Meet the AACE Review Team: Allie Alayan
Are you curious who is behind AACE Review or interested in doing a social media internship with AACE? As we complete our first year of the AACE Review magazine, we asked each of the regular writers to reflect on the past, and think about the future. What were some of the highlights of 2018, and what are the things that make 2019 exciting? Read about personal learning goals, edtech developments, research projects, plans for publications and conference, teaching, technologies to tinker with, recommendations for books and podcasts, and what to look forward to on AACE Review in the coming year.
My name is Allie Alayan, and I am a first-year PhD student at Colorado State University. I have been writing for AACE Review since January of 2018, and have enjoyed having the opportunity to interact with some of the leading researchers in the field through this position. My favorite post that I wrote this past year was a series of interviews with the workshop presenters at the E-Learn 2018 conference – even though I did not attend the conference, it got me in touch with a lot of interesting researchers – let me know what you think about it: “Traveling to E-Learn 2018 in Las Vegas? Don’t Miss the Workshop Lineup!”
My favorite recent posts on AACE Review were those that introduced me to new topics, in particular ‘Sketchnoting‘ and ‘Digital Well-Being‘.
Over the next year, I am hoping to work on a Writing Paradigm project related to career development outcomes. Past research has supported the positive impacts of participating in writing paradigm exercises, and has demonstrated that writing about life goals is associated with physical and psychological benefits. This project will investigate potential psychological benefits to writing about certain aspects of one’s ideal career. I am also hoping to run studies related to student outcomes in higher education.
I will be attending the Association for Psychological Science (APS) 2019 Convention and the American Psychological Association (APA) 2019 Convention. Both conferences brings together psychological scientists from disciplines spanning the full spectrum of the field. I am excited to attend APS and APA to network with psychological scientists from all psychological disciplines.
In 2019, I am hoping to work with my previous adviser Christopher Devers (he is a member of the E-Learn executive committee) on a publication related to our experiments related to the Khan Academy. In the past year, we have investigated the usefulness of Khan Academy videos with college students, as well as the impact of self-explanation on learning in order to make video learning more beneficial for students.
Some of my favorite books that I read this past year include: Freakonomics by Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt and David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell. Two of my podcast recommendations include: the Revisionist History Podcast and the NPR Hidden Brain podcast.
What will you read from me this coming year on AACE Review? That’s a good question, because I cover a lot of conference papers and research summaries, so that’s always new and unexpected. I am also planning to blog more about the use of technology in promoting student success in higher education, and maybe turn this topic into a series of posts.
