Franceska Xhakaj

Franceska Xhakaj is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University, affiliated with the School of Computer Science. She specializes in educational technology, intelligent tutoring systems, and learning analytics. Her work focuses on leveraging technology to enhance teaching practices, particularly through classroom sensing, data-driven instruction, and dashboard design for educators. She teaches courses such as 15110 ('Fundamentals of Programming and Computer Science'), 15121 ('Great Ideas in Theoretical Computer Science'), and 15890 ('Special Topics in CS').

Her research integrates artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction to improve educational outcomes, including studies on teacher dashboards, gaze-tracking classroom digital twins, and heuristic evaluations via multimodal LLMs. She has contributed to systems like EduSense and Luna, aiming to scale practical classroom analytics and support teacher professional development.

Her teaching responsibilities include multiple semesters of introductory programming courses (2023-2025), reflecting her dual focus on both research innovation and foundational computer science education. Key projects emphasize bridging gaps between technological tools and pedagogical needs, with recent work exploring instrumentation-free classroom monitoring and adaptive learning systems.