Danielle Allessio
96 Russellville Road
Amherst, MA 01002

College of Education
Manning College of Information & Computer Sciences
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Amherst, MA 01003
Email: allessio@umass.edu

EDUCATION
Ph.D. University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Concentration: Learning Technologies, (May 2020)
Dissertation Research: Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Pedagogical Agent design, Hispanic and English Language Learners – Dr. Florence Sullivan (Chair)
Comps Research: The Role of Immersion and Presence in Virtual Learning Environments – Dr. Florence Sullivan (Chair)
 Ed.M. University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Educational Technology, 2009
 B.A. University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Education and Information Technologies, 1992

RESEARCH AREAS
– Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Mathematics education, English Language Learner (ELL) students and Animated Pedagogical Agent (APA) design;
– Supporting affect and social emtional learning (SEL) in online learning systems;
– Design of Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) to maximize immersion and presence factors in order to potentially promote engagement, motivation, interest and deep learning;
– Creativity, collaborative problem solving and student learning with advanced learning technologies;
– Design of learning environments to foster creativity and collaborative problem-solving.

ACADEMIC POSITIONS
Learning Media & Technology Lecturer, September 1, 2023 – present
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
College of Education (CoE)
– LM&T Program Coordinator and Student Advisor

Teaching:
– EDUC 376: Digital Tools & Apps for 21st Century Students
– EDUC 612: Educational Web Design
– EDUC 615CT: Creativity, Technology and Learning
– EDUC 615GR: Teaching & Learning with Technology
– EDUC 890C: LMT Culminating Projects

Researcher, February 2024 – present
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Research Associate at the College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS)
Platform for Ethics and Responsible Computing Education (PEaRCE)
– Research data analysis.

Postdoctoral Research Associate, May 24, 2020 – present
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Research Associate at the College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) in the Center of Knowledge of Communication (CKC) lab on the MathSpring ITS project. Advisors: Professor Ivon Arroyo and Professor Beverly Woolf.
– Conduct research; data collection and analysis for MathSpring ITS projects.
– Mentor and supervise graduate students.
– Collaborate on grant writing.
– Scientific writing; write submit and present empirical research reports to journals and conferences tied directly to the MathSpring project.

Teaching Assistant, Fall 2015
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Teaching Assistant at the College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS)
– CS 691O: Tools for Explanatory and Tutoring Systems. Advisor Professor Beverly Woolf.
– Independent study; develop and administer new curriculum, including new assignments and readings on the topics of statistics and data mining.

Research Assistant, September 2013-June 2020
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Research Assistant to Professor Beverly Woolf for the MathSpring Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) at the College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) in the Center of Knowledge of Communication (CKC) lab
– Content development; math problem pedagogy design; problem animation.
– Data collection for ITS; data analysis; writing empirical reports; present at conferences.
– Collaborate on grant applications.

Project Assistant, September 2009-May 2013
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Educational Technology Coordinator for the College of Education (CoE)
– Coordinate the distribution of Educational Technology Services to faculty and students.
– Instruct faculty and students in the usage of various programs, equipment and hardware.

Research Assistant, 2008-2010
University of Massachusetts
Assistant to Professor Claire Hamilton at the CoE for a VLE (Second Life) case study

Research Assistant, 2007-2009
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Assistant to Professor Florence Sullivan at the CoE for an Active Worlds research project
– Representational guidance and student engagement: Examining the relationship of representational design to student collaborative problem solving in three chat environments.

Research Assistant, 2006-2008
Westfield State
Assistant to Professor David Raker
– Survey design, data mining, data analysis, report writing on a grant funded project.

