Professor Sanna Järvelä awarded honorary doctorate by the University of Antwerp

Professor Sanna Järvelä is especially known for the concept of socially shared regulation, which describes how learners regulate their learning processes collaboratively. She has studied learning using diverse and innovative methods that go beyond traditional questionnaires. Her research examines real interaction, conversations, and even physiological signals, offering a deeper view of learning in digital and collaborative environments.

By awarding the honorary doctorate, the University of Antwerp wishes to highlight not only Järvelä’s significant past achievements but also the forward-looking nature of her work. In recent years, Järvelä has focused on the intersection of artificial intelligence and learning, studying how intelligent technologies can support learning, collaboration, and self-regulation.

Järvelä emphasizes that in the future, those who know how to use AI strategically will do better than those who do not use it. What matters, however, is how and what kind of AI is used. Learners need AI, but AI must not make learning passive.

“The task of education is to ensure that AI is used to enhance thinking, not replace it. Skills in regulating learning – the ability to plan, monitor, and evaluate one’s own learning – are crucial. They form the core of human thinking, which AI cannot replace, but whose development it can support,” Järvelä says.

Sanna Järvelä’s work is conceptually strong, methodologically advanced, and future-oriented.

Read more:
Blog post by Sanna Järvelä: Hybrid intelligence ensures that AI does not replace learning or make the learner lazy