MEETINGS 2005
January 24, 2005 meeting:
February 21, 2005 meeting:
March 21, 2005 meeting:
April 4, 2005 meeting:
April 18, 2005 meeting:
May 2, 2005 meeting:
June 6, 2005 meeting:
June 20, 2005 meeting:
July 18, 2005 meeting:
August 15, 2005 meeting:
August 29, 2005 meeting:
September 13, 2005 meeting:
October 11 meeting:
October 25 meeting:
November 8 meeting:
November 22 meeting:
December 6 meeting:
December 15- PIER Poster Session

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Mark Wilson -PIER guest speaker

Title: Constructing Measures: The BEAR Assessment System

The BEAR Assessment System is an embodiment of the principles and practices of measurement described in Constructing Measures: An item response modeling approach . ( Wilson , 2005). The range of application of the approach spans achievement and aptitude testing, attitude measurement, and behavioral assessment. It consists of interrelated components that are congruent with testing and assessment standards and ideas promulgated by professional organizations (AERA, APA, NCME, 1999) as well as the National Research Council (NRC, 1996; NRC, 2001). Within an achievement testing application, the assessment system is based on the idea of measuring developmental trajectories of students as they progress through their education—these we call “progress variables.” An implementation of the BEAR Assessment System is constructed using embedded assessments, which are developed on the basis of the purposes and content of the instruction in which the assessments are embedded. These embedded assessments share a common framework of developmental trajectories with “link tests” to allow linkage to large-scale assessments across curricula, educational contexts, and systems. The BEAR Assessment System has been implemented within several large-scale contexts, most prominently in K-12 Science education (Scalise et al, 2006; Wilson & Sloane, 2000),but it has also been implemented in applications in higher education (Wilson & Scalise, 2006, and in infant/toddler and pre-school settings (Wilson et al, 2004).

References

American Educational Research Association, American Psychological Association, National Council for Measurement in Education. (AERA, APA, NCME, 1999). Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing . Washington , DC : American Educational Research Association.

National Research Council. (1996). National science education standards . Washington , DC : National Academy Press.

National Research Council (2001). Knowing what students know: The science and design of educational assessment . Committee on the Foundations of Assessment. Pellegrino, J., Chudowsky, N., & Glaser, R. editors. Washington , DC : National Academy Press.

Scalise, K., Claesgens, J., Wilson , M., & Stacy, A. (2006). Contrasting the expectations for student understanding of chemistry with levels achieved: A brief case-study of student nurses. Chemistry Education: Research and Practice, 7 (3), 170-184.

Wilson , M. (2005). Constructing Measures: An Item Response Modeling Approach . Mahwah , NJ : Erlbaum.

Wilson , M., Mangione, P. L, Brown, R. S., Heal, H. B., & Moore, S. (2004, April). Theory to Practice: Conceptualizing and Creating Developmental Indicators across Domains . Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Diego .

Wilson , M., & Scalise, K. (2006). Assessment to improve learning in higher education: The BEAR Assessment System. Higher Education, 52, 635-663.

Wilson , M. & Sloane, K. (2000). From principles to practice: An embedded assessment system. Applied Measurement in Education, 13 (2), 181-208.

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Ruth Wylie-PIER Student

Title: Developing Tutoring Systems for Classroom and Research Use: A look at two English Article Tutors

Abstract: Article usage has been cited as one of the hardest to teach and most frequent errors among English language learners. It is not uncommon for students to successfully complete worksheets on the topic but continue to make errors in production. This talk presents work that bridges the link between practice and production using computer-based tutoring systems. Motivated by a strong classroom need (an analysis of student essays revealed that articles were the most prevalent type of error representing 16.7% of all errors), we built two tutoring systems to help students learn to make distinctions regarding English article use. The first tutor is a menu-based tutor that mimics the fill-in-the-blank exercises found in many textbooks. The second tutoring system helps students learn both error detection and error correction skills via a controlled-editing tutor. In this interface, students edit an existing paragraph for article use. Unlike in the menu-based condition, students do not know where the errors occur and thus must first recognize that an error exists and then take steps to correct it. Both tutors provide immediate feedback and hints and have tools for instructors to develop new problems. Preliminary findings show that students found the controlled-editing task more challenging but appeared more motivated and engaged when using the system than when using the menu-based tutor. Additionally, analysis of the think-aloud protocols revealed a number of rules and heuristics students use when solving these problems. This information is helpful for developing more detailed levels of hints and feedback that will be incorporated in the next iteration of tutor development. Future studies plan to examine whether the added difficulty of the controlled-editing tutor produces larger learning gains as well as address issues of transfer to writing production and long-term retention.