Teaching Assistant, 2006-2008
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Undergraduate and Graduate Courses developed and taught:
– CS 551/Educ 591: 3D Modeling

STUDENT ADVISING
– Fall 2024/Spring 2025 – COE TECS LM&T MEd advisor
– Fall 2023/Spring 2024 – COE TECS LM&T MEd advisor
– Spring 2023 – Stuart Lustig, CICS Commonwealth Honors project
– Fall 2023 – present –  William  Rebelsky, CICS PhD

PUBLICATIONS
Feng, Mingyu & Brezack, Natalie & Huang, Chun-Wei & Schneider, Megan & Arroyo, Ivon & Woolf, Beverly & Allessio, Danielle. (2025). AI-Powered Math Learning: Evaluating the Impact of a Personalized Tutoring Platform that Responds to Affect. 10.1007/978-3-031-99264-3_15. 

Nezhad, M. H., Castro, Franciso., Mak, Eugene., Haas, Peter., Allessio, D., Osterweil, L., Rasul, I., Conboy, H., Arroyo, I. (2025). Embedding Ethical Awareness in Computer Science and AI Education: The PEaRCE Approach to Responsible Computing. In: Cristea, A.I., Walker, E., Lu, Y., Santos, O.C., Isotani, S. (eds) Artificial Intelligence in Education. AIED 2025. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 15877. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-98414-3_10

Yu, H., Allessio, D., Rebelsky, W., Murray, T., Magee, J., Arroyo, I., Woolf, B., Bargal, S., Betke, M. (2024). Affect Behavior Prediction: Using Transformers and Timing Information to Make Early Predictions of Student Exercise Outcome. In: Olney, A.M., Chounta, IA., Liu, Z., Santos, O.C., Bittencourt, I.I. (eds) Artificial Intelligence in Education. AIED 2024. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 14830. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-64299-9_14

Yu, H., Allessio, D., Lee, W., Rebelsky, W., Sylvia, F., Murray, T., Magee, J., Arroyo, I., Woolf, B., Bargal, S., Betke, M. (2023). COVES: A Cognitive-Affective Deep Model that Personalizes Math Problem Difficulty in Real Time and Improves Student Engagement with an Online Tutor. 6152-6160. 10.1145/3581783.3613965.

Gattupalli, S., Lee, W., Allessio, D., Crabtree, D., Arroyo, I., & Woolf, B. (2023). Exploring Pre-Service Teachers’ Perceptions of Large Language Models-Generated Hints in Online Mathematics Learning.

Arroyo, I., Euredjian, A., Lacera, L.P., Allessio, D., Geremías, W., Woolf, B.P. (2023). Localizing a Mathematics Tutoring System to Spanish in Latin-America. In: Rocha, Á., Ferrás, C., Ibarra, W. (eds) Information Technology and Systems. ICITS 2023. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 692. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33261-6_11

Woolf, B., Betke, M., Yu, H., Bargal, S. A., Arroyo, I., Magee, J., Allessio, D., Rebelsky, W. (2023). FACE READERS: The Frontier of Computer Vision and Math Learning.

Scudere-Weiss, J., Wilson, A., Allessio, D., Lee, W., & Magee, J. (2023). Parsing Pointer Movements in a Target Unaware Environment. Paper presented at the Engineering Psychology and Cognitive Ergonomics: 20th International Conference, EPCE 2023, Held as Part of the 25th HCI International Conference, HCII 2023, Copenhagen, Denmark, July 23–28, 2023, Proceedings, Part II, Copenhagen, Denmark. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35389-5_35.

Ruiz, N., Yu, H., Allessio, D., Jalal, M., Joshi, A., Murray, T., Magee, J., Delgado, K., Ablavsky, V., Sclaroff, S., Arroyo, I., Woolf, B., Bargal, S., Betke. M. (2023). “ATL-BP: A Student Engagement Dataset and Model for Affect Transfer Learning for Behavior Prediction” IEEE Transactions on Biometrics, Behavior, and Identity Science, pp.1-1. https://doi.org/10.1109/tbiom.2022.3210479

Lee, W., Allessio, D., Rebelsky, W., Satish Gattupalli, S., Yu, H., Arroyo, I., . . . Woolf, B. P. (2022). Measurements and Interventions to Improve Student Engagement Through Facial Expression Recognition. Paper presented at the Adaptive Instructional Systems, Cham.

