Qijie (Vicky) Cai

Biography

Dr. Cai has a Ph.D in K12 Administration and Supervision from University of Virginia and a Master's degree in Educational Technology. Upon completion of her degree, she worked as an instructional designer first at College of Continuing Studies at University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, then at the Information Technology Division at Minnesota State University. Before joining Towson University, Dr. Cai was assistant professor and graduate coordinator for the Educational Technology program at Minnesota State University. Dr. Cai has teaching and research experience in instructional design, online collaborative learning, and feedback design. 

Peer Reviewed Publications: 

Cai, Q., & Hong, H. (accepted). Improving K-12 teachers’ conceptual competencies in consuming empirical research. Teacher Development.

Hong, H., Cai, Q., & Wang, M. (accepted). Exploring young children’s argumentation as a social intertextual practice. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy.

Cai, Q., & Moallem, M. (2021). Applying Merrill’s first principles of instruction to redesign an online graduate course through the rapid prototyping approach. TechTrends. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-021-00658-w

Cai, Q. (2021). Designing Scholarly Conversations to promote cognitive presence and knowledge building among in-service teachers. International Journal of Online Pedagogy and Course Design. 11(2), 16-30. https://doi.org/10.4018/IJOPCD.2021040102

Cai, Q., & Robinson, D. (2021). Design, redesign and continuous refinement of an online graduate course: A case study for implementing universal design for learning. Journal of Formative Design in Learning, 5(1), 16-26. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41686-020-00053-3

Song, L., Cai, Q., Hong, H., Liu, X., Jin, L. & Li, Q. (2020). A self-study of five teacher educators’ experiences of transitioning to emergency remote teaching. In R. Ferdig, E. Baumgartner, R. Hartshorne, R. Kaplan-Rakowski, & C. Mouza (Eds.), Teaching, technology, and teacher education during the COVID-19 pandemic: Stories from the field (pp. 151-155). Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE).

Carey, L., Sadera, W. A., Cai, Q., & Filipiak, S. (2020). Creating a community of practice for educators forced to transition to remote teaching. In R. Ferdig, E. Baumgartner, R. Hartshorne, R. Kaplan-Rakowski, & C. Mouza (Eds.), Teaching, technology, and teacher education during the COVID-19 pandemic: Stories from the field (pp. 251-255). Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE).

Cai, Q., Chen, B., Wu, H., & Trussell, G. (2019). Improve learning performance through differentiated feedback in an introductory statistics course. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 56(4), 434-445. https://doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2018.1508362

Grants and Funding

Principal Investigator (PI): “TU-COE-Robotics Program,” with Christine Engbert (co-PI). Maryland State Department of Education Robotics Program, 2021-2022, awarded $8,700.

PI: “Towson University – College of Education Robotics Program,” BTU-Partnerships for Greater Baltimore, 2022, approved $1,700.

Co-PI: “Preparing PK-8 Preservice Teachers to Teach Computer Science: An Alternative Pathway,” with Mahnaz Moallem (PI), Qing Li, Christine Engbert, Destyni Loksa, Aisha Ali-Gombe, Melike Kara, Rachel Billman, Marcia Vandiver, LeaAnn Christenson (co-PIs), Google Computer Science Education, Sep. 2021- Dec. 2022, $49,736.00.

PI: “Designing Scholarly Conversations to Enhance Online Collaborative Learning,” Faculty Development & Research Committee Grant, Towson University, 2020-2021, awarded $4,520.

PI: “Enhancing Online Collaborative Learning among Graduate Students through Hard and Soft Scaffolding,” France Merrick Grant, College of Education, Towson University, 2020-2021, awarded $2,250.

Conference presentations and proceedings: 

Cai, Q. (2019). Designing learning journals to enhance online discussion among in-service teachers in a graduate course. In K. Graziano (Ed.), Proceedings of Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education Conference (pp. 1137-1142). Las Vegas, NV, United States: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education. 

Cai, Q. (2018). Promoting Scholarly Conversations among in-service teachers in an online graduate program. In E. Langran & J. Borup (Eds.), Proceedings of Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education Conference (pp. 104-109). Washington, DC., United States: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education. 

Cai, Q. (2017). Instructional design for improving Scholarly Conversations among online graduate students. In J. Dron & S. Mishra (Eds.), E-Learn 2017 Proceedings. Paper presented at World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education (pp. 263-268). Vancouver, British Columbia: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education. 

Cai, Q. (2017). Promoting knowledge building in online collaborative learning in graduate course. In J. Johnston (Ed.), EdMedia 2017 Proceedings. Paper presented at EdMedia 2017 World Conference on Educational Media & Technology (pp. 394-400). Washington, District of Columbia: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education.