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How do we learn? What makes a teacher effective? What unique qualities does a computer based system have to offer, and what are its limitations? What features should the best model for an intelligent tutoring system possess? AI scientists involved in education address these and other questions in three basic contexts: "The first is to use AI and cognitive science techniques to model experts who problem solve in a domain, as well as tutors teaching and students learning in that domain. . . . The second research goal involves explaining learning and teaching as parts of the human information-processing system. . . . The third research goal is to demonstrate completeness and reliability in the engineering side of the discipline and to show that intelligent instructional systems can be used effectively in training and classroom situations." Good Places to StartColleges see the future in technology - Online classes are only the start of how schools are looking at ways to use high-tech gear and change the way students learn. By Stuart Silverstein. Los Angeles Times (September 12, 2006). "Though long known for their adherence to tradition, colleges in California and elsewhere increasingly are embracing a variety of higher-tech approaches to teaching and learning. And new gizmos, including gear with cutting-edge videogame or artificial intelligence technology, are on the way to provide more individualized instruction. Some of the most futuristic devices -- if colleges are adventurous enough to try them -- could even monitor students' brainwaves to keep track of how they're learning. The trend toward electronic technology could be particularly dramatic in California, where demographic and economic forces are likely to promote ways to stretch the state's educational resources. ... [Carol] Twigg's outlook is based partly on her center's four-year effort with 30 colleges to redesign high-enrollment courses. The 30 projects involved such things as deemphasizing lectures and relying more on online tutorials and discussion forums, along with using computerized grading to give students speedier assessments of what they were learning well and what they were getting wrong. The result: Student learning rose in 25 of the 30 projects. ... At the same time, the cost of providing instruction was reduced an average 37%. ... Artificial intelligence experts are developing 'intelligent tutoring systems' that can help students working on problems in, say, algebra or physics where there are many ways to solve a problem -- as well as many ways to go wrong. ... The technologies have 'tremendous potential,' said Carnegie Mellon's [Joel M.] Smith. But if developers of the technologies don't keep in mind what psychologists and other experts have discovered about how people learn, he warned, 'there's a danger in going off the rails.'" Grand challenges free researchers to explore what can be imagined. By John Jernery. The Daily Yomiuri Online (February 20, 2007). "By design, grand challenges are dreamed up to push the envelope, to break through barriers, and to ignore limits. ... In the previous 'Report from Silicon Valley,' we began looking at some of the grand challenges currently under way in Britain under the auspices of the U.K. Computing Research Committee (www.ukcrc.org.uk). ... We continue here with some of the other grand challenges that the British are exploring. ... Learning for Life: Computer tutoring, e-learning, and distance learning are fast becoming a common ingredient in education-and not just for children. Learning today is a lifetime endeavor and the Learning for Life grand challenge seeks to discover what that means in the coming age of ubiquitous, possibly intelligent machines."
Top 10 Smart Technologies for Schools. Technology & Learning (November 2002). "What's a 'smart' technology? While one might argue that all technology -- from a toaster to a moon rover is smart, those we present in the following Top 10 list meet their own set of criteria. In contrast to the breakthroughs we profiled last year, which included such broad topics and trends as wireless and virtual learning, the technologies we've chosen to examine here perform more specific, identifiable functions. Fingerprint recognition and artificial intelligence can free educators and school staff of time-consuming tasks. Telementoring and virtual reality enable collaborations and instant expert guidance from any spot on earth. And voice-to-text technology and hybrid devices support young and challenged learners in formerly unheard of ways. In the hands of well-trained educators, these technologies can offer powerful new solutions for teaching children." One of the 10 articles offered is " Artificial Intelligence," by Kristen Kennedy: "They don't do windows -- but the next generation of AI applications can teach, tutor, and even grade essays." What We Know About Learning. By Herbert A. Simon, Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University. (Speech presented at the 1997 Frontiers in Education Conference.) "What we must avoid above all is designing technologically sophisticated hammers and then wandering around to find nails that we can hit with them. That is a great temptation for all of us who are involved with computer technology; for computers can do really fascinating things when they are not being stubborn; and we would like to see how we can use those potentialities in education. But I submit that we are not going to succeed in that unless we really turn the problem the other way around