 

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Thursday, May 3

Jodi Davenport

Titile: Concept Formation in Chemistry Education

Abstract: Robust learning in chemistry is more than learning a set of facts or procedures. Instead, many pieces of knowledge must be acquired and flexibly coordinated in order to make predictions, inferences and analyses of chemical systems. In this EdBag, I'll be presenting ongoing work that investigates how students learn concepts in chemical equilibrium. Two versions of online lectures were created. The first was based on the lecture notes of a previous year and the second was based on a new way of teaching equilibrium concepts using multiple representations to explain the progress of reaction - a central concept in the domain.

As this work is in early stages of analysis, this talk will be informal and she is looking forward to suggestions and feedback!

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Thursday April 5, 2007 -- noon 336B Baker Hall

Christof Wecker

"Fading Scripts in Computer-Supported
Collaborative Learning: The Role of Distributed Monitoring".

"Computer-based collaboration scripts constitute a form of distributed
control and dis*bur*den the learners from the regulation of their
performance, which they must internalize in order to acquire cognitive
skills such as argumentation. Accordingly, without further support, e.
g. by dis*tributed monitoring by a learning partner, fading may be
ineffective. Therefore we examined whe*ther fading fosters skill
acquisition only in combination with collaborative support. In an
ex*pe*ri*mental study with the factors fading and distributed
monitoring, learners were supported in an on*line discussion forum by a
collaboration script for the production of counterarguments. Results
show that fading fostered the acquisition of declarative knowledge about
argumentation only in com*bination with distributed monitoring, whereas
with regard to procedural knowledge about ar*gu*mentation there were no
differences. These results indicate that fading supported by aspects of
com*puter-supported collaboration can increase the effectiveness of
fading for skill acquisition even in early stages of skill
acquisition." Click here to access paper

 

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Thursday March 22, 2007 -- noon 336B Baker Hall
Ido Roll- Human Computer Interaction, PIER

Title : Cognitive-Tutor based discovery learning environment - work in progress

Abstract :
While discovery learning may not be successful ( i.e., students often do not discover the canonical solutions), research suggests that it may still be productive (i.e., foster future learning from instruction, compared with instruction alone (Schwartz 2004)).

In this talk I will discuss my current attempt to build a discovery-learning environment to precede instruction. The work is still in early stages, and I am seeking feedback before going out to the school next month to get a feel of the discovery process.

The talk will focus on three aspects of the research process:

- Top down: What hypotheses are interesting and relevant, and how do they influence the experimental design?
- Bottom up: How can paper-and-pencil data collected from students inform the design of the system? What data should be collected, and how should it be analyzed
- Inside out: What core mechanisms of Cognitive Tutors can be utilized in order to create a discovery learning system capable of cognitive model tracing, knowledge tracing, adaptive curriculum, and on-time relevant feedback?

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Thursday March 1, 2007 -- noon 336B Baker Hall

Measuring the Information Literacy of Carnegie Mellon Students

Jean Alexander, Library Instruction Coordinator
Dan Hood, Information Literacy Fellow
Carole George, Human Factors Researcher

We will describe two recent projects the library has undertaken to study information-seeking behavior and assess the information literacy of Carnegie Mellon students.  Carole will talk about the graduate student survey "Scholarly Use of Information: Graduate Students' Information Seeking Behaviour." Dan and Jean will talk about our experience administering the SAILS standardized test of information literacy and other assessment methods for undergraduates.
We hope to have a good discussion of the challenges of teaching students to be information literate in the Internet Age.

Information on both projects is available at:

Grad Students: http://informationr.net/ir/11-4/paper272.html
SAILS: https://www.projectsails.org/

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** Bonus talk!: Please note that this is a TUESDAY
Tuesday February 13, 2007 at Noon, Baker Hall 336B - Art Graesser

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February 1, 2007 at Noon, Baker Hall 336B

Ed-Bag Discussion led by David Klahr
Thursday, February 1st, 12:00-1:20
Baker Hall 336B

Topic: Discussion of Kirschner, Sweller, & Clark (2006) "Why Mimimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work: and Analysis of the Failure of Constructivist, Discovery, Problem-Based, Experiential, and Inquiry-Based Teaching".

