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Dr Irina Rets

Profile summary

  • Research Staff
  • Research Fellow
  • Institute of Educational Technology
  • IET Academic
  • irina.rets

Web links

Professional biography

Irina Rets is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Educational Technology (IET), the Open University, UK. With expertise in inclusive artificial intelligence (AI) and linguistics, Irina’s current research explores how technology can be leveraged to improve social justice in the learning contexts and more generally in society. She currently works on a large-scale Erasmus+ project – “Empowering Everyone’s Engagement in Energy (Every1)” – investigating how to enable effective participation of all European stakeholders in the digital energy market.

Before her current role, Irina was a Lecturer in OnlineTeaching in IET, responsible for designing and chairing microcredentials and online courses on educational technology (e.g., a postgraduate-level course: Teacher Development: Addressing the Climate Emergency, a teaser to which can be found here), bidding and supporting several large-scale research projects within the department. Between 2021 and 2025 Irina also worked with the BIAS project team at the Department of Management Science (LUMS), Lancaster University, initially as a Research Associate and later as a Visiting Researcher. Her research focused on AI fairness and employment, the management of equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in organisations, and the role of digital technologies in fostering EDI.

Irina is a Fellow of Higher Education Academy (FHEA). She has extensive experience of designing, teaching and carrying out the assessment on undergraduate and graduate courses in applied linguistics and technology-enhanced learning in international English Medium Instruction (EMI) settings and in the UK. Irina is also active in postgraduate research supervision. She currently co-supervises two postgraduate researchers:

Truong Do, Title: "Enhancing Engagement and Comprehension in ESL Online Teaching: A Gaze Analysis Approach to Visual Aid Integration";

Freddie Gay, Title: "An investigation into the effects of instructing EAP students to use generative AI as a vocabulary learning tool".

Irina is actively engaged in moving from research findings to impact. She does so through publishing policy-oriented outputs; developing and presenting an impact strategy of her research projects at international events, communicating via knowledge exchange platforms, such as the LSE Impact Blog, Times Higher Education, and writing open accessible summaries of her published studies.

 

Publications

How HireVue Created “Glass Box” Transparency for its AI Application (2025-03)
Tarafdar, Monideepa; Rets, Irina; Zuloaga, Lindsey and Mondragon, Nathan
MIS Quarterly Executive, 24, Article 7(1)

Editorial: Actionable Learning Analytics in Education: An Opportunity to Close the Learning Loop (2025)
Kennedy, JohnPaul; Gabriel, Florence; Korolkiewicz, Malgorzata; Rets, Irina and Rienties, Bart
Frontiers in Education, 10, Article 1571177

Language in job advertisements and the reproduction of labor force gender and racial segregation (2024-12)
Hu, Yang; Denier, Nicole; Ding, Lei; Tarafdar, Monideepa; Konnikov, Alla; Hughes, Karen D; Hu, Shenggang; Knowles, Bran; Shi, Enze; Alshehabi Al-Ani, Jabir; Rets, Irina; Kong, Linglong; Yu, Dengdeng; Dai, Hongsheng and Jiang, Bei
PNAS Nexus, 3, Article pgae526(12)

Energising the energy literacy debate for environmental education: Exploring citizens’ interest levels, knowledge gaps and individual differences (2024-08)
Rets, Irina; Whitelock, Denise; Edwards, Chris; Perryman, Leigh-Anne and Goshtasbpour, Fereshte
Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 40(4) (pp. 740-757)

Collaboration and care in climate education: Brave responses to an uncertain future (2024)
Chandler, Kathy; Aristeidou, Maria; Ball, Simon; Charitonos, Koula; Kent, Carmel; Perryman, Leigh‐Anne and Rets, Irina
The Curriculum Journal ((Early access))

Can ICT enhance workplace inclusion? ICT-enabled workplace inclusion practices and a new agenda for inclusion research in Information Systems (2023-06)
Tarafdar, Monideepa; Rets, Irina and Hu, Yang
The Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 32, Article 101773(2)

Six Practical Recommendations Enabling Ethical Use of Predictive Learning Analytics in Distance Education (2023-02-21)
Rets, Irina; Herodotou, Christothea and Gillespie, Anna
Journal of Learning Analytics, 10(1) (pp. 149-167)

Accessibility of Open Educational Resources: how well are they suited for English learners? (2023-01)
Rets, Irina; Coughlan, Tim; Stickler, Ursula and Astruc, Lluïsa
Open Learning: The Journal of Open and Distance Learning, 38(1) (pp. 38-57)