and first specify the kinds of things students ought to be doing: what are the cost-effective and time-effective ways by which students can proceed to learn. We need to carry out the analysis that is required to understand what they have to do - what activities will produce the learning - and then ask ourselves how the technology can help us do that." The Roles of Artificial Intelligence in Education: Current Progress and Future Prospects. David McArthur, Matthew Lewis, and Miriam Bishay. (1993) RAND DRU-472-NSF. A very good overview that will give you a solid foundation for your exploration of the exciting intersection of these two fields. Computers in Education: A Brief History. By Andrew Molnar. THE Journal (Technological Horizons in Education) June 1997. Encyclopedia of Educational Technology. Bob Hoffman, General Editor; a publication of San Diego State UniversityDepartment of Educational Technology. "The Encyclopedia of Educational Technology (EET) is a collection of short multimedia articles on a variety of topics related to the fields of instructional design and education and training. The primary audiences for the EET are students and novice to intermediate practitioners in these fields, who need a brief overview as a starting point to further research on specific topics. Authors are graduate students, professors, and others who contribute voluntarily. Articles are short and use multimedia to enrich learning rather than merely decorate the pages." Experts Use AI to Help GIs Learn Arabic. By Eric Mankin. USC News (June 21, 2004). " To teach soldiers basic Arabic quickly, USC computer scientists are developing a system that merges artificial intelligence with computer game techniques. The Rapid Tactical Language Training System, created by the USC Viterbi School of Engineering's Center for Research in Technology for Education (CARTE) and partners, tests soldier students with videogame missions in animated virtual environments where, to pass, the students must successfully phrase questions and understand answers in Arabic. ... 'Most adults find it extremely difficult to acquire even a rudimentary knowledge of a language, particularly in a short time,' said CARTE director W. Lewis Johnson. 'We’re trying to build an improved model of instruction, one that can be closely tailored to both the needs and the abilities of each individual student,' Johnson said." Read the story and then watch the video! Readings OnlineAIED Resources from the International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education (IJAIED): "This page contains links to items (other than the refereed, printed papers) of interest to AIED Society members. This might include: powerpoint presentations of invited talks at AIED conferences; proceedings and reports on AIED conference workshops; reports on other events of interest to Society members; bibliographies of fields of AIED; etc."
Educational Data Mining: Papers from the 2005 AAAI Workshop, ed. Joseph E. Beck, 24-31. Technical Report WS-05-02. American Association for Artificial Intelligence, Menlo Park, California. "This workshop focuses on leveraging the ability of computer tutors to record their interactions with students to better understand how to teach students. Computer tutors are capable of recording both longitudinal data, as well as data at a fine-time scale, such as mouse clicks and response time data. Using these interactions as a source of data to be mined provides a new view into understanding student learning processes. The first objective of this workshop is to bring together researchers working at the intersection of AI and education to discuss how to better understand and learn from the data we are collecting. The second major objective of the workshop is to create a repository of data sets for educational data mining. The lack of shared data sets has hampered the field both by creating a high barrier to entry and by making it difficult for researchers to directly compare techniques and results."
Speech in Education. By Phillip Britt. Speech Technology Magazine (June / July 2005). "Speech-enabled applications and hardware are increasingly finding their way into the classroom and into the offices of educators at all levels of education, but educational applications still represent a small, though growing, segment of the speech technology market, according to industry analysts." The Promise of Artificial Intelligence. Carnegie Mellon Today ( Sept. 2004, Vol. 1, No. 3). "In a remote African hut, a mother clutches her collapsed child in dread. She’s seen the symptoms before. They’re almost always fatal. She describes them aloud in her native tongue. Across the room, a computer screen displays the face of her'pediatrician' He asks her a series of questions and then prescribes the cure. It’s water. Today, Africa has the highest mortality rate for children under five. Most times, death is from preventable problems like dehydration. But medical help is seldom close enough to matter. A proposal before the World Bank would change that by placing cognitive tutors in every hut of every village on the African continent. That’s the long-term dream of Carnegie Mellon’s Herbert A. Simon University Professor of Computer Science and Robotics Raj Reddy, who like the late visionary Herb Simon, believes education technology can cure many of the world’s ills. With the help of World Bank funding, Reddy hopes to deliver on this promise for $1 per dwelling. But, in the near term, cognitive tutors are helping underprivileged children learn math three times faster and perform much better on tests. Intelligent tutors are now in 4 percent of the nation’s schools and attracting wide interest among government agencies."  