Ying Xu, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor
Graduate School of Education
Harvard University

Ying Xu

Harvard University
Graduate School of Education
13 Appian Way, Cambridge, MA 02138
E-mail: yingxu@g.harvard.edu
Website: ying-xu.com

ACADEMIC APPOINTMENTS

2024- Assistant Professor
Graduate School of Education, Harvard University

2022-2024 Assistant Professor
School of Education, University of Michigan

2022-2024 Faculty Affiliate
The Combined Program in Education and Psychology, University of Michigan
Michigan Institute for Data Science, University of Michigan

2021-2022 Postdoctoral Scholar
School of Education, University of California, Irvine

EDUCATION

2020 Ph.D. in Education (specialization: Language, Literacy, and Technology)
University of California, Irvine
Dissertation: Learning with Conversational Agents
Committee: Mark Warschauer (Chair, UC Irvine Education), Stacy Branham (UC Irvine Informatics), Young-suk Kim (UC Irvine Education), Penelope Collins (UC Irvine Education), Arthur Graesser (University of Memphis Psychology and Institute for Intelligent Systems)

2010 B.A. in Chinese Linguistics and Literature
Sun Yat-Sen University, China

HONORS/AWARDS

2025 Best Paper Award in the International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction

2025 Best Short Paper Award at the 2025 ACM Conference on Interaction Design and Children

2024 Editor’s Choice in The Journal of Educational Psychology

2023 Best Paper Award at the 2023 ACM Conference on Interaction Design and Children

2023 Early Career Interdisciplinary Scholars Fellowship, Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD)

2021 Best Paper Award Honorable Mention at the 2021 American Educational Research Association annual (AERA) conferences, Technology as an Agent of Change in Teaching and Learning Special Interest Group

2020 Best Paper Award Honorable Mention at the 2020 ACM Conference on Interaction Design and Children

2020 Research and Design Competition Honorable Mention at the 2020 ACM Conference on Interaction Design and Children

2020 Doctoral Consortium at the 2020 ACM Conference on Interaction Design and Children

2020 Grad Slam Finalist (Scientific Communication Competition) UC Irvine

2019 Public Impact Distinguished Fellow UC Irvine

2019 Best Short Paper Award at the 2019 ACM Conference on Interaction Design and Children

2018 Best Paper Award Honorable Mention at the 2018 American Educational Research Association annual (AERA) conferences, Technology as an Agent of Change in Teaching and Learning Special Interest Group

GRANT FUNDING

External grants

2025-2027 Overdeck Foundation, $200,000, Principal Investigator
Effects of Using Artificial Intelligence to Support Children’s STEM Learning From Educational Television Programs: Evidence From a Home-Based Intervention

2025-2026 National Science Foundation, Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, Faculty Sponsor
SPRF: Children’s Recognition of Errors Made by Generative AI

2024-2028 National Science Foundation, AISL, $700,000, Principal Investigator
Collaborative Research: Advancing Latino Children’s Science Learning through Community Co-Design of AI-Enhanced Bilingual E-Books [terminated in April 2025]

2023-2024 National Science Foundation, ITEST, $200,000, Co-Principal Investigator
RAPID DRL AI: Empowering Teachers to Collaborate with Generative AI for Developing High-Quality STEM Learning Resources

2023-2026 National Science Foundation, RETTL, $850,000, Principal Investigator
Building A Teacher-AI Collaborative System for Personalized Instruction and Assessment of Comprehension Skills

2021-2026 National Science Foundation, AISL, $3,000,000, Co-Principal Investigator
Developing Conversational Videos to Support Children’s STEM Learning and Engagement

2021-2022 Schmidt Futures, $50,000, Principal Investigator
Automatic Question-Answer Generation for Narrative Comprehension Skills Learning and Assessment

Internal grants

2024-2025 Harvard Graduate School of Education Dean’s Impact Fund, $20,000
LEARN Labs Consortium Database Infrastructure

2023-2024 University of Michigan ADVANCE Program, $8,000, Principal Investigator
Identifying Biases in Speech Recognition Against Bilingual Children: Implications for Technology Improvement and Education

Publications

Registered Reports

Xu, Y., Pan, Z., Levine, J., He, K., & Thomas, T. (2025). The effects of interactions with AI-enhanced media characters on learning computational thinking. Learning and Instruction. (accepted in principle at Stage 1)
Xu, Y., Pan, Z., Levine, J., He, K., Tran, J. E., Bustamante, A., & Warschauer, M. (2025). Effects of using artificial intelligence to support children’s STEM learning from educational television programs: Evidence from a home-based intervention. Child Development. (accepted in principle at Stage 1)

