design. The shirt is dark blue, with a hand-sketched wave in white, while the figure and surf board are in Illini Orange.

Jiang defends dissertation

PhD candidate Xiaoliang Jiang successfully defended his dissertation, "Identifying Place Names in Scientific Writing Based on Language Models, Linked Data, and Metadata," on November 10. 

Xiaoliang Jiang

Paper by He's lab honored at ICCV 2025 workshop

Professor Jingrui He's lab received an outstanding paper award at the Multi-Modal Reasoning for Agentic Intelligence Workshop, which was held during the International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV 2025) last month in Honolulu, Hawaii. 

Jingrui He

Vaez Afshar named APT Student Scholar

Informatics PhD student Sepehr Vaez Afshar has been named a Student Scholar by the Association for Preservation Technology (APT). Each year, around ten students are selected worldwide for the scholarship program based on the quality and innovation of their research abstracts, as well as their contribution to the field of preservation technology. Scholars are paired with mentors from the APT College of Fellows, prepare and present their research during the association's annual conference, and enjoy opportunities for long-term professional networking and mentorship within the preservation community.

Sepehr Vaez Afshar

iSchool well represented at ASIS&T 2025

iSchool faculty, staff, and students will participate in the 88th Annual Meeting of the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T), which will be held on November 14-18 in Arlington, Virginia. ASIS&T will also host a Virtual Satellite Meeting on December 11-12. 

School of Information Sciences

501 E. Daniel St.

MC-493

Champaign, IL

61820-6211

Voice: (217) 333-3280

Fax: (217) 244-3302

Email: ischool@illinois.edu

Back to top