Source-based essays are evaluated both on the quality of the writing and the content appropriate interpretation and use of source material. Hence, composing a high-quality source-based essay (an essay written based on source material) relies on skills related to both reading (the sources) and writing (the essay) skills. As such, source-based…

Due to substantial scientific and practical progress, learning technologies can effectively adapt to the characteristics and needs of students. This article considers how learning technologies can adapt over time by crowdsourcing contributions from teachers and students -- explanations, feedback, and other pedagogical interactions. Considering the…

As the use of educational technology becomes more ubiquitous, an enormous amount of learning process data is being produced. Educational data mining seeks to analyze and model these data, with the ultimate goal of improving learning outcomes. The most firmly grounded and rigorous evaluation of an educational data mining discovery is whether it…

The paper describes a biology tutoring system with adaptive question selection. Questions were selected for presentation to the student based on their utilities, which were estimated from the chance that the student's competence would increase if the questions were asked. Competence was represented by the probability of mastery of a set of biology…

Collaborative and individual learning are both frequently used in classrooms to support learning. However, little research has investigated the benefits of combining individual and collaborative learning, as compared to learning only individually or only collaboratively. With our study, we address this research gap. We compared a combined…

In this paper, we propose the development of a web-based, intelligent instruction system to help elementary school students for mathematical computation. We concentrate on the intelligence facilities which support diagnosis and advice. The existing web-based instruction systems merely give information on whether the learners' replies are…

Student modeling in intelligent tutoring systems is mostly concerned with modeling correctness of students' answers. As interactive problem solving activities become increasingly common in educational systems, it is useful to focus also on timing information associated with problem solving. We argue that the focus on timing is natural for certain…

Work in cognitive and educational psychology examines a variety of phenomena related to the learning and retrieval of information. Indeed, Alice Healy, our honoree, and her colleagues have conducted a large body of groundbreaking research on this topic. In this article we discuss how 3 learning principles (the generation effect, deliberate…

Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) are computer programs that model learners' psychological states to provide individualized instruction. They have been developed for diverse subject areas (e.g., algebra, medicine, law, reading) to help learners acquire domain-specific, cognitive and metacognitive knowledge. A meta-analysis was conducted on…

All branches of the U.S. military are moving toward education and training that is tailored to meet individuals' needs wherever they are and whenever they are ready to learn. The result will be a culture of continuous, personalized learning with learner progress that is based on proficiency and a greater emphasis on technology-enabled immersive…

Much debate surrounds the effectiveness of the common educational practice of homework (Cooper et al., 2006). A randomized-controlled trial has shown that using a web-based homework system that provides immediate feedback to students, while they are doing their mathematics homework, and detailed item reports to teachers significantly improves…

When modeling student learning, tutors that use the Knowledge Tracing framework often assume that all students have the same set of model parameters. We find that when fitting parameters to individual students, there is significant variation among the individual's parameters. We examine if this variation is important in terms of instructional…

Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) are beneficial for individual students learning in several domains, including mathematics where they have been used to support both secondary and elementary students. Collaborative learning may be beneficial to include in ITSs, particularly for conceptual knowledge. There is little work on collaborative ITSs,…

In order to reduce the passivity of students and enhance their learning experience in large lectures, we developed a browser-based tool called Classroom Interacter to promote classroom interaction. It allows students to use their own mobile devices to participate in the learning process. The main features of Classroom Interacter include live…

There is a growing prevalence in the use of digital media for education management and international partnerships; however, research continues to reflect the position that the absence of social interaction is a major barrier to a positive on-line learning experience. In 2007, a paper described the application of PESTE (Political, Economic, Social,…