Her research program is focused on better understanding the social and pragmatic nature of conversation, and using this understanding to build computational systems that can improve the efficacy of conversation between people, and between people and computers. In order to pursue these goals, she invokes approaches from computational discourse analysis and text mining, conversational agents, and computer supported collaborative learning. She serves on the Board of Directors of the International Society of the Learning Sciences and the Executive Board of the International Artificial Intelligence in Education Society. She serves as Associate Editor of the International Journal of Computer Supported Collaborative Learning and the IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies.