Alexander Steinmaurer - Academic Website

Me in a nutshell

I’m Alex Steinmaurer, a computer scientist, educator, and researcher from Upper Austria. I currently work at IT:U Austria, a newly established interdisciplinary university in Linz with the goal of transforming learning and science.

At IT:U, I serve in two roles: as study program coordinator for the Ph.D. program Digital Transformation in Learning, and as a postdoctoral researcher, supervised by Prof. Manuela Paechter.

My postdoctoral research lies at the intersection of computer science and education. I investigate the impact of generative AI on learning processes, with a particular focus on computing education. Together with an interdisciplinary team spanning learning sciences, psychology, educational technology, and computer science, I explore how conversational agents and large language models influence the development of computational thinking and coding skills. This includes studying interaction patterns, educational settings, and common misconceptions that arise in AI-supported learning environments.

In addition to my work at IT:U, I’m an adjunct fellow at the Cognitive and Digital Science Lab at Graz University of Technology. I earned my Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Faculty of Computer Science and Biomedical Engineering at Graz University of Technology, under the supervision of Prof. Christian Gütl.

Since 2020, I have been an external lecturer at the University College of Teacher Education Styria (Graz), where I teach a Master’s-level seminar on the development of (educational) multimedia systems. The course is designed for in-service teachers specializing in media informatics and digital media education. I view this seminar as a valuable opportunity to connect my research with classroom practice, introducing students to current topics in educational technology and working collaboratively on concepts and methods they can apply in their teaching.

During the Fall 2023 semester, I was a research fellow with the PLT Group at Brown University, working with Prof. Shriram Krishnamurthi and Prof. Kathi Fisler. My work there focused on developing new approaches and tools for rethinking data science and programming education in the context of large language models.

Teaching

During my academic career, I had the opportunity to give many different lectures and courses. I gave courses at Graz University of Technology, FH Campus 02, University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria, and University College of Teacher Education Styria.

I am especially proud that the courses Introduction to Programming and Object-oriented Programming 1 were nominated (and short-listed) twice for the Excellence in Teaching Award from TU Graz. In 2022/23 the course Object-oriented Programming 1 was finally awarded with the prize. We presented our teaching concept for the course in a poster.

Courses

Supervising

I also had the honor to work with talented Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Ph.D. students and (co-)supervise their thesis. I’m proud of the fantastic achievements of all my students; however, the following students have proven themselves in particular through their high level of academic commitment and achievements:

Current Ph.D. Students I am currently (co-)supervising the following Ph.D. students:

Former Master Students

Former Bachelor Students

Research

Reserach Vision

Motivated by Shriram Krishnamurthi, I strongly favor having a reserach vision rather than a narrowly defined reserach area. My scientific “home base” lies at the intersection of technology and education, constituting the core of my research endeavors. Since Data affects my everyday life, my reserach vision turns around data:

Data is omnipresent, people generate it every day; it depicts our complex reality. Learning is ubiquitous; people learn every day; it is the basis for positive change. How can data and learning be linked to bring positive change?

My research interests primarily focus on the field of Computer Science Education. Here is a (non-exhaustive) list of topics that I am interested in:

Research projects

This (non-exhaustive) list of my latest (reserach) projects shows what I am interested in:

Publications

I maintain my publications within a Google Docs publication list

Before that, I used Research Gate for a while to manage all my publications. But as with almost every social network, it requires quite active maintenance, which takes some time. Even though RG has some good functionality to support you as much as possible, I ended up using mainly Google Scholar instead. There you can find all my (recent) papers.

Working with me?

If you are interested in my research area and would like to discuss your ideas for a Bachelor’s or Master’s thesis, I would love to hear from you - drop me an email (alexander.steinmaurer@it-u.at). Ensure that this email also contains some first serious thoughts on the topic, including an interesting problem/question you would like to answer (you do not have to come up with a solution/implementation, a good question is a perfect starting point!)

Useful Resources