When practice does not make perfect: Differentiating between productive and unproductive persistence

Research has suggested that persistence in the face of challenges plays an important role in learning. However, recent work on wheel-spinning—a type of unproductive persistence where students spend too much time struggling without achieving mastery of skills—has shown that not all persistence is uniformly beneficial for learning. For this reason, Study 1 used educational data-mining techniques to determine key differences between the behaviors associated with productive persistence and wheel-spinning in ASSISTments, an online math learning platform. This study’s results indicated that three features differentiated between these two modes of persistence: the number of hints requested in any problem, the number of bottom-out hints in the last eight problems, and the variation in the delay between solving problems of the same skill. These findings suggested that focusing on number of hints can provide insight into which students are struggling, and encouraging students to engage in longer delays between problem solving is likely helpful to reduce their wheel-spinning. Using the same definition of productive persistence in Study 1, Study 2 attempted to investigate the relationship between productive persistence and grit using Duckworth and Quinn’s (2009) Short Grit Scale. Correlational results showed that the two constructs were not significantly correlated with each other, providing implications for synthesizing literature on student persistence across computer-based learning environments and traditional classrooms

Characterizing Productive Perseverance Using Sensor-Free Detectors of Student Knowledge, Behavior, and Affect

Failure is a necessary step in the process of learning. For this reason, there has been a myriad of research dedicated to the study of student perseverance in the presence of failure, leading to several commonly-cited theories and frameworks to characterize productive and unproductive representations of the construct of persistence. While researchers are in agreement that it is important for students to persist when struggling to learn new material, there can be both positive and negative aspects of persistence. What is it, then, that separates productive from unproductive persistence? The purpose of this work is to address this question through the development, extension, and study of data-driven models of student affect, behavior, and knowledge. The increased adoption of computer-based learning platforms in real classrooms has led to unique opportunities to study student learning at both fine levels of granularity and longitudinally at scale. Prior work has leveraged machine learning methods, existing learning theory, and previous education research to explore various aspects of student learning. These include the development of sensor-free detectors that utilize only the student interaction data collected through such learning platforms. Building off of the considerable amount of prior research, this work employs state-of-the-art machine learning methods in conjunction with the large scale granular data collected by computer-based learning platforms in alignment with three goals. First, this work focuses on the development of student models that study learning through the use of advancements in student modeling and deep learning methodologies. Second, this dissertation explores the development of tools that incorporate such models to support teachers in taking action in real classrooms to promote productive approaches to learning. Finally, this work aims to complete the loop in utilizing these detector models to better understand the underlying constructs that are being measured through their application and their connection to productive perseverance and commonly-observed learning outcomes

Opening Up an Intelligent Tutoring System Development Environment for Extensible Student Modeling

ITS authoring tools make creating intelligent tutoring systems more cost effective, but few authoring tools make it easy to flexibly incorporate an open-ended range of student modeling methods and learning analytics tools. To support a cumulative science of student modeling and enhance the impact of real-world tutoring systems, it is critical to extend ITS authoring tools so they easily accommodate novel student modeling methods. We report on extensions to the CTAT/Tutorshop architecture to support a plug-in approach to extensible student modeling, which gives an author full control over the content of the student model. The extensions enhance the range of adaptive tutoring behaviors that can be authored and support building external, student- or teacher-facing real-time analytics tools. The contributions of this work are: (1) an open architecture to support the plugging in, sharing, re-mixing, and use of advanced student modeling techniques, ITSs, and dashboards; and (2) case studies illustrating diverse ways authors have used the architecture

Cross Case Study of an Elementary Engineering Task

Designerly play has been identified as a fundamental component of childhood learning (Baynes, 1994; Petroski, 2003). However, as students enter grade one and beyond, the increasing academic focus has resulted in the loss of opportunities for designerly play (Zhao, 2012). At the same time, there are increasing calls to increase the number, skill, and diversity of STEM workers (Brophy, Portsmore, Klein, & Rogers, 2008). The robotics based Elementary Engineering Curriculum (Heffernan, 2013) - used by students in this study - and other similar projects have the potential to increase the STEM pipeline but elementary engineering is not well-understood. Research is needed to understand how to teach engineering to students as their cognitive, motor, and social skills rapidly develop in elementary school (Alimisis, 2012; Crismond & Adams, 2012; Mead, Thomas, & Weinberg, 2012; Penner, Giles, Lehrer, & Schauble, 1997; Roth, 1996; Schunn, 2009; Wagner, 1999). The literature review and theoretical frameworks chapters of this study determined the most relevant theoretical frameworks, engineering design process models, and existing research that is relevant to a cross-sectional case study of six grade 2 and six grade 6 elementary robotics students in the context of established K-6 elementary robotics curriculum (Heffernan, 2013). Students were videotaped doing an open-ended engineering task based on LEGO robotics using talk-aloud (Ericsson & Simon, 1993) and clinical interview (Ginsburg, 1997) techniques. The engineering design processes were analyzed and compared by age and gender. Significant differences were found in final projects and engineering design process. However, the differences were not, for the most part, related to development or gender, but were related to the complexity of the ride they tried to build and the skills and structural knowledge they brought to the task. The key factors identified consisted of three executive function process skills of cognitive flexibility, causal reasoning, and planning ability, three domain specific process skills of application of mathematics and science, engineering design process skills, and design principles of stability, scale, and the structural knowledge they had of LEGO robotics, most pointedly, LEGO connection knowledge. Implications of these findings for teachers are given