Whew! Nothing like stating a position with tact and subtlety. I will lead the discussion, but not with a slew of slides. Instead, I hope we can devote most of the time to a discussion of the many issues raised in this paper. You should real the attached paper before you come, and perhaps think about its grains of truth (if any) and/or its distortions and biases (if any). This should be fun, and a good way to start the 2007 Ed Bag.

Link to paper is: http://www.cogtech.usc.edu/publications/kirschner_Sweller_Clark.pdf

Abstract:
Evidence for the superiority of guided instruction is explained in the context of our knowledge
of human cognitive architecture, expert–novice differences, and cognitive load. Although unguided
or minimally guided instructional approaches are very popular and intuitively appealing,
the point is made that these approaches ignore both the structures that constitute human
cognitive architecture and evidence from empirical studies over the past half-century that consistently
indicate that minimally guided instruction is less effective and less efficient than instructional
approaches that place a strong emphasis on guidance of the student learning process.
The advantage of guidance begins to recede only when learners have sufficiently high
prior knowledge to provide “internal” guidance. Recent developments in instructional research
and instructional designmodels that support guidance during instruction are briefly described.

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January 18, 2007 at Noon, Baker Hall 336B

Title: A Braille Writing Tutor to Combat Illiteracy in Developing Communities

Tom Lauwers-PIER
Ph.D. Candidate
Robotics Institute

Abstract:
We present the Braille Writing Tutor project, an initiative sponsored
by TechBridgeWorld to combat the high rates of illiteracy among the
blind in developing communities using an intelligent tutoring system.
Developed in collaboration with the Mathru Educational Trust for the
Blind in Bangalore, India, the tutor uses a novel input device to
capture students' activity on a slate and stylus and uses a range of
caffolding techniques and Artificial Intelligence to teach writing
skills to both beginner and advanced students.

We conducted our first field study from August to September 2006 at
the Mathru School to evaluate its  feasibility and impact in a real
educational setting. The tutor was met with great enthusiasm by both
the teachers and the students and has already demonstrated a concrete
impact on the students' writing abilities. Our study also highlights a number of important
areas for future research and development which we invite the
community to explore and investigate with us.

For more information and videos:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~nidhi/brailletutor.html

Note: This research was conducted as Spring and Summer 2006 V-Unit
projects as a part of TechBridgeWorld.  The V-Unit is an opportunity
for graduate students to pursue an independent study that broadens
their perspective of the impact of their research beyond the
laboratory.

Tom Lauwers is a fourth year Ph.D. student at the Robotics Institute.
He has a long-standing interest in educational robotics, as both a
participant in programs like FIRST and later as a designer of a
robotics course and education technology. He is currently studying
curriculum development and evaluation and hopes that his study of the
educational sciences will help him design better and more useful
educational technologies. Tom received a BS in Electrical Engineering
and a BS in Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon University.

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Additional Edbag Tuesday December 5, 2006 Baker Hall 336B, noon-1:30pm- PIER Guest Speaker-
Leona Schauble, Vanderbilt University

**Please also note that Dr. Schauble will be presenting a talk on Monday Dec 4, 4:30- 6pm, Baker Hall A53. Title and Abstract

For PC format click here to view video of talk
For Mac format click here

Leona Schauble, Ph.D
(Columbia University, 1988)

Research Area
The development of scientific thinking; theory change; modeling approaches to science and mathematics; professional development of teachers

Short Biography
I am a cognitive developmental psychologist with research interests in the relations between everyday reasoning and more formal, culturally-supported, and schooled forms of thinking, such as scientific and mathematical reasoning. My research concerns topics such as belief change in contexts of scientific experimentation, strategy change, and causal inference. In 1991, I received a National Academy of Education Spencer Fellowship to investigate developmental changes in how children and adults understand the goals and strategies of scientific experimentation. This work generated findings concerning how people learn to design informative experiments and "read" patterns of evidence, including covariation, lack of covariation, and correlations between variables and outcomes.

