Eye Movement Patterns in Solving Science Ordering Problems

Dynamic biological processes, such as intracellular signaling pathways, commonly are taught in science courses using static representations of individual steps in the pathway. As a result, students often memorize these steps for examination purposes, but fail to appreciate either the cascade nature of the pathway. In this study, we compared eye movement patterns for students who correctly ordered the components of an important pathway responsible for vasoconstriction against those who did not. Similarly, we compared the patterns of students who learned the material using three dimensional (3-D) animations previously associated with improved student understanding of this pathway against those who learned the material using static images extracted from those animations. For two of the three ordering problems, students with higher scores had shorter total fixation duration when ordering the components and spent less time (fixating) in the planning and solving phases of the problem-solving process. This finding was supported by the scanpath patterns that demonstrated that students who correctly solved the problems used more efficient problem-solving strategies

Unterstützung adaptiver Benutzungsschnittstellen mittels Eye-Tracking zur Erkennung von Expertise oder Verstehen

Studien zeigen, dass Erledigen von Aufgaben am Computer von der Wahrnehmungsfähigkeit des Anwenders abhängt. Die Kommunikation zwischen Anwender und Computersystemen erfordert hohe Anforderungen an die Benutzerschnittstelle, die für eine Interaktion zwischen Benutzer und Software verantwortlich ist. Eine adaptive Benutzerschnittstelle vereinfacht und verbessert die Interaktionsmöglichkeit und passt sich automatisch an die Bedürfnisse und Fähigkeiten des Anwenders. Ein wichtiger Schritt zur Realisierung von adaptiven Systeme, ist die automatische Erkennung der Benutzerfähigkeiten, um eine Anpassung der Benutzungsschnittstelle an den Benutzer vornehmen zu können. Das Ziel dieser Bachelorarbeit ist es, festzustellen, ob bzw. wie sich die Analyse der Augenbewegung (Eye-Tracking) dazu eignet, die Fähigkeiten des Anwenders bezüglich Verständnis und Expertise anhand des jeweiligen Blickverhaltens zu erkennen, um diese Information für eine adaptive Benutzungsschnittstelle verwenden zu können. In dieser Arbeit werden Experimente zur Erkennung von Benutzerfähigkeiten anhand der Blickdaten analysiert und Erkenntnisse für eine adaptive Benutzerschnittstelle ermittelt. Die Ergebnisse der Studien zeigen, dass keine Unterschiede zwischen Benutzern bezüglich der Augenbewegungsdaten erkannt werden.Studies showed that completing a task with a computer depends on the perception of the user. The communication between user and computer systems requires high demands to the user interface, which is responsible for interaction between users and software. An adaptive user interface simplifies and improves the interactions and automatically adapts to the needs and abilities of the user. An important step towards the realization of such adaptive systems is the automatic recognition of the user skills to adapt the user interface to the user. The aim of this thesis is to determine whether and how the analysis of eye movements (Eye-Tracking) can be used, to recognize the skills of the user with respect to comprehension and expertise based on the respective eye gaze to use this information for an adaptive user interface. In this work experiments for the detection of user skills based on the gaze data are analyzed and findings for an adaptive user interface are determined. The results of the studies show, that there are no differences between users with respect to the eye movement data

Research for the Advancement of Green Chemistry Practice: Studies in Atmospheric and Educational Chemistry

Green chemistry is a philosophy of chemistry that emphasizes a decreasing dependence on limited non-renewable resources and an increasing focus on preventing pollution byproducts of the chemical industry. In short, it is the discipline of chemistry practiced through the lens of environmental stewardship. In an effort to advance the practice of green chemistry, three studies will be described that have ramifications for the practice. The first study examines the atmospheric oxidation of a hydrofluorinated ether, a third-generation CFC replacement compound with primarily unknown atmospheric degradation products. Determination of these products has the potential to impact decisions on refrigerant usage in the future. The second study examines chemistry students\u27 development of understanding benefits-costs-risks analysis when presented with two real-world scenarios: refrigerant choice and fuel choice. By studying how benefits-costs-risks thinking develops, curricular materials and instructional approaches can be designed to better foster the development of an ability that is both necessary for green chemists and important in daily decision-making for non-chemists. The final study uses eye tracking technology to examine students\u27 abilities to interpret molecular properties from structural information in the context of global warming. Such abilities are fundamental if chemists are to appropriately assess risks and hazards of chemistry practice

Rapid Knowledge Assessment (RKA): Assessing Students Content Knowledge Through Rapid, in Class Assessment of Expertise

Understanding how students go about problem solving in chemistry lends many possible advantages for interventions in teaching strategies for the college classroom. The work presented here is the development of an in-classroom, real-time, formative instrument to assess student expertise in chemistry with the purpose of developing classroom interventions. The development of appropriate interventions requires the understanding of how students go about starting to solve tasks presented to them, what their mental effort (load on working memory) is, and whether or not their performance was accurate. To measure this, the Rapid Knowledge Assessment (RKA) instrument uses clickers (handheld electronic instruments for submitting answers) as a means of data collection. The classroom data was used to develop an algorithm to deliver student assessment scores, which when correlated to external measure of standardized American Chemical Society (ACS) examinations and class score show a significant relationship between the accuracy of knowledge assessment (p=0.000). Use of eye-tracking technology and student interviews supports the measurements found in the classroom