Ben Van Dusen

Ben Van Dusen

Pronouns
he/him/his
Position
  • Associate Professor
I am an Associate Professor in the School of Education at Iowa State University. My research focuses on improving STEM education through the development of research-based assessments, learning analytics, and AI-supported tools that help instructors better understand and support student learning. I direct the LASSO platform, a national infrastructure that supports large-scale research on teaching and learning in STEM and provides instructors with data to improve their courses.

Contact

Email
bvd@iastate.edu
Phone
515-294-0317
0624d Lagomarcino
901 Stange Rd
Ames
,
IA
50011-1041
Social Media and Websites

Education

  • B.A., Physics, University of California, Berkeley, 2004
  • M.Ed., Educational Leadership, University of Oregon, 2005
  • Ph.D., Science Education: Curriculum and Instruction, University of Colorado, Boulder, 2014

Interdepartmental Programs

Ben Van Dusen is an Associate Professor in the School of Education at Iowa State University. His research focuses on improving STEM education through the development of research-based assessments, learning analytics, and AI-supported tools that help instructors better understand and support student learning. He directs the LASSO platform, a national research and assessment infrastructure used by hundreds of instructors and researchers to study and improve teaching and learning in STEM.

His work focuses on cognitive diagnostic assessments and next-generation AI-supported learning systems that provide instructors and students with actionable insights about skill mastery and learning progress. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation and has produced numerous peer-reviewed publications in journals such as Physical Review Physics Education Research, Sociology of Education, and Journal of Research on Science Teaching. Before earning his PhD, he served as an Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellow at the National Science Foundation.