Lauren Smith

Lauren received a Bachelor of Arts from Indiana University–Bloomington, where she majored in Sociology and minored in Arabic, Social Welfare Advocacy, and Psychology. Her research interests include motivation and engagement in online contexts, learning analytics, and educational policy and instructional reform. Prior to joining the lab, Lauren was a qualitative research analyst at the University of Pittsburgh School of Social Work, studying the use of arts-based data collection methods to better understand how young women of color experience and cope with trauma. 

Previously, Lauren was a research assistant at the RAND Corporation and the Center for Research on Learning and Technology at Indiana University–Bloomington.  She has also interned at the Philadelphia Folklore Project, where she evaluated student reflections to inform folk arts instruction. 

In the future, she would like to pursue a graduate degree in Educational Psychology with an emphasis on Learning Sciences.