Journal Articles

He, K., Cervera, K., Levine, J., Xu, Y., Collins, P., & Warschauer, M. (2025). Promoting parent-child shared reading with a bilingual conversational agent. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2025.103489
Xu, Y., Thomas, T., Yu, C.-L., & Pan, Z. (2025). What makes children perceive or not perceive minds in generative AI? Computers in Human Behavior: Artificial Humans. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chbah.2025.100135
Xu, Y., He, K., Levine, J., Ritchie, D., Pan, Z., Bustamante, A., & Warschauer, M. (2024). Artificial intelligence enhances children’s science learning from television shows. Journal of Educational Psychology, 116(7), 1071–1092. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000889
Xu, Y., Thomas, T., Li, Z., Chan, M., Lin, G., & Moore, K. (2024). Examining children’s perceptions of AI-enabled interactive media characters. International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijcci.2024.100700
Yang, D., Ge, Y., Sun, Y., Collins, P., Jaeggi, S., Xu, Y., Shea, Z. M., & Warschauer, M. (2024). Self-regulation and comprehension in shared reading: The moderating effects of verbal interactions and e-book discussion prompts. Child Development, 00, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.14128
Xu, Y. (2023). Talking with machines: Can conversational technologies serve as children’s social partners? Child Development Perspectives. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdep.12475
Xu, Y., Bradford, N., & Garg, R. (2023). Transparency enhances positive perceptions of social artificial intelligence. Human Behavior and Emerging Technologies. https://doi.org/10.1155/2023/5550418
Xu, Y., Aubele, J., Vigil, V., Bustamante, A., Kim, Y.-S., & Warschauer, M. (2022). Dialogue with a conversational agent promotes children’s story comprehension via enhanced engagement. Child Development. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13708
Xu, Y., Vigil, V., Bustamante, A., & Warschauer, M. (2022). Contingent interaction with a television character enabled by artificial intelligence promotes children’s science learning and engagement. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2022.101439
Xu, Y., Wang, D., Collins, P., Lee, H., & Warschauer, M. (2021). Same benefits, different communication patterns: Comparing children’s reading with a conversational agent vs. A human partner. Computers & Education, 161, 104059. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2020.104059
Umarji, O., Day, S., Xu, Y., Zargar, E., Connor, C., & Yu, R. (2020). Opening the black box: User-log analysis of children’s e-book reading and association with word knowledge. Reading and Writing. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-020-10081-x
Xu, Y., Yau, J., & Reich, S. (2020). Press, swipe, and read: Can interactive features in ebooks facilitate engagement and learning? Journal of Computer Assisted Learning. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcal.12480
Reich, S., Yau, J., Xu, Y., Muskat, T., Campbell, J., & Cannata, D. (2019). Digital or print? A comparison of preschooler’s comprehension, vocabulary, and engagement from a print book and an eBook. AERA Open, 5(3), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1177/2332858419878389
Tate, T., Collins, P., Xu, Y., Yau, J., Krishnan, J., Prado, Y., Farkas, G., & Warschauer, M. (2019). Visual-syntactic text format: Improving adolescent literacy. Scientific Studies of Reading, 23(4), 287–304. https://doi.org/10.1080/10888438.2018.1561700
Xu, Y., Xu, D., Simpkins, S., & Warschauer, M. (2019). Does it matter which parent is absent?: Labor migration, parenting, and adolescent development in china. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 28(6), 1635–1649. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-019-01382-z
Park, Y., Xu, Y., Collins, P., Farkas, G., & Warschauer, M. (2018). Scaffolding learning of language structures with visual-syntactic text formatting. British Journal of Educational Technology, 50(4), 1896–1912. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.12689
Xu, Y. (2014). Rethinking literacy education in the digital era: Digital storybook as a learning tool for young children. China Educational Technology, 333(10), 29–35.

