Apr 25 2008Open position: Flash research programmer
From the posting:
We are looking for a research programmer to help our lab in the development of web-based tutoring software. The candidate's duties will include the development of computer-based tutors, using the Cognitive Tutor Authoring Tools (CTAT), a software package for authoring intelligent tutors that has been developed within our lab, maintaining and extending the Flash-based tools within CTAT, and helping to create, maintain, and extend a website with CTAT-built tutors for middle-school math.
Read the full description.
(If the link does not work, go to http://hr.web.cmu.edu/prospective/, click on "Search Staff Job Listing", and search job number 4608.)
Feb 15 2008PSLC Summer School Registration is Open
The PSLC Summer School is an intensive 1-week course on technology-enhanced learning experiments and building intelligent tutoring systems. The summer school will provide a conceptual background and considerable hands-on experience in developing, running and analyzing technology-enhanced learning experiments. This year's summer school will be held July 7-11, 2008.
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Feb 05 2008Internship Opportunities with HumRRO
HumRRO's internship is available to graduate students currently enrolled in full time masters or Ph.D. accredited programs. The traditional summer internship at HumRRO is for 3 months; however, a 6-12 month internship will be considered. Our internship is a paid, full time opportunity. Regardless of duration, internship duties and responsibilities are the same; however, variations are possible depending upon the technical content and timeline of the particular projects in need of staffing. An intern will serve as a research assistant/associate on one or more projects. Typical tasks include literature review, synthesis, and analysis; data collection, entry, and analysis; survey and other instrument development and administration; and documentation of findings. HumRRO is looking for a responsible, motivated team player with strong technical and communication skills to assist in our contract research activities. HumRRO project directors will provide technical supervision and mentoring to help make the most of the intern's exposure to and experience with our applied research setting.
›› Selection
Selection is competitive and will be based on review of application materials and reference assessment for evidence of research promise, academic achievement, and writing ability. Finalists will be interviewed telephonically.
›› Application Process
Applications for HumRRO's internship are due on or before March 1. Each applicant must provide HumRRO with the following: 1) a resume and cover letter; 2) a one-page personal statement of career goals and internship interests; 3) official transcript(s) of graduate work; and 4) contact information for two references (i.e. the name, address, phone number, and email address; recommendation letters are not needed). The traditional internship at HumRRO is for three months. Candidates who desire a longer opportunity must submit with their application a justification for the additional time.
Interested candidates should submit their application to:
Jessica Terner
66 Canal Center Plaza, Suite 400
Alexandria, VA 22314
›› Correspondence and Information
If you have questions or would like additional information regarding the HumRRO internship, please contact:
Jessica Terner
(703) 706-5687
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Jan 31 2008First Annual iSLC Student/Postdoc Conference
The First Annual iSLC Student/Postdoc Conference will be a meeting of junior researchers from the NSF-funded Science of Learning Centers (SLCs). During this threeday conference, participants will spend time discussing their common interests for understanding and improving how people learn in a variety of settings and will share and learn about useful methods for conducting research to achieve these goals. The goals of the meeting are to initiate and foster research collaborations between SLCs and to build a network of young researchers who will be the future of the field of learning sciences. These outcomes are to be achieved in a setting in which all of the researchers are brought together to communicate and share their ideas. The scientific importance of the meeting will be in the productive collaborations that are formed. Bringing together young researchers from different geographic areas, disciplines, and domains of expertise will foster an understanding of how learning science problems can be studied from different angles, and create new, integrative ways of attacking those problems in hopes of reaching a sound solution. The solutions produced by these collaborations will simultaneously have a broader impact on the academic field of learning sciences as well as the potential to inform educators, museum curators, parents, or anyone else who makes it their goal to foster learning of children, adolescents or adults.
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Jan 15 2008Post-doctoral Research Position: Conceptual Learning in Physics
Post-doctoral Research Position: Conceptual Learning in Physics
Applications are invited for a two-year research position for a post-doc with an interest in learning and problem solving. We are looking for a cognitive psychologist/scientist or a science education researcher with a strong background in cognition, to join us (Brian Ross, Jose Mestre, and Tim Nokes) to examine the learning of complex concepts in a problem-solving domain. Some knowledge of physics is useful but not required. The post-doc will be involved in helping design, conduct, analyze, and write up the research at the Beckman Institute, University of Illinois.
Submit vita, statement of research interests, and three letters of reference to Brian Ross (bhross@uiuc.edu) by March 1. If you have questions, please contact Brian Ross or Jose Mestre (mestre@uiuc.edu).
