Jari
Metsämuuronen
Contact
Areas of expertise
Biography
Originally, I'm a qualified Nurse - I worked mainly in the first aid, emergency room, and in the intence care units. After this carrier, I graduated as a classroom teacher but continued by studies with statistics and psychometrics, and started to work as a senior researcher and later as a leading specialist of assessment and evaluation in Finnish Education Evaluation Centre with the emphasis of research methodology and psychometrics.
I have a long history (25+ years) at the national level assessment and evaluation in both FInland and abroad. I have also consulted quite widely as a expert of assessment, methodological issues, and IRT modelling in countries such as Sri Lanka (2002), Kenya (2005), Ethiopia (2005), Palestine (2008, 2009), Chile (2013), Nepal (2010‒2015), Bangladesh (2017), Norway (2017-2019), Italy (2017-2018), Moldova (2020 - 2021), and Somalia (2023). Right now, I'm working as a professor of learning analytics at Turku Research Institute for Learning Analytics in University of Turku. I'm leading the Analytic team which consists of statisticians and AI experts.
I have my own personal developmental mission going on in Nepal from 2013 onward where I experiment how berry farming could be profitable for the local farmers. I pay salaries permanently for one family and seasonally for 10–15 families.
Teaching
During the years, I have been teaching students in polytechnics and university, mainly focusing on research methods. Part of my teaching, it may be worth mentioning that my many textbooks are used in some extent in many polytechnics and universities either as a curriculum-based material or suggestion-based material. I have supervised numerous masters theses and doctoral theses either officially or inoffically.
Research
I'm working as a professor of learning analytics at Turku Research Institute for Learning Analytics in University of Turku. I'm leading the Analytic team which consists of statisticians and AI experts. The team studies the optimal ways to use the digital trace provided by a digital learning environments, particularly the ViLLE learning environment. Earlier I have been studied the learning processes in mathematics and languages, and published tens of assessment and evaluation reports at the national level. I have also published several methodological textbooks in Finnish and English. Recently, from 2020 onward, I have focused in psychometrical matters, and published research on estimators of correlation, test score reliability, and effect sizes. Particularly, I have been interested in the phenomenon of underestination of the association, i.e., the deflation, when using the traditional estimators of correlation. I have develeoped several deflation-corrected estimators of correlation and reliability. While writing this, I'm working with deflation-corrected factor analysis, F-test, t-test, and effect sizes.