Theories Meet Practice:
Hands-on workshops in Theories and Principles of Learning Analytics
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Christina Huang
Christina Huang
May 9, 2025
As part of the Theories and Principles of Learning Analytics course taught by Professor Christina Huang, students participated in two hands-on workshops that brought theory into practice. Andrés Cuervo from Folk Computer led a workshop on designing tangible, human-scale interactions. Eagle Tong from Building Blocks guided sprint exercises on chunking knowledge and mapping learning metrics. Together, the workshops with guest speakers showed how learning analytics principles translate into real-world, insight-driven design.
Folk Computer
Folk Computer
As part of our Theories and Principles of Learning Analytics course, we invited Andrés Cuervo from Folk Computer, a research and art project. The session featured a hands-on workshop and live demo that connected course concepts to real-world applications through experimental physical computing.
Folk Computer explores how computation can move beyond screens and into human-scale, interactive spaces. Their project centers around building a full technical stack—from hardware drivers to interface primitives—that allows users to endow everyday physical objects with computational properties and script reactive behaviors. The goal is to design systems that are not only functional but also embodied, social, and spatial.
During the session, students engaged directly with Folk’s tools and ideas, experimenting with how data, interaction, and analytics could be reimagined in physical form. The workshop emphasized how the principles of learning analytics can take on new meaning when situated in tangible, real-world interfaces.
This session encouraged students to think critically about the environments where learning takes place, and how new forms of computing can shape those experiences in surprising and meaningful ways.
“Folk Computing has such an innovative approach to bridging the gap between digital and tangible artifacts, there are so many potential opportunities for application in education of all ages. Coming out of COVID, where so many students have technology fatigue, students can engage in physical creation of manipulation while still participating in emerging technology.
The operating system is all open source, so if you have a camera and a projector, students can turn their tables into an interactive solar system, a piano, a collaborative art piece, etc. The limit is their own imagination. This threshold of accessibility is the standard we should always strive for when looking to the future of educational technology. ”
– Tori Stroud, student in the Theories & Principles of Learning Analytics class
Building Blocks
Building Blocks
We also welcomed Eagle Tong from Building Blocks for an interactive guest session.
Eagle is the co-founder of Building Blocks, a learning copilot that helps learners transform scattered content into structured, personalized knowledge systems that grow with them. Driven by a deep passion for AI and education, Eagle is reimagining how people learn, making it more adaptive and meaningful. She has also built a community for underrepresented founders and continues to champion inclusive innovation. With a background in software engineering and AI, she brings a unique perspective shaped by her technical expertise, product vision, and lifelong curiosity about how we grow through learning.
Together, we explored the concepts of chunking and interconnection—two foundational ideas from cognitive science that help explain how people make sense of complex information.
Students worked through two sprint-style exercises: one on breaking down knowledge into meaningful chunks, and another on designing learning metrics and evaluation strategies tied to specific interventions.
Through these activities, students saw how learning analytics goes beyond just tracking outcomes—it’s about uncovering the deeper structure of how learning happens. By mapping relationships between concepts and aligning metrics with intention, we can design more effective and insight-driven learning experiences.
It was a fast-paced, hands-on session that brought theory to life and offered a fresh lens on how data can support smarter, more connected learning.
“The session was so helpful in developing my understanding for applying analytics in a real-world context. I appreciated the step by step activity and how we went from discussing background/theory to application. The collaboration with other classmates was also great in mimicking a real working environment and the brainstorming and iteration that goes into developing applications for analytics. This was something I had only had experience doing with design projects, so it was fun to approach this process through a different lens.”
– Kate Gorton, student in the Theories & Principles of Learning Analytics class
If you’re curious about Building Blocks and want to explore,
For questions or collaboration, feel free to reach out to Eagle:
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