Dec 20 2007DataShop Winter Workshop - 2008
The DataShop team is excited to announce we'll be holding a DataShop hands-on workshop on Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008. Please click visit our website for more details!
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Oct 24 2007CFP : International Journal of AI in Education - Special Issue on ill-defined domains
International Journal of AI in Education - Special Issue on ill-defined domains
AI-Supported educational systems have made great strides in recent years both as research tools and as teaching applications. Most of the AIED research and development to this point has been in well-defined domains such as Physics, Mathematics, or Chemistry. Such domains are characterized by a well-accepted theory or model that makes it possible unambiguously to classify problem solutions as correct or incorrect. Not all domains of teaching and inquiry are well-defined, indeed most are not. Domains such as Law, Argumentation, History, Art, Medicine, and Design are ill-defined. Often even well-defined domains are increasingly ill-defined at the edges where new knowledge is being discovered. Ill-defined domains have open-textured concepts; typically problems have ambiguous solutions that can be argued for (and against!) but that are impossible to verify formally. For those reasons, ill-defined domains present a number of unique challenges for researchers in Artificial Intelligence in Education. These challenges must be faced if the AIED community is ever to branch out from the traditional domains into newer arenas.
As the recent AIED and ITS conferences show, a number of researchers are currently developing ITS approaches for ill-defined domains such as Law, Medicine, Professional Ethics, Psychology and Design. This IJAIED special issue presents a chance to collect what has been learned in these pioneering efforts and share it with the broader AIED community.
The topics of interest for this IJAIED special issue include:
- Foundational issues: Characteristics of ill-definedness for a domain or task, and their implications for AIED systems
- Model development: Production of (formal or informal) models of ill-defined domains or subsets of such domains, and their use within AIED
- Assessment and feedback: Student-modeling or assessment strategies that are particularly suitable for ill-defined domains, and feedback/guidance mechanisms based on these
- Systems and teaching strategies: System design principles and educational paradigms that can be successfully applied in AIED tools for ill-defined domains
- Evaluation: Empirical studies of the effectiveness of AIED applications in ill-defined domains, or empirical studies of expert or novice reasoners in these kinds of domains.
We welcome high-quality submissions from different perspectives (theoretical, systems engineering, application oriented, case study, system evaluation, etc). Survey or review papers are invited also. All submitted work must be unpublished and not under submission elsewhere.
A two-step review system will be applied for this special issue:
- December 1, 2007: Deadline for submission of one-page abstracts to the guest editors (email to niels.pinkwart@tu-clausthal.de). Abstracts have to clearly express the main contribution of the article and explicate its relation to ill-defined domains.
- February 1, 2008: Feedback on abstracts sent to the authors.
- May 15, 2008: Submission deadline for full articles. Note that the two-step submission is mandatory – articles submitted without prior abstract submission will not be considered.
- October 1, 2008: Review results sent to authors.
- March 2009: Accepted papers ready for production after revision.
- Fall 2009: Expected publication of special issue.
Special Issue Guest Editors:
Niels Pinkwart, Clausthal University of Technology
Collin Lynch, University of Pittsburgh
Kevin Ashley, University of Pittsburgh
Vincent Aleven, Carnegie Mellon University
Oct 08 2007 DataShop v2.3 released
For a list of new features and other details see our home page.
Take a look at the all new "Guide to the Tutor Message Format" available on as both online html or a downloadable pdf at http://learnlab.web.cmu.edu/dtd/ as of October 2007. The new guide is more comprehensive and easier to understand than ever!
Sep 25 2007ICME 11 - TSG 22 - New Technologies in the Teaching and Learning of Mathematics
ICME 11 - TSG 22 « New Technologies in the Teaching and Learning of Mathematics »
First announcement for the group TSG 22: 'New Technologies in the Teaching and Learning of Mathematics' of next ICME (http://icme11.org/) to be held in 2008 in Monterrey, Mexico.
Aims and focus
The ICME 11 Topic Study Group « New Technologies in the Teaching and Learning of Mathematics » will serve a dual role:
- overview of the current state of art in the topic and expositions of outstanding recent contributions to it, as seen from an international perspective
- sharing of ongoing work and perspectives
Technology is understood here in a broad sense and encompasses in particular, computers of all types, calculator technology, the use of the Internet, and distance technology. The use of technology includes implementation for students of all ages, teacher education, and all mathematical topics. Thus, establishing coherence will be a major challenge of the TSG.