A second important theme in my research is the design and study of instruction. Shortly after completing her undergraduate degree, I joined the staff developing Sesame Street at the Children's Television Workshop. My subsequent fifteen years at CTW provided practical experience in research and the design of education. In 1987, after completing a PhD in Developmental and Educational Psychology at Columbia University, I joined the staff of the Learning Research and Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh as a postdoctoral fellow, where I continued as a Research Scientist until 1992. At the University of Wisconsin and subsequently at Vanderbilt University, I have continued studies of learning in both informal and formal educational settings. For example, with The Children's Museum of Indianapolis, the world's largest children's museum, I assisted on an NSF-funded project to design and construct an 11,000-foot science gallery that reflects research findings about the science knowledge and learning of six- to ten-year-old children. My current research focus, in collaboration with Professor Richard Lehrer, is on the origins and development of model-based reasoning in school mathematics and science. In this project, we researchers work collaboratively with teachers on an extended basis to generate reform in teaching and learning of mathematics and science, at levels from elementary through middle school. As participating teachers collectively develop an educational agenda that emphasizes representational competence and modeling, researchers conduct studies that track the long-tem development of forms of epistemology that would otherwise be very difficult or impossible to study.

Access Paper in preparation for the talk-Scientific Thinking and Science Literacy: Supporting Development in Learning Contexts

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Tuesday, November 7, 2006
Martha Alibali

Multimodal Signals in Instructional Communication:
The Importance of Teachers' Gestures in Students' Learning

This informal discussion will address teachers' gestures and their importance for students' learning. Teachers utilize gesture extensively in classroom settings, to manage interaction, express emphasis, guide attention, and convey information. Teachers' gestures can serve to scaffold student understanding, and teachers sometimes “fade” their gestures as students' skills grow. There is growing evidence that teachers' gestures have an impact on students' learning. Further, a recent study indicates that teachers can alter their gesture production if they wish to do so. Thus, interventions that encourage teachers to use gestures effectively may be feasible.

Additional readings: Alibali & Nathan in press and Hostetter et.al.06
Martha is also giving a colloquium talk: Understanding Change in Mathematical Reasoning: Consequences and Sources of Changes in Problem Encoding
Monday, Nov 6  4:30-6pm in Newell Simon Hall 1305

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Thursday Oct 26, 2006 - Brian Junker will be giving his talk, "Using On-line Tutoring Records to Predict End-of-Year Exam Scores". You can find the ppt slides at http://marces.org/conference/cognitive/Conference_Agenda_2006.htm Click on 10-10:50am talk.

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Thursday October 17, 2006- noon in 336B please note that this is a Tues-additional Edbag for guest PIER speaker-James Stigler, UCLA

Abstract:
To improve classroom teaching in a steady, lasting way, the teaching profession needs a knowledge base that grows and improves. In spite of the continuing efforts of researchers, archived research knowledge has had little effect on the improvement of practice in the average classroom. We explore the possibility of building a useful knowledge base for teaching by beginning with practitioners’ knowledge. We outline key features of this knowledge and identify the requirements for this knowledge to be transformed into a professional knowledge base for teaching. By reviewing educational history, we offer an incomplete explanation for why the United States has no countrywide system that meets these requirements. We conclude by wondering if U.S. researchers and teachers can make different choices in the future to enable a system for building and sustaining a professional knowledge base for teaching.

Lesson lab:
LessonLab, a Pearson Education company, knows the key to successful academic achievement in schools is driven by improved teaching in the classroom. Drawing on more than a quarter of a century of quality research and professional development experience, LessonLab provides an unparalleled collection of K-12 teacher educational programs including district professional development, distance and site-based graduate courses, and master's degree programs. Today, LessonLab offers a new approach to professional development by fusing a unique research-based learning model with innovative technology. This combination creates a solid foundation of teacher practices fully capable of supporting successful student learning while driving towards district attainment of federal and state mandates.
For associated reading see: Hiebert, Gallimore, Stigler 2002

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Thursday Oct 12, 2006

Discussion led by Robert Siegler- In preparation for the upcoming PIER guest speaker (James W. Stigler) scheduled for October16th, room A53 Baker Hall, 4:30pm

Mathematics Teaching in the United States Today (and Tomorrow):
Results From the TIMSS 1999 Video Study

Hiebert, J., Stigler, J., et al.

James W. Stigler is Professor of Psychology at UCLA , Director of the TIMSS video studies, and founder and CEO of LessonLab.