Smart Machines in Education. Edited by Kenneth D. Forbus and Paul J. Feltovich. AAAI Press. "Multimedia, simulation, computer-mediated communication networks, and distance learning have all become part of the educational toolkit. The next major technology to change the face of education will be based on the widespread use of artificial intelligence (AI). Progress in AI has led to a deeper understanding of how to represent knowledge, to reason, and to describe procedural knowledge. Progress in cognitive science has led to a deeper understanding of how people think, solve problems, and learn. AI scientists use results from cognitive science to create software with more humanlike abilities, which can help students learn better. This book looks at some of the results of this synergy among AI, cognitive science, and education." "The International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education (IJAIED) is the official journal of the International AIED Society. IJAIED publishes papers and other items concerned with the application of artificial intelligence techniques and concepts to the design of systems to support learning." Conceptualizing Intelligent Agents For Teaching and Learning. By Ali Jafari. Educause Quarterly. Volume 25, Number 3 (2002). "An intelligent agent is a set of independent software tools linked with other applications and databases running within one or several computer environments. The primary function of an intelligent agent is to help a user (client) better use, manage, and interact with a computer application such as a CMS [course management software] or campus portal system. Additionally, software agents, like human agents (for example, a secretary or an administrative assistant), can be authorized with the autonomy to make decisions and perform certain tasks. Agent-based technology systems are assumed to involve artificial intelligence (AI) and include a degree of autonomous problem-solving ability." "The Journal of Interactive Learning Research (JILR) publishes papers related to the underlying theory, design, implementation, effectiveness, and impact on education and training of the following interactive learning environments: authoring systems, cognitive tools for learning computer-assisted language learning, assessment systems, computer-based training, computer-mediated communications, computer-supported collaborative learning, distributed learning environments, electronic performance support systems, interactive learning environments, interactive multimedia systems, interactive simulations and games, intelligent agents on the Internet, intelligent tutoring systems, microworlds, virtual reality based learning systems." Artificial Intelligence in Education. Volume 50 in Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications. Edited by S.P.Lajoie and M. Vivet. 1999. 820 pp., hardcover. ISBN: 90 5199 452 4. "This volume contains the proceedings for the 9th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education (AI-ED 1999). This is one of a series of international conferences in this area and it is designed to report on state of the art research in the field of AI in Education." Enter the Computer Tutor - PCs Can Help Kids Pass No Child Left Behind Tests. By Angie C. Marek. USNews.com's E-Learning Guide (November 2005). "In a K-12 educational environment that is ever more focused on metrics-based achievement, computers -- with their massive processing power and number crunching abilities -- can become tireless teaching aides. 'These things can basically work for you as a testing administrator, a one-on-one tutor, or just a very well-organized storage space for massive amounts of data on your students,' says Jeff Cameron, the brain behind Brainchild. The versatility computers bring to the classroom is on full display in Wooster, Mass., where several classes of eighth graders are currently testing the Assistment program, a software tool designed by professors at Carnegie Mellon University. The program saves teachers time by administering and automatically scoring quizzes that are similar to Massachusetts's state achievement test. And when kids get tripped up on a problem, the PC breaks a larger problem down into step-by-step questions, trying to tease out exactly where the students got off track. ... And teachers don't necessarily feel supplanted by the high-tech gadgetry. Kate Ross, a seventh- and eighth-grade English teacher in Highland, Utah, says she sometimes thinks of the computer as a 'teaching assistant,'...." Visual-Syntactic Text Formatting: A New Method to Enhance Online Reading. By Stan Walker,Phil Schloss,Charles R. Fletcher,Charles A. Vogel, and Randall C. Walker. Reading Online (May 2005). Abstract: "A new process, visual-syntactic text formatting (VSTF), transforms block-shaped text into cascading patterns that help readers identify grammatical structure. The new method integrates converging evidence from educational, visual, and cognitive research, and is made feasible through computer-executed algorithms and electronic displays. Among college readers, the VSTF method instantly increased reading comprehension and efficiency of reading online text, while reducing eyestrain. Among high school students, who read with the format over an entire academic year, the VSTF method increased both academic achievement and long-term reading proficiency by more than a full standard deviation over randomized controls."
