Dr. Kerstin Wagner successfully defended her PhD thesis at HU Berlin in October 2025: The dissertation presents the design and evaluation of a course recommendation system to support students at risk of dropping out. By analyzing performance differences across three undergraduate programs and involving students early in development, the system was designed to be transparent, interpretable, and accessible to all. The work was supervised at the BHT by Prof. Agathe Merceron and Prof. Petra Sauer.
Research Interests
- Human-Centered Design
- Interpretable Machine Learning
- Trusted Learning Analytics
A current list of publications is available on the project website.
Background
Kerstin graduated with a Bachelor’s (2009) and Master’s degree (2011) in Management Information Systems (Wirtschaftsinformatik) at the HTW University of Applied Sciences Berlin. After working as a technical consultant in Deutsche Bahn's group-wide Enterprise Architecture Management, she decided to enhance her data-related skills and started the international Data Science degree program at Beuth University of Applied Sciences in 2018. One year later, she got the chance to apply and further develop her newly acquired knowledge, paired with her previous experience in software engineering and management, in the field of Learning Analytics - in the project "Students Advice".