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Thursday September 28, 2006- Discussion led by David Klahr

Educating the Evolved Mind:

Conceptual Foundations for an Evolutionary Educational Psychology

David C. Geary

University of Missouri at Columbia

It is widely accepted that all children in modern societies will receive formal and extended instruction in a variety of core domains, such as mathematics, and at the very least they will acquire the basic skills, as in being able to read and write, necessary for employment and day-to-day living in these societies. Unfortunately, the instructional approaches used to achieve these goals and in fact the details of the goals themselves are points of continued and often divisive debate (Hirsch, 1996). At one extreme is a child-centered approach, whereby adults should come to understand how children learn and then construct educational goals and instructional methods around children's learning biases (e.g., McLellan & Dewey, 1895). At the other extreme is the assumption that adults should decide the content to be taught in schools, and an accompanying assumption that the methods by which this content is taught should be based on experimental studies of learning, often without much consideration of children's preferences (e.g., Thorndike, 1922). In addition to this lack of consensus about how to approach children's learning, educational goals can be further complicated by attempts to use schools to socialize children in one ideological perspective or another (MacDonald, 1988).

These ideological debates and the attendant opportunity costs to children's educational outcomes and later employment opportunities will continue well into the 21st century, if current attempts to move the field of education to a more solid scientific footing are not successful (Reyna, 2005). With this monograph, I hope to provide a broad and scientifically-grounded perspective on these debates by considering how children?s schooling and to a lesser degree their later occupational interests can be informed by recent advances in the application of evolutionary theory to the understanding of the human brain, mind, and its development (Bjorklund & Pellegrini, 2002; Cosmides & Tooby, 1994; Geary, 2005; Hirschfeld & Gelman, 1994; Pinker, 1997). I have termed this perspective evolutionary educational psychology (Geary, 2002a), but I must emphasize at the outset that this is not a perspective that is ready for direct translation into school curricula. Rather, I will outline the foundations for this discipline, and in doing so I hope to (a) provide a conceptualization of children's learning in school that is less prone to ideological change; (b) consider ways in which this perspective can be used to generate testable empirical hypotheses about this learning; and (c) discuss implications for understanding and ultimately improving educational outcomes.

In the first section, I make a distinction between biologically primary folk knowledge and abilities, that is, competencies that are components of evolved cognitive domains, and biologically secondary knowledge and abilities, that is, competencies acquired through formal or informal training. In this first section, I focus on primary abilities because these are the foundation for the construction of secondary abilities through formal education. In the second section, I discuss the evolution of general intelligence and how this evolution relates to the primary abilities discussed in the first section. In these first two sections, I provide more detail than might, at first read, seem to be needed. The details are necessary, however, if we are going to make a serious attempt to understand academic learning from an evolutionary perspective and are going to generate explicit and testable hypotheses about the relation between evolved cognitive and social biases and this learning. In the final section, I discuss the historical and schooling-based emergence of secondary abilities, focusing on potential cognitive and social mechanisms involved in the building of secondary competencies, and using reading and scientific reasoning as examples. See Figures

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Thurs Sept 14, 2006

Yvonne Kao-3rd yr PIER Student

Title:Crossing the Bridge: From Lab to Practice

Abstract:Over the past few years, I have been studying geometry performance using a variety of methodologies?behavioral, neuroimaging, eyetracking, and verbal protocol. Although the data are interesting, the question of how to translate the findings into educational practice remains wide open.

During EdBag, I will be discussing:
An overview of the work that has been done so far, its successes and its failures
How can I make the most of the different methodologies at my disposal?
The process of translating lab findings and theories of learning into instruction

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Wed August 2

Title: Fixing Teacher Quality in Pennsylvania:

A Status Report on a Project for the
Pnnsylvania State Board of Education

Robert P. Strauss
Professor of Economics & Public Policy
H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management

http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/rs9f

Some earlier materials:

Should Teachers Know or Know How to Teach?
http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/rs9f/sv_4_18_06.pdf

Improving Public Education through Strenghened Local Control
http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/rs9f/severino_strauss_final_april_2005.pdf

The Preparation and Selection of
Public School Administrators in Pennsylvania
Supply and Demand the Effects on Student Achievement
http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/rs9f/aefa_2003.pdf

The Market for Substitute Classroom Teachers in South West Pennsylvania
http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/rs9f/substitute_8_4_03.pdf

Who Gets Hired to Teach?
http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/rs9f/fordham.pdf

Improving Teacher Preparation and Selection: Lessons from the Pennsylvania Experience
http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/rs9f/eer99wk.doc

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Wed July 5th

Beth Ayers (PIER, starting Fall 2006) and Nathaniel Anozie (PIER, starting Fall 2007) -

Both will be giving practice talks for their presentations at the AAAI data mining in education research workshop.

