Congratulations to Dr. Zhiru Sun for earning Ph.D degree in Educational Technology from The Ohio State University! Zhiru’s research interests bridge across disciplines including educational technology, psychology, and statistics. Her research is grounded in the belief that technology can facilitate the realization of the constructivist learning environment in which learners are not isolated, but actively interact with a variety of resources to develop the students’ understanding through a mixture of experimentation, experience, and expert guidance. Since the use of technology in education brings new challenges to both students and instructors, Zhiru has been conducting research on the advancement of theories and technologies to understand students’ learning behaviors and provide suggestions for instructors’ course design.
In her dissertation, she investigated the role of self-regulation on students’ learning achievements in an undergraduate flipped math class through the survey method. She proposed two conceptual models based on the self-regulation theory for pre-class and in-class flipped learning and assessed the models by conducting the structural equation modeling analysis. 
Her dissertation research provides empirical evidences for the significant relationship between the pre-class and in-class flipped learning, between the confidence of learning math and the pre- and in-class achievements, as well as between the use of help seeking strategy and the pre- and in-class achievements. Besides this line of research, Zhiru is also working on a learning analytics project in extension of her dissertation work. This project first examines students’ learning patterns in pre-class online learning environment of the flipped class. Then non-cognitive factors are
incorporated to understand the learning patterns based upon motivation and learning theories. Zhiru’s involvement in a variety of research projects had resulted in several international/national conference presentations (e.g., AERA, AECT, and CSCL), as well as some scholarly publications (e.g. a book chapter in press).
Besides the academic involvement, Zhiru has also volunteered to contribute in a variety of community services at OSU. She founded the Educational Technology Graduate Student Council in July 2014 and served as the President of the group for a year. She participated in the Education Studies Graduate Student Council as a member in the communication division. As the most senior member in the DL research lab, she also played a mentoring role to provide valuable advice to lab members.
Zhiru is a proud member of the lab who played crucial roles in many of our projects. She is hardworking, talented, and enthusiastic young researcher; capable of working independently but also a good team-member and collaborator. Her doctoral study at OSU has prepared her very well to purse a fruitful academic career. In the fall 2015, Zhiru will continue her academic life in Denmark. Good luck and best wishes to her!