The TA Framework: Designing Real-time Teaching Augmentation for K-12 Classrooms

Recently, the HCI community has seen increased interest in the design of teaching augmentation (TA): tools that extend and complement teachers' pedagogical abilities during ongoing classroom activities. Examples of TA systems are emerging across multiple disciplines, taking various forms: e.g., ambient displays, wearables, or learning analytics dashboards. However, these diverse examples have not been analyzed together to derive more fundamental insights into the design of teaching augmentation. Addressing this opportunity, we broadly synthesize existing cases to propose the TA framework. Our framework specifies a rich design space in five dimensions, to support the design and analysis of teaching augmentation. We contextualize the framework using existing designs cases, to surface underlying design trade-offs: for example, balancing actionability of presented information with teachers' needs for professional autonomy, or balancing unobtrusiveness with informativeness in the design of TA systems. Applying the TA framework, we identify opportunities for future research and design.Comment: to be published in Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 17 pages, 10 figure

Boat design deriving from ethnographic study: a transdisciplinary approach to Malaysian fishing boat design.

The goal of the project is to further the positivist discourse of design by ascertaining whether ethnographic analysis contributes to the design process. To this end, the project provides 1) a culturally appropriate conceptual fishing boat design and 2) an industrial design case study. This project identifies mechanistic and non-mechanistic design elements and presents the results of thematic analysis. This project develops a 40 GRT (gross register ton), Malaysian Class B fishing boat design based primarily upon ethnographic study of stakeholders, which includes fishermen, boat builders, designers and owners. The design concept is evaluated by fishermen regarding perceived performance as a fishing boat, aesthetics, safety, and comfort. The concept boat is compared with the visual stereotype of a traditional Malaysian fishing boat and a Western style, deck forward design. The conceptual design is evaluated with a creative product analysis matrix (CPAM) followed by a questionnaire based evaluation by fishermen. This project is intended for students and practitioners of industrial design interested in culturally appropriate design. It provides insights into design methodology and ethnographic methods for developing an understanding of indigenous design sensitivities of a client or end user. This study provides an example of product development that integrates the designer’s creativity with the stakeholders’ requirements and material culture. This project also demonstrates the technique of superimposing photographs via computer aided design (CAD) drawings to develop a visual stereotype. Moreover, this project demonstrates the benefit of employing visual models in charcoal and clay in ethnographic fieldwork

The Role of the Designer in Play

Includes bibliographical references (p. 71-74) and Appendix A - Advancing our Understanding of Adult Play (bibliography for Appendix A (p. 85-86)).This thesis endeavors to answer the question, “What, if any, is the role of the designer in facilitating play?” I base my answer to this question on years of play studies, design projects, conversations with experts, classes, conferences, seminars, travel, and careful observation. I ran an extensive literature search on play theory, design, science, philosophy, and playwork, only to discover that there was little agreement on the matter of defining play. By reviewing the ‘cited by’ tables of online resources (lists of papers that cite a given article), I was able to find a contemporary definition in line with my own understanding of play, active frivolity, which I explain in Chapter 1. Working through a complex landscape of historical interpretations of play, Chapter 2 explains the evolution of contemporary play theories and concludes with what I call Omnidisciplinary Play Theory, a synthesis of Joe Frost’s Integrated Theory of Play and Nathaniel Gindele’s Naturalistic Philosophy of Play. Omnidisciplinary Play Theory is an instructive tool for understanding the phenomenon of play, and explains it in five ways: exemplars, motives, behaviors, content, and developmental correlates. Chapter 3 argues that play is a fundamental part of a complete human experience and should be treated as a human right rather than a leisurely privilege. This has important implications for designers, namely that their duty is to allow for the widest possible variety of play in an environment designed for such purpose. Implicit in this obligation is the need to respect the agency of prospective users as designers, builders, and directors of their own space. Chapter 4 describes how meritocracies are antithetical to play and are one of the major reasons our ethical obligation to provision play is beset with systemic, societal resistance. Chapter 5 describes how external goals of value such as education are also antithetical to play. It stipulates, however, that once primary agendas of players are met, external agendas may be covertly introduced as long as said agendas are not in conflict. Chapter 6 outlines the practical applicability of the theoretical, ethical, and philosophical perspectives covered in previous chapters by translating them into actionable design guidelines. The thesis concludes by suggesting that the role of the designer in facilitating play is to understand it deeply; engage in it; practice empathy; respect the agency of players; advocate for the right to play; provision time, space, materials, and permission so as to allow for the widest possible variety of play; design exemplary playscapes; consult over the lifetime of the project; and learn from its evolution