Rate My Professor Joe Reilly

Dr. Joe Reilly serves as an Assistant Teaching Professor in the College of Professional Studies at Northeastern University, where he holds the position of Program Lead for the Master of Professional Studies (MPS) in Analytics. He earned his Ph.D. in Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 2020, following a master's degree obtained while working as a teacher in Washington, D.C. Early in his career, Reilly taught seventh-grade science at a D.C. middle school, where he tailored immersive lesson plans for students, including those with dyslexia and ADHD, and studied individualized education programs to support their learning. During his doctoral studies at Harvard, he conducted design-based implementation research in partnership with practitioners to make student data more salient for both students and teachers. His dissertation focused on automated formative assessment tools designed to detect unproductive struggling and provide timely scaffolding, supervised by Professor Chris Dede and Principal Research Scientist Tina Grotzer. Reilly's research specializations include immersive virtual environments for science education, multi-modal learning analytics, collaboration quality assessment through physiological synchrony, and augmented reality applications in undergraduate ecology courses.

Reilly has authored several key publications, including 'Assessing science identity exploration in immersive virtual environments: A mixed methods approach' (2024, with E. McGivney, C. Dede, T. Grotzer), 'Using mobile location-based augmented reality to support outdoor learning in undergraduate ecology and environmental science courses' (2018, with A. Kamarainen et al.), 'Predicting the Quality of Collaborative Problem Solving Through Linguistic Analysis of Discourse' (2019, with B. Schneider), and 'Supports for deeper learning of inquiry-based ecosystem science in virtual environments' (2018, with S.J. Metcalf et al.). After completing his Ph.D., he worked as a data scientist in industry, applying Agile methodologies to develop and deploy models on large datasets to meet business objectives. At Northeastern, he delivers workshops on integrating generative AI into pedagogy and work practices, serves as an AI Faculty Fellow for 2025-2026, leading efforts in ethical AI use in teaching, and delivered a keynote address at the Analytics Employer Panel in 2024, emphasizing experiential learning and innovation in data-centric roles. His work bridges educational research, data analytics, and professional development, preparing learners for global workforce demands.