Research and innovative projects in learning with technological tools have indeed been showing much promise with respect to their use in the generation of learning environments where students have richer opportunities to construct mathematical meanings, to explore and experiment with mathematical ideas, and to express these ideas using a wealth of representations. However, actual use of these tools in schools is still very sparse despite the abundance of governmental funding and interest around the world. The use of technologies has simply not expanded and the changes promised by the case-study experiences have not really been noticed beyond the empirical evidence given by the studies themselves. The changes in classroom practices involved in the use of technology seem to pose a real challenge to administrators, curriculum designers, teachers and students. Thus, there is a great need for a deeper understanding of how the potential suggested by research in the 80s and the 90s! can be grounded both in classroom practices with respect to systemic schooling, in other institutional environments such as the workplace, and in informal situations for children and adults. In recent years, the focus has also been on teaching methods and on ways of supporting teachers to use technological tools. The perturbation posed to traditional teaching has become an avenue for reflection and professional development for teachers rather than an implicit obstacle to implementing technologies in the classroom.
The issues addressed at this TSG will focus on three broad themes.
1) Integration of technology into school and other learning environments :
This theme refers both to research studies and the innovative development of technology-based curricula or units. It includes the study of learning processes with technology and the impact of technology on the learning of mathematics. It also addresses the issue of assessing mathematics with and through technology. Connectivity and virtual networks for learning mathematics is also part of the topic.
2) Issues related to the use of technology by teachers:
How do teachers cope with perturbations introduced by technology? How do they succeed in the ordinary types of usage? What are teachers' conceptions of the use of technology? How do these conceptions evolve? How are they taken into account to promote changes in teacher practice? The topic also includes issues about mathematics teacher preparation and professional development in the use of technology.
3) Design of technology for the learning and teaching of mathematics:
This theme refers to the design choices of technology environments related to epistemological and cognitive aspects of mathematics and of the learning of mathematics, as well as to the features aimed at assisting teaching.
Call for contributions
TSG 22 « New Technologies in the Teaching and Learning of Mathematics » invites the submission of contributions related to the topic of the group. In particular, any contribution addressing questions, problems and issues related to the presentation of the topics listed above can be submitted. The organizers of the Topic Study Group welcome proposals from both researchers and practitioners and encourage contributions from all countries with different economic contexts and cultural backgrounds. Reflecting the diversity of the contributions is a major concern of the group organizers.
The submitted contributions will be reviewed by the organizing team of the Topic Study Group. The accepted contributions will be published on the ICME website before the congress and presented in a poster session within the slots of the group. During this session, it is expected that the contributors will be available to discuss their work with the other group members. Presentations related to theme 3 may also include live demonstrations of new technologies. Contributors will also be invited to bring copies of accepted papers, including expanded versions, and CDs to be presented-by-distribution during this session.
Submissions
The first version of submissions can be a short proposal of 3 pages, clearly indicating the aims and the nature of the work, synthesizing its content and results. Authors of accepted submissions will send later a longer version for publication of 7 pages on the Web site of the congress, presenting the aims and the nature of the work, the underlying theoretical frameworks or assumptions, the ways it was carried out or the methods that were used, and provide the results and/or questions coming from the work.
Submissions could report on research work as well as teaching work in classrooms, or on the design of computer environments or of teaching units integrating technology. They also could address theoretical issues by reporting on advances made in the development of theoretical frameworks or approaches.
Sending submissions
Submissions in their short form (3pages) or in their final form (7 pages) should be sent by November 15, 2007 as an email attachment to both chairs of the Topic Study Group at the following addresses:
Colette.Laborde@imag.fr and kynigos@ppp.uoa.gr
Information about acceptance of the submissions with recommendations for the final version will be available by the end of January.
Final versions of accepted submissions should be sent by March 31, 2008.
Scheme for paper presentation
Final texts should be 7 pages (Times 12, single-spaced lines) and fit into an outline of 16 cm x 25 cm. Each submission must:
- be in .doc or .pdf file
- be written in English
- have a title (bold, capital, centered, Times 16)
- indicate below the title, the name of the author(s), affiliation and country, email address (centered, Times 14)
- underline the name of the participating author(s)
- include a 200-word abstract (Times 10)
- indicate whether the paper is research or practice oriented
- mention the main theme of the presentation (if possible chosen from among the themes listed in the call for contributions).
Sep 14 2007New version of Flash Logging Library (v2.3.8) released
The CTAT team has released an update to the Flash Logging Library. This version contains support for logging media events related to video and audio.
CTAT provides the Flash Logging Library for logging data from Flash educational applications that don't use the CTAT components. This library supports logging to the LearnLab logging servers.
