One of the challenges many learning scientists face is the laborious task of coding large amounts of video data and consistently identifying social actions, which is time consuming and difficult to accomplish in a systematic and consistent manner. It is easier to catalog observable behaviours (e.g., body motions or gaze) without explicitly…

In educational technology and learning sciences, there are multiple uses for a predictive model of whether a student will perform a task correctly or not. For example, an intelligent tutoring system may use such a model to estimate whether or not a student has mastered a skill. We analyze the significance of data recency in making such…

Background: Historically, significant advances in scientific understanding have followed advances in measurement and observation. As the resolving power of an instrument increased, so have gains in the understanding of the phenomena being observed. Modern interactive systems are potentially the new "microscopes" when they are…

The primary thesis of this paper is that James J. Gibson and Kurt Lewin and their followers subscribe to the central ecological notions of interdependence of organisms and their environments. An attempt is made to show the connections between Gibson's conceptualization of affordance, and the related Lewinian notion of psychological ecology.…

A study was conducted at Macomb Community College (MCC), in Warren, Michigan, to determine whether respondents to studies would be as likely to include their return addresses on business reply envelopes if there were no lines designating the return address's proper placement. From October 25 through November 18, 1993, 23 mailings were conducted…

Education reforms such as "A Nation at Risk" and "Goals 2000" have come and gone. However, we can be confident that the goal of student improvement shall not pass if the core mission is student learning. The true mission of learning has prompted educators to ponder the following questions: How do we need each student to behave?…