Title for Beth's talk: Do Skills Combine Additively to Predict Task Difficulty in
Eighth-grade Mathematics?

Abstract:
During the 2004--2005 school year, over 900 eighth-grade students used an
online intelligent tutoring system, the Assistment System of Heffernan, et
al. (2001), to prepare for the mathematics portion of the Massachusetts
Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) end-of-year exam. A transfer model,
identifying the skills that each tutoring task and exam problem depends
upon, was developed to help align tutoring tasks with exam problems. We use
a Bayesian form of item response theory (IRT) modeling to attempt to model
the difficulty of tutoring tasks and exam items additively in terms of these
component skills: the more skills, the more difficult the task or test item.

Our goal is to directly examine the alignment between tutoring tasks and
assessment items and to use the transfer model to build more efficient
functions for predicting end-of-year exam performance from student activity
with the online tutor. However, our analysis shows that the additive skills
model (the Linear Logistic Test Model, LLTM) does not adequately account for
task-to-task or item-to-item variation in difficulty.

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Wed June 28

Title: Refined Micro-analysis of Fluency Gains in a Reading Tutor that Listens (practice run of talk at the upcoming Scientific Studies of Reading conference)

Jack Mostow and Joseph Beck

Our SSSR2005 talk presented a linear model of speedup in word reading between successive encounters of words in connected text, based on a quarter of a million such encounters by children using Project LISTEN's Reading Tutor. The model indicated that reading a word in a new context contributed more to speedup than re-encountering it in an old context, implying that wide reading builds fluency more than rereading. Our new, improved model uses an exponential growth curve to model word reading time. It estimates the relative value of wide reading vs. reading and of spaced vs. massed practice, both overall and disaggregated by student proficiency.

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Wed June 14 -- Niels Taatgen, a familiar face in the psychology dept. halls and a visiting researcher from the University of Groningen will be speaking (see below for title and abstract; for additional reading click here).

Niels' talk is entitled, "How can cognitive models help the design of instructions?"
(Personal website: http://www.ai.rug.nl/~niels/)

Abstract:
Instructions represented as lists of steps lead to inflexible and brittle behavior in cognitive models, suggesting that list-style instructions lead to poor learning in people as well. On the basis of this assumption we designed an alternative operator-style instruction that produces better learning in models. In an experiment and model of interacting with a simulated Flight Management System (the on-board computer of a Boeing 777), a system that is notoriously hard to learn on the basis of list-style instructions, we show that alternative instructions produce significantly better and more robust learning. We validated the approach with a second experiment in which participants had to complete half-completed tasks. Sometimes the half-completed task contained an error which first had to be fixed. We used the model to make predictions for the learning in the experiment, and then performed the experiment itself. The predictions turned out to be reasonably accurate.

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Wed May 10 -- 336B-Baker Hall-Elsa Golden(PIER student)

Title: "Designing a Meaningful Assessment for Professional Development
Education in the Software Architecture Domain"

Abstract:
The professional development certificate programs in Software Architecture
offered by the Software Engineering Institute, in their present embodiment,
have no assessment component. The SEI has requested assistance in
developing a meaningful assessment component for the two-day course in
Software Architecture: Principles and Practices, a core course for all three
of their Software Architecture certificate programs, which can be
administered online at a distance after students have completed the course.

Requiring students to pass a low-stakes assessment before receiving a
completion certificate for any course is an innovation to the SEI's current
program. I will discuss the process of creating an assessment component
that is aligned with the instructional goals and curriculum of this
professional development course.

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Tues May 2 -- *NOTE CHANGE* moved to Tues the 2nd (340A Baker) to accommodate Sara Rimm-Kaufmann (PIER speaker)

We also invite you to attend the Monday talk 4:30pm-6:30pm in A53 across from Giant Eagle Auditorium in Baker Hall.

http://curry.edschool.virginia.edu/

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Wed April 26-- 336B-Baker Hall-Matt Easterday (PIER student)

The effect of diagramming tools on the analysis of social policy.
Matthew Easterday,
Carnegie Mellon University, Human-Computer Interaction Institute

People have difficulty evaluating information on social policy--in fact, previous work shows that when presented with ambiguous causal information, people tend to interpret the information as confirming whatever belief they held prior to encountering the information. A second body of research shows that people can sometimes reason better when using diagrams or diagramming tools. In this experiment, we test the effectiveness of causal diagrams, and diagramming tools for teaching students to analyze the effects of different social policies.