Conference Proceedings

Chen, J., Tang, M., Lu, Y., Yao, B., Fan, E., Ma, X., Xu, Y., Wang, D., Sun, Y., & He, L. (2025). Characterizing LLM-empowered personalized story-reading and interaction for children: Insights from multi-stakeholder perspectives. Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. https://doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3713275
He, K., Liu, X., Xu, Y., Bustamante, A. S., & Warschauer, M. (2025). "Carlitos the curious caterpillar": Exploring teacher-AI co-creation of culturally responsive educational materials for young learners. Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Interaction Design and Children (IDC ’25). https://doi.org/10.1145/3713043.3727056
Li, J., Thomas, T., & Xu, Y. (2025). Acoustic and affective dynamics in children’s storytelling with AI and human partners. Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Interaction Design and Children (IDC ’25). https://doi.org/10.1145/3713043.3731533
Oh, S., Zhang, C., Girouard-Hallam, L., Zhou, Z., March, H., Jayaramu, S., & Xu, Y. (2025). "Hey curio, can you tell me more?": Children’s information-seeking and trust in AI. Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Interaction Design and Children (IDC ’25). https://doi.org/10.1145/3713043.372705 (Best Short Paper Award)
Chen, J., Lu, Y., Zhang, S., Yao, B., Dong, Y., Xu, Y., Tang, M., Wang, D., Sun, Y., & He, L. (2024). StorySparkQA: Expert-annotated QA pairs with real-world knowledge for children’s story-based learning. Proceedings of the 2024 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing, 17351–17370. https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2024.emnlp-main.961
He, K., Levine, J., Cervera, K., Ojeda-Ramirez, S., Xu, Y., & Warschauer, M. (2024). A home study of parent-child co-reading with a bilingual conversational agent. Extended Abstracts of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’24). https://doi.org/10.1145/3613905.3650836
Li, Z., Thomas, T., Yu, C.-L., & Xu, Y. (2024). "I said knight, not night!": Children’s communication breakdowns and repairs with AI versus human partners. Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Interaction Design and Children (IDC ’24). https://doi.org/10.1145/3628516.365939
Meng, J., Li, H., Hu, T., & Xu, Y. (2024). The transfer deficit in the context of social robots: A case of early spatial learning from screen-based technology. Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Interaction Design and Children (IDC ’24). https://doi.org/10.1145/3628516.3659384
Sun, Y., Chen, J., Yao, B., Liu, J., Wang, D., Ma, X., Lu, Y., Xu, Y., & He, L. (2024). Exploring parent’s needs for children-centered AI to support preschoolers’ interactive storytelling and reading activities. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 8(CSCW2), 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1145/3687035
Zhang, C., Liu, X., Ziska, K., Jeon, S., Yu, C.-L., & Xu, Y. (2024). Mathemyths: Leveraging large language models to teach mathematical language through child-AI co-creative storytelling. Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. https://doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642647
Xu, Y., He, K., Vigil, V., Ojeda-Ramirez, S., Liu, X., Levine, J., Cervera, K., & Warschauer, M. (2023). "Rosita reads with my family": Developing a bilingual conversational agent to support parent-child shared reading. Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Interaction Design and Children (IDC ’23). https://doi.org/10.1145/3585088.3589354 (Best Paper Award)
Xu, Y., Vigil, V., Bustamante, A., & Warschauer, M. (2022). "Elinor’s talking to me!": Integrating conversational AI into children’s science narrative programming. Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. https://doi.org/10.1145/3491102.3502050
Xu, Y., Wang, D., Yu, M., Ritchie, D., Yao, B., Wu, T., Zhang, Z., Li, T., Bradford, N., Sun, B., Hoang, T., Sang, Y., Hou, Y., Ma, X., Yang, D., Peng, N., Yu, Z., & Warschauer, M. (2022). Fantastic questions and where to find them: FairytaleQA— an authentic dataset for narrative comprehension. Association for Computational Linguistics. https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.13947
Yao, B., Wang, D., Wu, T., Zhang, Z., Li, T., Yu, M., & Xu, Y. (2022). It is AI’s turn to ask humans a question: Question and answer pair generation for children’s storybooks. Association for Computational Linguistics. https://arxiv.org/abs/2109.03423 (Corresponding author)
Zhang, Z., Xu, Y., Wang, Y., Yao, B., Ritchie, D., Wu, T., Yu, M., Wang, D., & Li, T. (2022). Storybuddy: A human-AI collaborative agent for parent-child interactive storytelling. Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. https://doi.org/10.1145/3491102.3517479 (Equally contributing first author)
Kalinowski, R., Xu, Y., & Salen, K. (2021). The ecological context of preschool-aged children’s selection of media content. Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445429
Xu, Y., Branham, S., Collins, P., Deng, X., & Warschauer, M. (2021). Are current voice interfaces designed to support children’s language development? Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445271
Xu, Y., & Warschauer, M. (2020a). A content analysis of voice-based apps on the market for early literacy development. Proceedings of the 19th ACM International Conference on Interaction Design and Children (IDC ’20). https://doi.org/10.1145/3392063.3394418 (Best Paper Award Honorable Mention)
Xu, Y., & Warschauer, M. (2020b). "Elinor is talking to me on the screen!" integrating conversational agents into children’s television programming. CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Extended Abstracts. https://doi.org/10.1145/3334480.3383000
Xu, Y., & Warschauer, M. (2020c). Exploring young children’s engagement in joint reading with a conversational agent. Proceedings of the 19th ACM International Conference on Interaction Design and Children (IDC ’20). https://doi.org/10.1145/3392063.3394417
Xu, Y., & Warschauer, M. (2020d). What are you talking to?: Understanding children’s perceptions of conversational agents. Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. https://doi.org/10.1145/3313831.3376416
Xu, Y., & Warschauer, M. (2020e). Wonder with elinor: Designing a socially contingent video viewing experience. Proceedings of the 19th ACM International Conference on Interaction Design and Children (IDC ’20). https://doi.org/10.1145/3397617.3398024 (Research and Design Competition Honorable Mention)
Xu, Y., & Warschauer, M. (2019). Young children’s reading and learning with conversational agents. CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Extended Abstracts. https://doi.org/10.1145/3290607.3299035
Xu, Y., Yau, J. C., & Reich, S. M. (2019). The added challenge of digital reading: Exploring young children’s page turning behaviors. Proceedings of the 2019 Conference on Interaction Design and Children. https://doi.org/10.1145/3311927.3323121 (Best Short Paper Award)

