Making Education Accessible to All: Associate Professor Xiao Hu
Associate Professor Xiao Hu joined the University of Arizona College of Information Science after teaching and conducting research at the University of Hong Kong.
What excites me most about my research is the opportunity to reduce barriers and make education accessible to all.
Associate Professor Dr. Xiao Hu joined the College of Information Science in 2025 after advancing her research and teaching at the University of Hong Kong. In this profile, she opens up about her cutting-edge research on how AI can enhance human learning and wellbeing, the project-based approach that brings students directly into her teaching and her passions for exploring the outdoors—plus much more.
What brought you to the College of Information Science?
The U of A College of Information Science is new and very energetic. It encourages interdisciplinary work providing unlimited room for exploration, collaboration and innovation. I was a member in the Faculty of Education in the University of Hong Kong, where I taught in information management and data science programs and led a team of young researchers investigating questions on learning analytics, human-AI interactions, technology-enhanced learning and cultural heritage education.
What is your current research, and what most excites you about this work?
I am continuing my research on improving human learning and wellbeing through designing and applying intelligent systems. In recent projects we proposed a virtual reality co-creation pedagogy and designed CLEVR, a Collaborative Learning Environment for Virtual Reality creation, which has so far benefited 1,000+ students, from primary schools to universities. An ongoing project is exploring and facilitating secondary school students’ writing processes with generative artificial intelligence tools, for which we are building a web-based system called GAILA (Generative AI and Learning Analytics).
What excites me most about my research is the opportunity to reduce barriers and make education accessible to all.
Associate Professor Xiao Hu works with students in Hong Kong.
Tell us about your academic editorial and conference involvement.
I am serving in the editorial board of the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology (JASIST) and the British Journal of Educational Technology (BJET). I also serve as the coordinating co-chair of the Big Data in Education and Learning Analytics (BDELA) track in the IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT, 2021-2025), and am a program co-chair for the Annual Conference of the International Society for Music Information Retrieval (ISMIR, 2025) and The ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL, 2024).
What courses are you teaching, and what do you most enjoy about teaching?
I am teaching INFO 505: Foundations of Information and INFO 456/556: Text Retrieval and Web Search. Teaching helps satisfy my intellectual curiosity for new advancements and problems in my field, through interactions with ideas, perspectives and questions from generations of students.
How do you bring your research and service work into your teaching?
Perhaps it’s my inherent tendency of sharing—it all comes naturally that I tell my students what I learned from research, service and life.
Teaching also contributes to research as well. Students keep inspiring me.
Associate Professor Xiao Hu works with students on generative AI projects in the classroom.
How do you engage with students to foster their academic and professional growth?
I involve students in projects, organizing them in teams so that they can learn from and share with one another.
Beyond research, service and teaching, what are your passions?
Reading, hiking, skygazing and traveling.
What advice do you have for InfoSci students?
It may sound a bit cliché, but it is truly important to keep in mind what you are passionate about. How do you want information to help people, society and yourself? Then you will have endless strength to conquer difficulties and the capacity to grow and enjoy your professional journey.
Learn more about Xiao Hu on her faculty page, or explore ways you can support the dynamic, student-invested faculty of the College of Information Science.