Using a between-subjects, randomized, controlled experiment, approximately 100 Carnegie Mellon University undergraduates taking introductory social science courses will be given a short on-line training on analyzing social policies with multiple sources of evidence using either: i. diagrammatic representations, ii. diagramming tools, or iii. text only. Data from the on-line course will be logged and analyzed for the effect of diagrams on: i. students’ ability to predict the effect of different policies, ii. students’ confirmation bias, iii. students’ avoidance of the “correlation equals causation” fallacy, and iv. students’ credibility bias, i.e. the perception that a sources that confirm one’s beliefs are more credible than sources that contradict one’s beliefs.

Based on the results of the study (to be analyzed), we will be able to make claims about whether or not students should be taught to read diagrams or use diagramming tools in order to understand social policy, a fundamental skill for an informed citizen.back to dates

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April 12, 2006 meeting

336B-Baker Hall-Ido Roll (PIER associate)& Yvonne Kao (PIER student)-Planning tutor (their interdisciplinary project)

For their 3rd year PIER interdisciplinary project, Ido and Yvonne are creating a planning tutor. During this EdBag, they'll present their idea, progress-to-date, and seek feedback to improve their project.

Our goal is to better understand and promote sense-making and robust learning by asking students to articulate a plan for solving a geometry problem and give justification for their actions before performing any computation. Currently, the Geometry Cognitive Tutor provides students with a complete solution path and thus the focus is on numbers and computation—surface features of the problem. We plan on eliminating the need for computation in the tutor interface (see Appendix). This should help shift students' primary goal from computing an answer as quickly as possible to making sense of the deep structure of the problem.

 

We hypothesize that students who use our modified tutor will develop a deeper conceptual understanding of the geometry domain and better problem-solving skills. The Planning Tutor gives students a systematic way to use existing knowledge components in a more complex knowledge event . By practicing their sense-making skills, students can gain conceptual understanding of general problem-solving procedures. We hypothesize that the Planning Tutor will help students in navigate complex problem-solving situations: situations with a broad search space—many possible actions at each step—and situations with a deep search space—a long solution path is required.back to dates

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April 4, 2006 meeting

Speaker: John T Bruer President
James S. McDonnell Foundation
bruer@jsmf.org

TITLE: Critical Periods In L2 Learning: Phenomenon vs Mechanisms

ABSTRACT: There is probably not much to say about critical periods that has not been written already. This talk, alas, is no exception. However, as my high school Latin teacher often said, every once in a while it is a good idea to review. Here I review some old ideas about the critical period concept. First, “critical period” is a descriptive term for an empirical phenomenon. Second, one should not confuse the empirical phenomenon with specific causal theories that are proposed to explain the phenomenon. Applying these old ideas to current debates about critical period in second language (L2) acquisition reveals misunderstanding on both sides of the debate.back to dates

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March 22, 2006 meeting

336B-Baker Hall-Norma Chang (PIER student)

TITLE: Providing Professional Development to Different Audiences: How Do We
Practice What We Preach?

ABSTRACT:
As educational researchers who care about having an impact on teaching,
schooling, and learning, we should consider the needs of our target audience
as well as the ideas that we think are worth conveying. Making those
connections explicit obliges us to evaluate and demonstrate the relevance of
our research to an important group of would-be consumers of that research,
which is especially challenging when confronted with the daily demands of
their jobs. Furthermore, teaching teachers about teaching exposes our work
to even closer scrutiny, inviting critical reflection on whether we
ourselves practice what we preach. I will describe my experiences offering
training and professional development to educators ranging from school
administrators to faculty developers, which will lead into an open and
informal discussion of how we might reconcile these competing demands.back to dates

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March 7, 2006 meeting

Tues March 7 -- *NOTE CHANGE* moved to Tues the 7th (340A Baker) to accommodate Alan Schoenfeld (PIER speaker) --- " Random thoughts on Randomized Trials " Are randomized controlled trials the real gold standard? Or, in the hands of the wrong people, are they fool's gold? The research community is being pushed to employ RCT's as a primary, if not sole, measure of the effectiveness of educational interventions. I will argue that the issues involved are much more complex than advocates suggest, but that there are ways in which the field can make progress toward the analogue of rigorous clinical studies. I'll also point to major flaws in high profile studies and malfeasance in high places - but with the caveat that the detailed consideration of those issues will take place in David Klahr's class discussion of "What Works" later in the afternoon.