Untangling the relationship between pre-service teachers’ development of intercultural effectiveness and their experiences in virtual exchange (2023)
Rets, Irina; Rienties, Bart and Lewis, Tim
ReCALL, 35(3) (pp. 241-257)

Approaches to simplifying academic texts in English: English teachers’ views and practices (2022-10)
Rets, Irina; Astruc, Lluïsa; Coughlan, Tim and Stickler, Ursula
English for Specific Purposes, 68 (pp. 31-46)

The impact of virtual exchange on TPACK and foreign language competence: reviewing a large-scale implementation across 23 virtual exchanges (2022)
Rienties, Bart; Lewis, Tim; O'Dowd, Robert; Rets, Irina and Rogaten, Jekaterina
Computer Assisted Language Learning, 35(3) (pp. 577-603)

The impact of virtual exchange on East-West social relations: lessons from a China-Portugal foreign language exchange (2022)
Rienties, Bart and Rets, Irina
Journal of China Computer-Assisted Language Learning, 2(1) (pp. 1-19)

To simplify or not? Facilitating English L2 users’ comprehension and processing of Open Educational Resources in English using text simplification (2021-05-11)
Rets, Irina and Rogaten, Jekaterina
Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 37(3) (pp. 705-717)

Exploring critical factors of the perceived usefulness of a learning analytics dashboard for distance university students (2021)
Rets, Irina; Herodotou, Christothea; Bayer, Vaclav; Hlosta, Martin and Rienties, Bart
International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, 18, Article 46(1)

“As the Twig is bent, so is the Tree Inclined”: Research engagement among pre-service EFL teachers (2021)
Savasci, Merve and Rets, Irina
The Journal of Language Teaching and Learning, 11(2) (pp. 114-137)

Transforming pre-service teacher education through Virtual Exchange: a mixed-method analysis of perceived TPACK development (2020)
Rets, Irina; Rienties, Bart and Lewis, Timothy
Interactive Learning Environments, 31(3) (pp. 1229-1241)

Eliciting ELT students’ Understanding of Plagiarism in Academic Writing (2018-09-26)
Rets, Irina and Ilya, Ali
Eurasian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 4(2) (pp. 193-211)

Vocabulary Retention and Concordance-based Learning in L3 Acquisition (2017)
Rets, Irina
Eurasian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 3(2) (pp. 313-324)

The Go-GN Open Research Handbook (2023-04-01)
Farrow, Robert; Weller, Martin; Pitt, Rebecca; Iniesto, Francisco; Algers, Anne; Almousa, Samia; Baas, Marjon; Bentley, Penny; Bozkurt, Aras; Butler, Walter; Cardoso, Paula; Chtena, Natascha; Cox, Glenda; Czerwonogora, Ada; Dabrowski, Michael T.; Darby, Robert; DeWaard, Helen; Kathy, Essmiller; Johanna, Funk; Jenni, Hayman; Emily, Helton; Huth, Kate; Hutton, Sarah C.; Iyinolakan, Olawale; Johnson, Kathryn R.; Jordan, Katy; Kuhn, Caroline; Lambert, Sarah; Mittelmeier, Jenna; Nagashima, Tomo; Nerantzi, Chrissi; O'Reilly, Jessica; Paskevicius, Michael; Peramunugamage, Anuradha; Pete, Judith; Power, Virginia; Pulker, Hélène; Rabin, Eyal; Rets, Irina; Roberts, Verena; Rodés, Virginia; Sousa, Lorena; Spica, Elizabeth; Vizgirda, Vidminas; Vladimirschi, Viviane and Witthaus, Gabi
Farrow, Robert ed.
Publisher : Global OER Graduate Network | Published : Milton Keynes

Communication, metacommunication and intercultural effectiveness in virtual exchange: The Evaluate project (2023)
Lewis, Tim; Rienties, Bart and Rets, Irina
In: Potolia, Anthippi and Derivry-Plard, Marine eds. Virtual Exchange for Intercultural Language Learning and Teaching: Fostering Communication for the Digital Age. Routledge Research in Language Education (pp. 133-155)
ISBN : 978-0-367-45661-0 | Publisher : Routledge | Published : London & New York

Responsible AI for labour market equality (BIAS) (2022-08)
Konnikov, Alla; Rets, Irina; Hughes, Karen D.; Alshehabi Al-Ani, Jabir; Denier, Nicole; Ding, Lei; Hu, Shenggang; Hu, Yang; Jiang, Bei; Kong, Linglong; Tarafdar, Monideepa and Yu, Dengdeng
In: Hantrais, Linda ed. How to Manage International Multidisciplinary Research Projects (pp. 75-87)
Publisher : Edward Elgar | Published : Cheltenham