Book Chapters

Xu, Y., Prado, Y., Severson, R., Lovato, S., & Cassell, J. (2024). Growing up with artificial intelligence: Implications for child development. In D. A. Christakis & L. Hale (Eds.), Children and screens: A handbook on digital media and the development, health, and well-being of children and adolescents. Springer. (in progress)
Xu, D., & Xu, Y. (2020). The ambivalence about distance learning in higher education. In L. Perna (Ed.), Higher education: Handbook of theory and research (Vol. 35). Springer.
Warschauer, M., & Xu, Y. (2018). Technology and equity in education. In J. Voogt, G. Knezek, R. Christensen, & K.-W. Lai (Eds.), International handbook of information technology in primary and secondary education. Springer US. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53803-7_76-1
Xu, Y., & Warschauer, M. (2018). Language and digital divide. In B. Warf (Ed.), The sage encyclopedia of the internet. SAGE.

Workshop Papers/Doctoral Consortium

Xu, Y., Zheng, Z., Wang, H., Yao, B., Ritchie, D., Wu, T., Yu, M., Wang, D., & Li, T. (2021). Building an interactive storytelling conversational agent through parent-AI collaboration. CUI@CSCW Workshop: Inclusive and Collaborative Child-Facing Voice Technologies.
Xu, Y. (2020). Using conversational agents to foster young children’s science learning from screen media. Proceedings of the 19th ACM International Conference on Interaction Design and Children (IDC ’20). https://doi.org/10.1145/3397617.3398031

Research Reports

Xu, D., & Xu, Y. (2019). The promises and limits of online higher education: Understanding how distance education affects access, cost, and quality. American Enterprise Institute. http://www.aei.org/publication/the-promises-and-limits-of-online-higher-education/

Public Datasets

Xu, Y., & Bradford, N. (2023). Data on the effects of transparency on people’s perceptions of social AI. https://doi.org/10.7302/69h3-x918
Xu, Y., Ritchie, D., Mo, Y., & Wang, D. (2022). FairytaleQA: An authentic large-scale dataset for narrative comprehension. https://github.com/uci-soe/StoryQAData
Xu, Y., & Warschauer, M. (2021). Conversational agents for dialogic reading. Dryad. https://doi.org/10.7280/D10Q3P