Please note additional presentations that Dr. Schoenfeld will be giving:
Mon 3/6, 12pm-1:30pm - Methods in Educational Research- BH 336B
Mon 3/6, 4:30pm-6pm - Toward a Theory of Problem Solving-(PIER colloquium)- BH A51 ABSTRACT

You may reference the following relevant papers associated
with these presentations/discussions:
Schoenfeld - Method
Burkhardt & Schoenfeld 2003
Schoenfeld - What Doesn't Work

Suggested reading for the EdBag discussion:
Cook 2003

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February 22, 2006 meeting

Wed Feb 22, 336B-Baker Hall -- Junlei Li (CMU postdoc; Pitt Education Department instructor) “Standards and Standardized Tests in Urban Schools ? A Mile-Wide and Mile-Deep Dilemma”

ABSTRACT: Using science education as an example, we present and discuss the dilemma faced by teachers, schools, and researchers in the present standards and accountability reform. We argue that, at least in science education, policies have not distinguished what we want from what we need or adequately researched what is feasible. The result is that we have a curricular behemoth that is impossible to cover, much less to teach. We are eager to hear any ideas and solutions the EdBag group would like to propose.back to dates

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February 8, 2006 meeting

Wednesday February 8, 2006 -- 336B-Baker Hall -- Amy Ogan (PIER student) will be presenting her work regarding the French languate/culture computer tutor

Title: A System for Teaching Intercultural Competence: Classroom Evaluation and Proposed Analysis

Abstract: Intercultural competence, the ability to "gain insight on native perspectives, opinions, and values; reflect critically and engage with otherness" (ACTFL 96), is an integral part of any language learning curriculum, yet the increasing ardor for technology in the language classroom has mainly been limited in this area to multimedia presentation, or large-scale, resource-intensive projects that perform little rigorous evaluation. We have developed an interactive system that incorporates attention-focusing techniques to "teachable moments" in feature film that highlight cultural attributes. This talk presents an evaluation of this system that was recently conducted in two French Online classrooms to test the hypothesis that attention-focusing techniques will increase cultural learning in an online environment. We present the results of the study in which increased self-confidence in intercultural competence and improvement in cultural analysis of film was shown. back to dates

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January 26, 2006 meeting:

Our first meeting of the year is Wednesday January 25, 2006 (others are noted below). This event will be at Pitt- LRDC building (2nd floor) noon- 1pm!!!! Given that Micki Chi is giving a talk we imagine will be of great interest to our EdBag audience, we are making that talk our EdBag (our scheduled speaker has been gracious enough to present at the next EdBag instead).

LEARNING FROM COLLABORATIVELY OBSERVING TUTORING:
INSIGHTS ABOUT TUTORING EFFECTIVENESS FROM VICARIOUS LEARNING
Michelene T.H. Chi and Marguerite Roy

ABSTRACT
This study is aimed at furthering our understanding of tutoring effectiveness. The study compared the learning outcomes of five different instructional conditions including, one-to-one tutoring, observing tutoring collaboratively, observing tutoring alone, collaborating without observing, and studying alone. The results show that students who observed collaboratively videotapes of another student (a tutee) being tutored, learn as much as the tutees. In order to understand how the observers learned these results, we explored how the characteristics of tutor-tutee talk and tutor-tutee interactions relate to both the tutees¹ learning and the observers¹ learning. We use these relationships to evaluate three potential hypotheses that explain why one-to-one human tutoring is such an effective way to learn. We also explored how tutor-tutee interactions contributed to the observers¹ learning, which in turn also shed light on how the tutees learn from their interactions with the tutor. Our data provide further support for the hypotheses that learning arises from opportunities for students to be constructive, as well as from joint interactions between participants. This novel learning environment of collaboratively observing suggests that the benefits of tutoring can be effectively adapted to a variety of learning contexts, including both on-line and classroom learning. back to dates