In July 2026, Dr. Xuelan Qiu, Associate Professor at the School of Education, attended the International Meeting of the Psychometric Society (IMPS 2026), hosted at Yonsei University in South Korea. The IMPS is a premier international conference in the fields of psychometrics, educational measurement, and quantitative research, bringing together scholars from around the world to discuss cutting-edge topics including measurement theory, statistical methods, artificial intelligence, and educational assessment.

During the conference, Dr. Qiu delivered an oral presentation titled "Leveraging Machine Learning for Clustered Data: Model Development and Application to Examining the Impact of COVID-19 on Student Mathematics Achievement." The study addresses the commonly encountered hierarchical data structures in education and the social sciences, proposing a multilevel machine learning framework that accounts for data clustering to enhance analytical and predictive performance in complex data contexts. The research further applies data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA 2022) to investigate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on student mathematics achievement. The findings not only demonstrate the potential of machine learning methods in educational big data analytics but also provide important empirical evidence for strengthening the resilience of education systems in the face of major disruptions. The presentation generated lively discussion among attending scholars.

Throughout the conference, Dr. Qiu engaged in extensive exchanges with researchers from various countries and regions. This participation has not only accumulated valuable experience for the School's development in educational assessment, big data analytics in education, and AI in education research, but has also significantly enhanced the international academic visibility of the School of Education at the City University of Macau within the global community of educational measurement and psychometrics.