Research

Making computer science education work at scale — and proving it

My research started in large-scale distributed systems and autonomic computing within the S3 group (Systems, Software, Services) at Télécom Paris. The academic freedom I was given there allowed me to progressively transpose those scalability questions to a different object: human learning. In 2019 I joined the DIVA group (Design, Interaction, Visualization & Applications), closer to my current themes in education and learning technologies.

FOLCS — Future Of Learning in Computer Science

In 2021 I founded FOLCS, an interdisciplinary and international research and innovation group hosted at Télécom Paris, with Ella Hamonic, Mathias Hiron and Gérard Memmi. It brings together researchers, educators, designers and edtech developers around one question: we teach computer science online, but do people actually learn?

Research questions

Evidence-based learning experiments. We evaluate the integration of new learning tools with pre/post tests, and we develop analytics and dashboards to measure and monitor learning rather than assume it.

Cognitive science. Does learning to program promote higher cognitive skills — abstract thinking, problem solving, planning, algorithmic thinking — and does that transfer across knowledge domains? How do we measure it?

System architectures. What architectures give better scalability, interoperability, discoverability and traceability in learning? We prototype modular learning systems with self-healing, self-deploying, self-optimizing and self-protecting properties, and we work on open protocols and standards so that learning resources can genuinely be reused.

Training CS educators at scale. How can we train enough computer science educators, fast enough, given the shortage in the field?

Inclusive by design. How do we design learning experiences that promote diversity and inclusion, for teachers as well as learners?

Better feedback with AI. Can artificial intelligence provide relevant, instant and personalised feedback in CS learning?

Ethics. How do we embed ethical frameworks in the interfaces we build — and how do we teach the basics of AI ethics to every citizen?

Research at scale, in the field

Since 2018 our international team has been meeting every Thursday evening to run the MOOC series: managing teaching assistants, improving content, and designing research instruments embedded directly in the courses. This is what makes experiments on cohorts of tens of thousands of learners possible.

This work has been published with Andy Saltarelli, director of educational research at Stanford, and René Kizilcec, director of the Future of Learning lab at Cornell, in venues such as ACM Learning@Scale, ACM SIGCSE, IEEE LWMOOCs, ACM CHI, AIED, EIAH and the Open edX Conference.

See all publications →

eMOOCs 2025

I was general co-chair, with Ella Hamonic (IIEP-UNESCO), of eMOOCs 2025 — the 9th European MOOCs Stakeholders Summit — held at Télécom Paris from 30 June to 2 July 2025 on the theme Shaping Sustainable Lifelong Learning for All in the Era of AI, and co-located with the international Open edX Conference.

The conference gathered the international online education community around six tracks (Research, Experience, World, Business Sustainability and Policy, Francophonie, Workshops). Keynotes included Ángel Cabrera, president of Georgia Tech, Anant Agarwal, founder of edX and professor at MIT, Payal Arora (Utrecht University) and Mairéad Pratschke (LSE Data Science Institute). Four United Nations delegations attended.

The 20 full papers, selected out of 79 submissions, were published open access by Springer in proceedings I co-edited: Digital Education: Shaping Sustainable Lifelong Learning for All in the Era of AI.

Doctoral supervision

Mingming Qiu (50%) — designing smart home services with machine learning, with Elie Najm and Bruno Traverson (EDF), 2019–2023. Thesis
Robin Despouys (50%) — distributed and autonomic systems for the smart home, with Isabelle Demeure then Elie Najm, 2013–2017.
Chloé Le Bail (10%) — ergonomic psychology, collaborative design for sustainable shared resource management, with Michael Baker and Françoise Détienne, defended in 2018. Thesis

Funding

Around 840 k€ raised for the research and teaching projects: IMT MOOC production unit through the Mines-Télécom Foundation (450 k€), Île-de-France edtech awards for TOUCAN (58 k€) and CALAO (180 k€), a French Programme d’investissements d’avenir grant for Code ton futur (80 k€), a Coursera grant (30 k€) and an Alumni fundraising dinner (40 k€).