Dr. Alin Yalcinkaya earned her BS in Secondary School Mathematics from Cumhuriyet
University, Turkiye, in 2011. She worked as a tutor and youth leader, engaging with K-12 and
adolescents, providing her with valuable insights into the impact of technology on education
and students’ learning techniques. Motivated by this experience, she pursued a degree in
EdTech, earning her M.A. in Digital Media Design for Learning from New York University in
2018. In 2023, she successfully completed the Learning Design and Technology Ph.D.
program at NC State University.
As of 2024, Dr. Yalcinkaya has become a Postdoctoral Research Scholar in DELTA’s
Research & Analysis team. She actively contributes to various research projects, ranging
from improving course quality to exploring high-tech implications in learning environments.
Dr. Yalcinkaya’s research interests revolve around the design, development, and evaluation
of learning experiences in online, face-to-face, and hybrid settings. She is particularly
focused on understanding the impact of online learning on students, with a specific
emphasis on creative data literacies, designing unconventional data visualizations, and
generative AI.
Scholarly Publications, Proceedings, and Presentations
Sanei, H., Kahn, J. B., Yalcinkaya, R., Jiang, S., & Wang, C. (2023). Examining how
students code with socioscientific data to tell stories about climate change. Journal of
Science Education and Technology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10956-023-10054-z.
Jiang, S., Qian, Y., Tang., H., Yalcinkaya, R., Rosé, C., Chao, J., & Finzer, W. (2022).
Examining computational thinking processes in modeling unstructured data. Education and
Information Technologies, 1-25. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-022-11355-3
Yalcinkaya, R. Sanei, H., Wang, C., Zhu, L., Kahn, J. & Jiang, S. (2022). Remixing as a Key
Practice for Coding and Data Storytelling. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the
International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS), 407-410.
https://doi.dx.org/10.22318/cscl2022.407
Jiang, S., Huang, X., Xie, C., Sung, S., & Yalcinkaya, R. (2020). Augmented scientific
investigation: Support the exploration of invisible “fine details” in science via Augmented
Reality. Proceedings of the 19th ACM International Conference on Interaction Design and
Children (IDC), 349-354, London, UK. https://doi.org/10.1145/3392063.3394406
Wang, C., Sanei, H., Yalcinkaya, R., Kahn, J., Jiang, S., & Cairo, A. (2023, April). Examining
how students code with socioscientific data to tell stories about climate change [Poster
session]. American Educational Research Association (AERA), Chicago, IL, United States.
Yalcinkaya, A. & Jiang, S. (2022, October). An Empirical Analysis of Data Literacy in
Comments on Open Education Resources [Conference presentation]. Annual International
Convention of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT),
Online.
Yalcinkaya, A. & Jiang, S. (2020, November). Augmented Scientific Investigation: Making
Invisible Visible to the Unaided Eye via Augmented Reality [Conference presentation].
Annual International Convention of the Association for Educational Communications and
Technology (AECT), Online.