Ikseon Choi

Dr. Choi has led a series of innovative research and development projects for authentic learning (e.g., case-based e-learning, problem-based learning, project-based learning, virtual reality-based learning) and real-world problem solving in education. Through his multi-disciplinary collaboration with leading scholars in the areas of health sciences (medicine, nursing, pharmacy, vet medicine), science, engineering, and teacher education, he explores the uncertain nature of various types of real-world problems, identifies individual and environmental factors influencing learning and problem solving, and investigates effective ways of promoting and evaluating the development of learners’ problem-solving abilities. Since 2015, he has established an interdisciplinary research lab with his colleagues, Research and Innovation in Learning (RAIL), with a pragmatic research mission, that is, to bring educational innovation to universal challenges by incubating ideas, innovating solutions, and impacting society. As a founding faculty of RAIL, he has been initiating socially responsive educational research programs that can address our current societal issues, such as STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) workforce development, diversity in cybersecurity and neuroscience, leadership and professionalism for graduate students, health professions career development/navigation, child pedestrian safety, and so on. A STEM-integrated robotics education curriculum and a Virtual Reality-based child pedestrian safety education program are the most recent examples of educational innovations that have been developed, validated, and disseminated globally through RAIL (http://rail.coe.uga.edu/).