Related Web SitesAdvanced Learning Technologies (ALT): "Through the Advanced Learning Technologies (ALT) program, the CISE and EHR Directorates of NSF support research that (1) enables radical improvements in learning through innovative computer and information technologies, and (2) advances research in computer science, information technology, learning, and cognitive science through the unique challenges posed by learning environments and learning technology platforms. Integrative research approaches that build across disciplines and establish tight linkages among theory, experiment, and design are strongly encouraged. Technology goals may include systems for tutoring or assessment, modeling and sensing of cognitive or emotional states, context awareness, natural language interfaces, collaboration, knowledge management, and non-traditional goals that redefine the roles of technology in learning." Be sure to scroll down their page to the link to abstracts of awards made through ALT and related programs. AIED, the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education. "The International AIED Society organizes a biennial AIED conference, which is the main forum for reporting the best international research in the field of AI in Education. The conferences provide the opportunity for the exchange of information and ideas on related research, development and applications. Society members receive reduced registration rates for AIED conferences. AIED 97 was held in Kobe, Japan; AIED 99 was held in Le Mans, France; AIED 01 was held in San Antonio, USA; AIED 03 was held in Sydney, Australia. AIED 05 (the 12th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education) was held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands."
"ARIES, the Laboratory for Advanced Research in Intelligent Educational Systems [at the University of Saskatchewan], is a focal point for research projects in the areas of intelligent tutoring systems and adaptive learning environments. The mission of the ARIES Laboratory is to advance the development of Learning Technologies through the integration of Artificial Intelligence techniques and to advance Artificial Intelligence research through attempts to solve real-world education and training problems." Be sure to check out their many projects, both present and past. The Artificial Intelligence and Education (AI-ED) Group is part of the Division of Informatics of the University of Edinburgh, although it has strong links with othr research groups and institutes within and outwith Edinburgh. The group's main purpose is the application of Artificial Intelligence techniques and methods to support learning and teaching/training." If you follow the link to 'Publications', you'll find links to many online articles. Carnegie Learning. "Based on over 20 years of research at Carnegie Mellon University, our Cognitive Tutor® mathematics solutions integrate advanced cognitive research, interactive software sessions and engaging classroom lessons to immerse students in the experience of mathematics." Center for Advanced Research in Technology for Education (CARTE), Information Sciences Institute at the University of Southern California. "A major current thrust at CARTE is 'socially aware learning environments,' which emulate aspects of human social interaction in engaging with learners and which support social learning processes. ... CARTE is a multidisciplinary center that includes artificial intelligence specialists, multimedia designers, cognitive psychologists, and educational researchers." Center for Research of Innovative Technologies for Learning (RITL) Florida State University: "founded in 2004 by Dr. Amy L. Baylor to facilitate interdisciplinary research in the areas of instructional technology, human-computer interaction, communications, computer science, and psychology." "The Computer Based Learning Unit has the general research aim of using computer based technology to examine processes of cognition, decision-making and problem-solving, and hence to support innovative teaching and learning applications. CBLU was established in 1970 and now numbers about 40 people, including about 25 research students. It is administratively part of the School of Education at the University of Leeds and has strong links to the School of Computer Studies and the Department of Psychology." "In the DEMO Lab [Dynamical & Evolutionary Machine Organization] at Brandeis University's Computer Science Department, we have directed a number of our research projects towards educational technologies. We synthesize several components of our work, uniting a unique combination of technologies and theories from which we are building the educational environment. We start with our experience in machine learning, where we have co-evolved software agents to play games. We add to this our success using the Internet to facilitate a new form of co-evolution between humans and software agents. Finally, we carry these concepts into the educational arena." The Education Arcade (TEA): "The Education Arcade explores games that promote learning through authentic and engaging play. TEA’s research and development projects focus both on the learning that naturally occurs in popular commercial games, and on the design of games that more vigorously address the educational needs of players. Our mission is to demonstrate the social, cultural, and educational potentials of videogames by initiating new game development projects, coordinating interdisciplinary research efforts, and informing public conversations about the broader and sometimes unexpected uses of this emerging art form in education. Education Arcade projects have touched on mathematics, science, history, literacy, and language learning, and have been tailored to a wide range of ages. They have been designed for personal computers, handheld devices and on-line delivery." Education and Artificial Intelligence. Prepared by Deva Brown, Graduate Student of Library and Information Science, The University of Texas at Austin (1998). Contains sections addressing background and philosophy, recent applications and related web sites. Education Resources from the National Engineering Information Center. Be sure to see the links collected under the heading "Artificial Intelligence in Education." "The EduTech Institute [at the Georgia Institute of Technology] is a multi-disciplinary research organization committed to enhancing science, math, and design education through innovative uses of technology." EUROCALL Special Interest Group. "We feel that research in Artificial Intelligence, Computational Linguistics, Corpus-Driven and Corpus Linguistics, Formal Linguistics, Machine Aided Translation, Machine Translation, Natural Language Interfaces, Natural Language Processing, Theoretical Linguistics has produced results which have proven, are proving and will prove very useful in the field of Computer-Assisted Language Learning [CALL]. A SIG in Language Processing can therefore facilitate information exchange between individual EUROCALL members interested in or already working in one of the above fields."