Conference Presentations

Pan, Z., Liu, X., Thomas, T., & Xu, Y. (2025). Math talk in childhood: Exploring communication patterns with AI and human partners. Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD); Symposium paper.
Pan, Z., Thomas, T., & Xu, Y. (2025). Teaching math vocabulary through storytelling: Comparing AI and human partners’ effectiveness. Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD); Symposium paper.
Xu, Y., He, K., Levine, J., Ritchie, D., Pan, Z., Bustamante, A., & Warschauer, M. (2025). Effects of AI-enhanced television shows on children’s science learning and verbal engagement. Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD); Symposium paper.
Xu, Y., Thomas, T., & Yu, C.-L. (2025). Learning with AI or humans: An experimental study on children’s perception of mind in AI learning companions. Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD); Symposium paper.
Oh, S., Zhang, T., & Xu, Y. (2025). Empathy or utility: Children’s reasoning for moral consideration of AI. In Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (Vol. 47).
Pan, E. Z., Xu, Y., & Ward, L. M. (2025). Exploring associations among AI usage, anthropomorphism, and perceived human uniqueness in adolescents. Cognitive Science Society Conference; Poster.
Thomas, T., Takahesu-Tabori, A., Stoehr, A., Varady, C., & Xu, Y. (2023). Does bilingual status influence automatic speech recognition for young latino children? 14th International Symposium on Bilingualism; Conference presentation.
Xu, Y., Levine, J., Vigil, V., Ritchie, D., Thomas, T., Barrera, C., Meza, M., Zhang, S., Bustamante, A., & Warschauer, M. (2023). Conversations with media characters promote children’s science learning from television watching. American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting; Paper presentation.
Xu, Y., Vigil, V., Ritchie, D., & Levine, J. (2023). The impact of socially interactive technologies on parent-child interactions and young children’s learning. Society for Research in Child Development; Symposium.
Xu, Y., & Warschauer, M. (2023). Using conversational artificial intelligence to promote active and engaging learning. American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting; Symposium.
Zhang, S., Vigil, V., Ritchie, D., Levine, J., & Xu, Y. (2023). Interacting with a conversational agent promotes children’s science learning. Society for Research in Child Development; Flash talk.
Wong, A., Xu, Y., & Warschauer, M. (2022). Promoting active engagement in science learning using artificial intelligence. Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association; Paper presentation.
Deng, X., Song, Y., & Xu, Y. (2021). Young children’s reading with conversational agents: The role of age and language status. Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association; Paper presentation. (Nominated for Best Paper Award in the Technology as an Agent of Change in Teaching and Learning (TACTL) SIG)
Vigil, V., Xu, Y., Yang, D., Bustamante, A., & Warschauer, M. (2021). Promoting social interaction in young children’s digital learning. Connected Learning Summit; Conference presentation.

SERVICE

Professional Service

I serve as the chair and program chair of AERA Advanced Technologies for Learning SIG

I serve as a reviewer for the following journals and conferences:

  • Child Development Perspectives
  • Child Development
  • Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
  • Applied Artificial Intelligence
  • Cognitive Science
  • Frontiers in Psychology
  • Journal of Family Psychology
  • AERA Open
  • Journal of Computer Assisted Learning
  • British Journal of Educational Technology
  • Educational Researcher
  • Research in Higher Education
  • ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing
  • ACM Conference on Interaction Design and Children (IDC)
  • ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems, (DIS)
  • ACM Conference on Computer Collaborative Work (CSCW)
  • American Educational Research Association
  • American Psychological Association
  • Technology, Society, and Mind conference

I serve on the program committee for ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing

I serve on the reviewer panel for the following funding agencies/programs:

  • NSF Research on Emerging Technologies for Teaching and Learning (RETTL) Program; Research on Innovative Technologies for Enhanced Learning (RITEL); EDU Core Research (ECR:Core)
  • Schmidt Futures; Templeton Foundation

University Service

2024-2025 Committee member, HGSE AI Working Group

2023-2024 Committee member, U-M Artificial Intelligence (AI) Research Committee

2023-2024 PhD Steering Committee

2023 Mentor, Transfer Bridges Program

2022- Mentor, University of Michigan Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program

2017-2022 Mentor, UC Irvine Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program

2017-2022 Mentor, UC Irvine Summer Undergraduate Research Program

2020 Mentor, UC Irvine Competitive Edge Program

2016-2019 Coordinator, UC Irvine Digital Learning Lab Seminar

2018 Conference Committee, Digital Learning in the Humanities and Beyond

TEACHING EXPERIENCE

2024 Instructor, AI and the Developing Child, Harvard University

2023 Instructor, Digital Media, AI, and Child Development, University of Michigan

2023 Instructor, Foundations of Teaching and Learning, University of Michigan

2023 Instructor, How People Learn, University of Michigan

2021 Guest Lecture. EDUC 212 Literacy and Technology, UC Irvine

2020 Guest Lecture. EDUC 30 21st Century Literacies, UC Irvine

2020 Instructor. R Workshop for Education Research

2020 Instructor. EDUC 198 Designing Socially Interactive Technologies

2019 Instructor. EDUC 199 Conversational Agents: Design and Evaluation

2019 Guest Lecture. EDUC 212 Literacy and Technology, UC Irvine

2019 Instructor. R Workshop for Education Research

2019 Guest Lecture. EDUC 30 21st Century Literacies, UC Irvine

2018 Graduate Teaching Assistant. EDUC 358 Media and Information Literacy, UC Irvine

LANGUAGES

Native/bilingual proficiency in English, Mandarin, and Cantonese