Delgado K, Origgi J, Hansapoor T, Yu H, Allessio D, Arroyo I, Lee W, Betke M, Woolf B. (2021). Student Engagement Dataset, Workshop on Affective Behavior. International Conference on Computer Vision; Montreal, Canada.

Yu H, Gupta A, Lee W, Arroyo I, Betke M, Allessio D, Murray T, Magee J, Woolf B. (2021). Measuring and Integrating Facial Expressions and Gaze as Indicators of Engagement and Affect in Tutoring Systems. Essentials of Learner Modeling for Adaptive Instructional Systems (AISs) LNCS and LNAI series, index.

Ruiz, N., Yu, H., Allessio, D. A., Jalal, M., Joshi, A., Murray, T., … & Betke, M. (2021, December). Leveraging Affect Transfer Learning for Behavior Prediction in an Intelligent Tutoring System. In 2021 16th IEEE International Conference on Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition (FG 2021) (pp. 1-8). IEEE. Best Poster Award!

Gupta A, Menon N, Lee W, Rebelsky W, Allessio D, Murray T, Woolf B, Whitehill J, Arroyo. Affective Teacher Tools: Affective Class Report Card and Dashboard.  International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Education. 2021.

Joshi, A., Allessio, D., Magee, J., Whitehill, J., Arroyo, I., Woolf, B., Sclaroff, S., Betke, M. (2019). Affect-driven learning outcomes prediction in intelligent tutoring systems. In: 13th IEEE International Conference and Workshops on Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition, FG 2019.

Allessio, D., Woolf, B., Wixon, N., Sullivan, F., Tai, M., Arroyo, I (2018). Ella me ayudó (She helped me): Supporting Hispanic and English Language Learners in a Math Intelligent Tutoring System. Artificial Intelligence in Education. Springer International Publishing. London, UK.

Wixon, N., Woolf, B.P., Schultz, S., Allessio, D., & Arroyo, I. (2018). Microscope or Telescope: Whether to Dissect Epistemic Emotions, Artificial Intelligence in Education. Springer International Publishing. London, UK.

Arroyo, I., Wixon, N., Allessio, D., Woolf, B. P., Muldner, K., & Burleson, W. (2017) Collaboration Improves Student Interest in Online Tutoring. Artificial Intelligence in Education, 28-39. Springer International Publishing. Wuhan, China.

Karumbaiah, S., Lizarralde, R., Allessio, D.,Woolf, B., Arroyo, I., (2017) Addressing Student Behavior and Affect with Empathy and Growth Mindset Arnon Hershkovitz, Luc Paquette, (Eds) 10th International Conference on Educational Data Mining. Wuhan, China, Springer International Publishing.

Wixon, N., Schultz, S., Muldner, K., Allessio, D., Burleson, W., Woolf, B., & Arroyo, I. (2016, July). Internal & External Attributions for Emotions Within an ITS. In Proceedings of the 2016 Conference on User Modeling Adaptation and Personalization (pp. 311-312). ACM.

Wixon, N.; Schultz, S., Muldner, K., Allessio, D., Woolf, B.P., Burleson, W., Arroyo, I. (2016) “When the Going Gets Tough…”: Challenge, Emotions, & Difference of Perspective. The 13th International Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems. Zagreb, Croatia, 2016.

Schultz, S. E., Wixon, N., Allessio, D., Muldner, K., Burleson, W., Woolf, B., & Arroyo, I. (2016) Blinded by Science?: Exploring Affective Meaning in Students’ Own Words. International Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems, 314-319. Springer.

Wixon, Allessio, D., Ocumpaugh, J., Woolf, B., Burleson, W., Arroyo, I. (2015) La Mort du Chercheur: How well do students’ subjective understandings of affective representations used in self report align with one another’s, and researchers’? International Workshop on Affect, Meta-Affect, Data and Learning (AMADL 2015), 34-44.