"The Future of Learning Group [MIT Media Laboratory] explores how new technologies can enable new ways of thinking, learning, and designing. The group creates new 'tools to think with' and explores how these tools can help bring about change in real-world settings, such as schools, museums, and under-served communities." International Conference for Interaction Design and Children. In cooperation with ACM SIGCHI and hosted by the University of Maryland and the Human-Computer Interaction Lab. "IDC 2004 will focus on addressing the challenges of interaction design for children and explore the opportunities and impact that new technologies can afford young people in their everyday lives. ... 1. Emerging technologies for children (e.g., educational simulations, online games, mobile communications devices, wireless embedded technologies, authoring/programming tools). 2. The impact these technologies can have on children's lives (e.g., in schools, at home, in public spaces). 3. New research methods which give children a voice in the design, development, and evaluation processes (e.g., participatory design methods, usability testing, etc.)." Laboratoryfor Interactive Learning Technologies, Department of Informationand Computer Sciences, University of Hawaii at Manoa: "Researchin LILT addresses issues in artificial intelligence, cognitive science,and human-computer interaction, while applying methodologies fromthese fields to develop improved educational software. Several researchprojects are unified by the theme of representational affordancesfor collaborative learning." The Teachable Agents Group at Vanderbilt University. "Our project's objective is to combine insights from recent work in computer science, psychology and education to create and study 'teachable agent' (TA) environments in mathematics and science that are motivating to students, intuitive to teachers and parents, and lead to high degrees of student learning. The hallmark of these environments is that students learn by instructing "teachable agents" who then venture forth in simulation-based exploratory environments and attempt to solve problems that require knowledge relevant to the disciplines of mathematics or science. If the agents have been taught properly they solve the problems; otherwise they need to be educated further. The simulation-based environments are carefully designed to focus attention on important concepts in science and mathematics, and to make explicit the errors that occur during problem solving. Students 'scout' the problem solving requirements of various environments before attempting to teach their agents. Additional help and coaching agents are available to point students in the right direction when they make errors or produce sub-optimal solutions. ... [Our project] will inform education by exploring design principles that are student, teacher and parent friendly, and that help all students achieve." TECFA (Technologies de Formation et Apprentissage) Overview. "TECFA is a research and teaching unit created in 1989 by the Faculté de Psychologie et des Sciences de l'Education ('School of Psychology and Education') of the University of Geneva. It is active in the field of educational technology. TECFA's research covers a large area of interests, including: cognitive issues in learning technology, computer-supported collaborative learning, virtual learning environments, computer-mediated communication, information systems in education, and distance education." Related AI Topics Pages
More ReadingsHoffman, Robert R., Gavan Lintern, and Susan Eitelman. 2004. The Janus Principle. IEEE Intelligent Systems 19(2). "Because of traditions including the separation of disciplines (for example, instructional design in education versus control systems design in cognitive engineering), there is a widespread distinction between training systems (TSs) and performance support systems (PSSs) . ... Neither a TS nor a traditional PSS on its own can accomplish this fit between human, machine, and context. In his Unified Theories of Cognition, Allen Newell argued that people learn continuously, so in his SOAR cognitive architecture, he modeled learning as a result of problem solving, implying performance. Thus, learning and problem solving (or performance) are necessarily intertwined." Smith, Matt, Alan Smaill, and Geraint A. Wiggins, editors. 1993. Proceedings of a Workshop held as part of AI-ED 93, World Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education on Music Education: An Artificial Intelligence Approach. London, UK: Springer-Verlag. [Link is to the ACM Portal.] Interactive Learning Toolshttp://www.aispace.org/index.shtml AI Space: Interactive Tools for Learning Artificial Intelligence. A collection of Java applets that are designed as tools for learning and exploring concepts in Artificial Intelligence. Developed and maintained at the University of British Columbia. |
