Eleanor O’Rourke
Faculty Profile
Assistant Professor , Learning Sciences
Assistant Professor , Computer Science
Biography
Eleanor O’Rourke is an Assistant Professor at Northwestern University with a joint appointment in Computer Science and the Learning Sciences. Her research lies at the intersection of human-computer interaction and education with a focus on developing playful data-driven systems to support learning in diverse classroom and online environments. Some of O’Rourke’s recent projects have included the design of incentive structures to promote growth mindset behaviors in educational games and studying the use of personalized learning systems for the classroom that visualize student data in real-time to support teachers. Her interventions have been used by over 100,000 students online, adopted by companies, and integrated into classrooms.
Research Interests
Design of technology-enabled learning experiences, educational games and playful learning, growth mindset interventions, connected classroom ecosystems.
Websites
Education
| Year | Degree | Institution |
| 2016 | PhD, Computer Science & Engineering | University of Washington |
| 2012 | MS, Computer Science & Engineering | University of Washington |
| 2007 | BA, Computer Science and Spanish | Colby College |
Selected Publications
Eleanor O’Rourke, Erik Andersen, Sumit Gulwani, Zoran Popovic (2015). A Framework for Automatically Generating Interactive Instructional Scaffolding. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2015).
Eleanor O’Rourke, Christy Ballweber, Zoran Popovic (2014). Hint Systems May Negatively Impact Performance in Educational Games. Proceedings of the First Annual ACM Conference on Learning at Scale (L@S 2014).
Eleanor O’Rourke, Kyla Haimovitz, Christy Ballweber, Carol S. Dweck, Zoran Popovic (2014). Brain Points: A Growth Mindset Incentive Structure Boosts Persistence in an Educational Game. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2014).