Nicholas A. Vest

I am a postdoctoral researcher in the School of Teaching and Learning at the University of Florida, where I study mathematical thinking and learning. I work within the Institute for Advanced Learning Technologies and contribute to research projects affiliated with the CS Everyone Center. I am also a principal investigator on a project funded through the Gates Foundation–supported Advancing Innovative Math Solutions (AIMS) EduData Initiative.

My research combines controlled experiments with computational and data-intensive approaches. I use experimental designs to investigate how instructional supports affect learning, computational models to examine cognitive processes, and learning analytics with large-scale educational data to study learning in authentic contexts. My recent article in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review examines how learners flexibly recruit different representations of mathematical concepts across contexts.

I earned my Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology in the Department of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where I was a member of the Cognitive Development and Communication Lab. Before beginning my doctoral studies, I was a lab manager in the Learning, Education, and Development Lab at Indiana University.