About

The Ateneo Laboratory for the Learning Sciences is a Department of Science and Technology-funded undertaking engaged in investigating learning. The goal of the lab is to create tools for educational data mining.  We are interested in quantitative analysis of student interactions with computer-based learning environments to derive new insights about how students learn best.

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Ateneo to Host Discussion on AI-Driven Decision-Making in Public Services

The Ateneo School of Government, through the Ateneo Policy Center (APC) and the Ateneo Laboratory for the Learning Sciences (ALLS), will host a brown bag discussion on the governance of artificial intelligence-driven automated decision-making (ADM) in public services on August 26, 2026, from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. at San Alberto Hurtado Hall, Ateneo de Manila University, Quezon City.

The event will feature Dr. Seung-Hun Hong of the Korea Institute of Public Administration, who will present his latest research on a governance framework for public-sector AI. The discussion will explore how governments can harness the benefits of AI-driven ADM while safeguarding citizens’ right to explanation and recourse.

For complete event details, see the poster below:

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ALLS Participates in the Festival of Learning 2026 in Seoul, Republic of Korea

The members and collaborators of the Ateneo Laboratory for the Learning Sciences participated in the Festival of Learning (FoL) held at COEX, Seoul, Republic of Korea from June 27 to July 3, 2026. The FoL was an umbrella event that co-located three major conferences: Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED), Educational Data Mining (EDM), and Learning at Scale (L@S). The first two days of the FoL were devoted to workshops and tutorials, while the main conference paper and poster presentations were scheduled for the last five days.

During the workshop days, ALLS had two presentations. The poster Design of Culturally Appropriate Virtual Patient Personas for Philippine Medical Education by Joi Marie Angelica (Smile) Indias, Samantha Castaneda, Reynan B. Hernandez, and Maria Mercedes T. Rodrigo, was presented at the Culturally-Aware Tutoring Systems Workshop. Meanwhile, the paper Modeling Student Well-Being from Experience Sampling Data by Fr. Arthur Nebrao, SJ, and Dr. Rodrigo, was presented at the Multimodal Affect in AI for Education Workshop.

Additionally, Dr. Rodrigo and Fr. Joseph Patrick Echevarria, SJ also served as panelists at the I Workshop on AIED Unplugged 2026. During the main conference, Dr. Rodrigo was also on the panel entitled Old AIED, New AI: What has Changed? What still Matters?

Finally, the paper entitled Can you help me also to write? Using LLMs to evaluate essays that contain Filipino English features by Jaclyn Ocumpauh, Xiner Liu, Dr. Rodrigo, Shimin Kai, and Juliana Maria Alexandra Andres was presented during the WIDE AIED session.

Dr. Rodrigo was happy to serve as program co-chair of EDM alongside Anthony Botelho of the University of Florida, USA and Adish Singla of MPI-SWS, Germany.

Ms. Smile Indias presents our poster entitled “Design of culturally-appropriate virtual patient personas for Philippine medical education.

Fr. Arthur Nebrao, SJ presents his paper entitled “Modeling student well-being from experience sampling data.”

Dr. Rodrigo and Fr. Joseph Patrick Echevarria, SJ serve as panelists in the I Workshop on AIED Unplugged.

Dr. Rodrigo serves as a panelist on the topic, “Old AIED, New AI: What has Changed? What still Matters?

Dr. Jaclyn Ocumpaugh presents the paper entitled “Can you help me also to write? Using LLMs to evaluate essays that contain Filipino English features.”

The organizers are acknowledged during the opening ceremony.

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2025. Development of Digital Materials on Bullying Prevention

Project Summary

This project seeks to develop digital materials on bullying prevention for Filipino youth. In partnership with the Department of Education, the project will go through a design thinking process bringing together target users and Ateneo universities from multiple disciplines to ideate materials. Prototyping of the digital materials will be done followed by the pre-testing and evaluation of the materials. The data will be used to finalize the materials before turning this over to the Department of Education.

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Developing Evidence-Informed Digital Materials To Prevent Bullying.

Project Summary

In partnership with the Department of Education, this project aims to develop digital materials on bullying prevention. Using a human-centered design process, multi-disciplinal teams if college students will work with public school students in ideating, prototyping and evaluating tools that can be used in making our schools safer and more inclusive.

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2026-2027. Caladrius 2.0: A Virtual Patient for Medical Interview Training.

Project Summary

Caladrius is a generative artificial intelligence-based (GenAI) virtual patient (VP) system intended to help medical students practice their skills at conducting medical interviews. A collaborative team composed of computer science researchers from the Ateneo de Manila’s Ateneo Laboratory for the Learning Sciences and medical doctors from the Ateneo School of Medicine and Public Health (ASMPH) began development in August of 2024. A minimum viable product is now available in two modalities: text only and audio / voice. It has been deployed at ASMPH and is currently under being processed for IP protection. The testing and deployment of Caladrius has brought several shortcomings to light. The goal of this proposed project is to improve upon Caladrius to make it more easily and broadly accessible and to extend the types of medical cases it can support.

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