Wixon, N., Allessio, D., Muldner, K., Schultz, S., Burleson, W., Woolf, B., Tapia, S., Arroyo, I. (EDM, 2015). Why do you feel that way? Exploring Students’ Attributions for Emotions in MathSpring ITS. Paper presented at EDM 2015 conference.

Allessio, D., Arroyo, I., Woolf, Beverly. MathSpring: An Online Tutor that Personalizes Math Tutoring. NSF 2015 Teaching & Learning Video Showcase: Improving Science, Math, Engineering, & Computer Science Education.

Sullivan, F.R., Hamilton, C.E., Allessio, D., Deschamps, A., Sinclair, A., Vargas, G., Wilson, N., Zhu, Y. (2011). Representational guidance and student engagement: examining designs for collaboration in online synchronous environments. Educational Technology Research and Development, 59(5), 619-644.

Sullivan, F.R., Hamilton, C.E., Allessio, D., Deschamps, A., Sinclair, A., Vargas, G., Wilson, N., Zhu, Y. (2009). Representational guidance and student engagement: Examining the relationship of representational design to student collaborative problem solving in three chat environments. Paper presentation at the annual conference of the American Educational Research Association, San Diego, CA.

Sullivan, F.R., Hamilton, C.E., Allessio, D., Deschamps, A., Sinclair, A., Vargas, G., Wilson, N., Zhu, Y. (2009). “Let’s build an obstacle course!:” Examining the evolution of chat as a learning environment. Paper presentation at the annual conference of the New England Educational Research Organization, Portsmouth, NH.

Sullivan, F.R., Hamilton, C.E., Allessio, D., Deschamps, A., Sinclair, A., Vargas, G., Wilson, N., Zhu, Y. (2008). Active Worlds & Synchronous Chats: A Media Comparison Study. Paper presentation at School of Education Centennial Marathon conference, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

JOURNAL AND CONFERENCE REVIEWING
– Served as reviewer for International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education, Spring 2025
– Served as reviewer for Social Sciences & Humanities Open, Fall 2024
– Served as reviewer for ISTELive + ASCD Annual Conference, Fall 2024
– Served as reviewer for The International Conference of the Learning Science (ICLS), Spring 2018

PROFESSIONAL SOCIETY MEMBERSHIPS
– Association for Graduate Women in Sciences (GWIS), UMass Amherst.
– International Society of Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED).
– American Educational Research Association (AERA).

PROFESSIONAL SERVICE AND OUTREACH
University of Massachusetts
– Volunteer, Girls Inc. Camp Eureka served to develop and administer summer math ITS (MathSpring) workshops for Hispanic female middle-school students, (2014-2017)
– Member, Graduate Student Senate Senator Executive Committee (2015-2016)
– Senator, Graduate Student Senate Senator for College of Education Teacher Education and Curriculum Studies (CoE TECS) (2013-present)
College of Education (CoE) – University of Massachusetts
 – TECS Departmental Academic Matters (DAM) committee chair (Spring 2025)
 – TECS Departmental Academic Matters (DAM) committee (Fall 2023/Spring 2024; Fall 2024/Spring 2025)
– Treasurer, Teacher Education and Curriculum Studies Graduate Student Organization (TECS GSO) (2014-2015) (2015-2016) (2016-2017)
– Member, Teacher Education and Curriculum Studies Student Advisory Committee (TECS SAC) (2012 -2013)
– Information Manager, Math, Science, & Learning Technologies Graduate Student Organization (MSLT-GSO) (2011-2012)
– CoE Steward, Graduate Employee Organization (GEO) (2011 – present)
– Member, Math, Science, and Learning Technology Doctoral Concentration (2006-present)
– Member, Teacher Education and Curriculum Studies (TECS) Department (2005-present)
– Member, Learning, Media and Technology Masters Concentration (2005-present)

AWARDS
AIED 2018 (London, UK) travel fund award – June 27-30

REFERENCES
Available upon request