Shao holds an MA in Language Teaching Studies at the University of Oregon. Currently she is a doctoral researcher and her research focuses on multimodal strategies and AI applications in higher education Mandarin Chinese teaching within the Nordic contexts. Her study explores how multimodal strategies and AI applications influence the linguistic, educational, psychological, social, and political dimensions of language learning.

Research interests include intercultural communicative competence, pragmatics, and multimodality and AI applications in language teaching and learning.

Shao has been consistently teaching and co-teaching Mandarin Chinese as a foreign and second language in China, United States and Finland since 2015. She taught business Chinese to adult learners in China for three years, and later taught in the United States for five years across various educational contexts, including K–12 and higher education. Currently Shao serves as a teaching assisstant at the Chinese department.