Simplification of open educational resources in English: Its effect on text processing of English learners (2022)
Rets, Irina; Stickler, Ursula; Coughlan, Tim and Astruc, Lluïsa
In: Rienties, Bart; Hampel, Regine; Scanlon, Eileen and Whitelock, Denise eds. Open World Learning: Research, Innovation and the Challenges of High-Quality Education. Routledge Research in Digital Education and Educational Technology (pp. 89-102)
ISBN : 9781003177098 | Publisher : Routledge | Published : London

Co-creating with Generative AI (GenAI) for curriculum design: learning personas (2025-06)
Rets, Irina; Whitelock, Denise; Edwards, Chris; Perryman, Leigh-Anne and Pitt, Beck
In : EDEN Bologna Annual Conference 2025 - Shaping the Future of Education in the age of AI (15-17 Jun 2025, Bologna, Italy)

Digital Exclusion or Digital Rejection? Exploring the Rejection of Digitalised Social Rights by Racialised Individuals with Migration Backgrounds in the UK (2024-04)
Bailey, Sara; FitzGerald, Elizabeth; Kukulska-Hulme, Agnes and Rets, Irina
In : British Sociological Association Annual Conference 2024 (3-5 Apr 2024, Online)

On the journey to impact: developing an impact strategy plan for the PRIME project (2023-03-20)
Rets, Irina; Kukulska-Hulme, Agnes; Bailey, Sara and FitzGerald, Elizabeth
In : Social Sciences Impact Conference 2023 (20-21 Mar 2023, University of Oxford)

Can ICT enhance workplace inclusion? The role of ICT-enabled inclusion practices (2022-06-18)
Tarafdar, Monideepa; Rets, Irina and Hu, Yang
In : Thirtieth European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS 2022) - New Horizons in Digitally United Societies (18-24 Jun 2022, Timisoara, Romania)

What if ‘eye’ find it too difficult? English L2 users’ response to text simplification (2020-12-16)
Rets, Irina
In : SIG27: Sharpening the facets of online measures: Research at the cutting edge (14 Dec - 16 Dec 2020, [Online])

Guidance on how Learning at Scale can be made more accessible (2020)
Papathoma, Tina; Ferguson, Rebecca; Iniesto, Francisco; Rets, Irina; Vogiatzis, Dimitrios and Murphy, Victoria
In : Proceedings of the Seventh ACM Conference on Learning@ Scale (Aug 12-14, Georgia Tech, Atlanta, GA) (pp. 289-292)

Linguistic accessibility of Open Educational Resources: Text Simplification As An Aid To Non-native Readers Of English (2021-02-03)
Rets, Irina
PhD thesis The Open University

Innovating Pedagogy 2023: Open University Innovation Report 11 (2023-07-06)
Kukulska-Hulme, Agnes; Bossu, Carina; Charitonos, Koula; Coughlan, Tim; Deacon, Andrew; Deane, Nawaal; Ferguson, Rebecca; Herodotou, Christothea; Huang, Cheng-Wen; Mayisela, Tabisa; Rets, Irina; Sargent, Julia; Scanlon, Eileen; Small, Janet; Walji, Sukaina; Weller, Martin and Whitelock, Denise
The Open University, Milton Keynes.

Gendered STEM Workforce in the United Kingdom: The Role of Gender Bias in Job Advertising (2022-02-04)
Hu, Yang; Tarafdar, Monideepa; Alshehabi Al-Ani, Jabir; Rets, Irina; Hu, Shenggang; Denier, Nicole; Hughes, Karen D.; Konnikov, Alla and Ding, Lei
HMSO

GO-GN Guide to Conceptual Frameworks (2021-09-15)
Farrow, Robert; Iniesto, Francisco; Weller, Martin; Pitt, Rebecca; Algers, Anne; Bozkurt, Aras; Cox, Glenda; Czerwonogora, Ada; Elias, Tanya; Essmiller, Kathy; Funk, Johanna; Lambert, Sarah; Mittelmeier, Jenna; Nagashima, Tomo; Rabin, Eyal; Rets, Irina; Spica, Elizabeth; Vladimirschi, Viviane and Witthaus, Gabi
Global OER Graduate Network (GO-GN). The Open University (UK)

Virtual exchange: supporting online collaboration to benefit all learners (2021-01-27)
Rets, Irina and Rienties, Bart
THE campus / Times Higher Education