John (Yuehan) Chen

John (Yuehan) Chen

he/him/his

Designing the Future of Learning

Portfolio

NetLogo AR (2023-Present)

NetLogo AR is a spatial AR authoring toolkit that combines room-scale AR technology with NetLogo, a popular agent-based programming language. Part of Turtle Universe, the mobile version of NetLogo, it allows users to create simulations that blend digital content with real-world environments. Built on NetLogo’s strengths for research and education, it enables users to model complex systems, fostering creativity in applications like games and art, making it ideal for K-12 learners and researchers.

NetLogo Chat (2023-Present)

NetLogo Chat is an innovative LLM-powered interface designed to enhance learning and practice in NetLogo, a leading language for agent-based modeling (ABM). ABM simulates complex systems using simple rules applied to agents, with applications in fields like disease spread and ecology. Unlike general-purpose LLM tools, NetLogo Chat addresses ABM’s unique challenges by aligning conceptual designs, code, and real-world phenomena. Built on constructionist learning principles, it empowers users to create meaningful models while integrating authoritative sources, supporting troubleshooting, and fostering human-AI collaboration within the NetLogo IDE.

Physics Lab AR (2017-Present)

Physics Lab AR, founded in 2017, is a mobile app that lets learners create and explore virtual physics experiments. Initially designed for high school students, the app quickly attracted a larger audience, including K-12 students outside the classroom. By 2019, it reached over 1 million users, and by 2024, nearly 7 million worldwide.

Tortuga (2021-2023)

Tortuga is a novel technical system for building interactive scaffolds for Agent-based Modeling and Programming (ABM & P) in NetLogo. It lowers the threshold and raises the ceiling for constructionist curricular designers by allowing them to build interactive scaffolds with simple NetLogo commands. These scaffolds can be aware of computational models’ emergent behaviors and react to learners’ interactions in modeling spaces.

Turtle Universe (2019-Present)

A mobile incarnation of NetLogo, the most widely used agent-based modeling environment, Turtle Universe is dedicated to younger learners and educators on phones and tablets. Some highlights include built-in multilingual, block-based programming, and interactive tutorials. By May 2024, it has been used by 104,539 people around the world.