Center for Process Data: From Digital Interactions to Intelligent Insights

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Every click, pause, and navigation choice a user makes in a digital system—whether in a learning management system (LMS), survey, or assessment—creates a footprint. These footprints, or process data, reveal far more than simple digital behavior. With process data, we can see how users engage and strategize with platforms or products, as well as how platform or product functions are used. 

Since 2017, the Center for Process Data team has helped education and research partners turn process data into clear, useful insights that improve learning, design, and decision-making. For instance, through our work with process data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), we learned valuable insights around students’ use of universal design features and tools.
 

Solving Challenges Across the "Data-to-Insight" Pipeline

At the Center for Process Data, our experts work closely with assessment providers, technology leaders, researchers, data scientists, and others to identify and apply practical solutions that lead to meaningful insights. Our broad expertise in data engineering, decision support, data analytics, and visual storytelling has paved the way for data-driven approaches to decision making. 

More specifically, our expertise includes: 

1. Behavioral Data Engineering

• Parsing, transforming, and structuring raw digital behavioral data
• Building secure and scalable data pipelines tailored to platform-specific requirements

2. Engagement, Strategy, and Navigation Analytics

• Detecting disengagement, fast response guessing, and navigation and response patterns
• Analyzing timing, tool use, and order of action behavior for deeper understanding

3. Access to Relevance Evaluation

• Exploring the use of on-screen tools and accommodations
• Distinguishing between access, use, and relevance in digital feature use
• Supporting design choices for all learners

4. AI-Enhanced Modeling and Decision Support

• Building explainable models for learner behavior, scoring, and feedback generation
• Using machine learning, natural language processing (NLP), and AI to automate insight extraction
• Generating content, intelligent systems, and recommendations with human-centered design

5. Visual Storytelling and Dissemination

• Developing intuitive dashboards, briefs, and visuals for technical and nontechnical audiences
• Creating tools that empower our partners to use data to make evidence-based decisions
   

Our Approach to Artificial Intelligence: Human-Centered and Evolving

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming how we generate content, analyze human behavior, and support decision-making. At the Center for Process Data, we continuously learn, adapt, test, and deploy AI models to ensure usability, transparency, and practical value. We integrate AI tools strategically, while aligning with the latest standards in the field to support evolving project needs:

• Use of natural language processing (NLP) and AI for analysis;
• Autonomous AI frameworks;
• Automated scoring;
• Automated content generation;
• Pattern recognition and knowledge discovery processes;
• Evaluation frameworks for AI chatbots;
• Responsible AI frameworks; and
• Training for the research community.