Biographical Details
Dr Kathy Lee's research examines how learners develop and perform academic communication across the educational pipeline, with a particular emphasis on oral presentations, academic English, and the impact of digital technologies and AI on assessment and feedback.
Her grant-supported research began with work on emergent literacy in Chinese and English among low‑SES children and on academic writing and IELTS preparation, exploring how assessment shapes motivation, autonomy, and language development in school and tertiary pathways. As her teaching and leadership roles moved into large, communication‑focused university programs, her research increasingly centred on oral presentation in higher education, especially for EAL students. In this phase she investigated cognitive and affective dimensions of presentation—such as fear, confidence, and self‑efficacy—alongside the multimodal nature of performance, including speech, gesture, and visual design in high‑stakes assessment contexts.
More recently, Dr Lee's research has turned to AI‑mediated and technology‑enhanced feedback on student presentations. She studies real‑time presentation feedback platforms and AI‑generated responses to recorded student performances, comparing automated and human feedback and probing issues of bias and fairness—for example, how different regional accents may be treated by AI systems. In parallel, she also explores how generative AI can be used in presentation planning and resource curation for teachers, linking pedagogical and curriculum design questions with emerging concerns about integrity, equity, and the educational impact of AI.