Zachari Swiecki
ARC DECRA Fellow, Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University
I study how we can say something meaningful about a person from activity they didn’t carry out alone. Most of what people do that’s worth understanding is done with other people, with tools, and in settings that shape the work.
What I work on
I build tools that record how work unfolds, methods for making sense of those records, and ways of showing them back to the people involved. Most of my current work looks at writing with AI — what people ask of these tools, what they do with the answers, and what separates the sessions where something is learned from the ones where something is merely produced.
The problem itself is old. What’s changed is that the usual shortcut — read the essay, judge the writer — has stopped working, which makes it impossible to put off any longer.
TraceSoftware that records writing sessions as they happen, across the tools people already use.
Network modelsWays of finding structure in coded interaction, and of seeing what that structure is doing.
ValidationSimulation and testing that establish what these methods can and can’t support.
Background
I’m a learning analytics researcher at Monash University, where I hold an ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (2026–2029). I studied physics and mathematics as an undergraduate, then did a PhD in educational psychology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. I’ve been building methods for studying collaboration and learning ever since.
I sit on the editorial boards of the International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning and the Journal of Quantitative Ethnography, and I help organise the LAK and ICQE conferences.