Unbounded Human Learning: Optimal Scheduling for Spaced Repetition

In the study of human learning, there is broad evidence that our ability to retain information improves with repeated exposure and decays with delay since last exposure. This plays a crucial role in the design of educational software, leading to a trade-off between teaching new material and reviewing what has already been taught. A common way to balance this trade-off is spaced repetition, which uses periodic review of content to improve long-term retention. Though spaced repetition is widely used in practice, e.g., in electronic flashcard software, there is little formal understanding of the design of these systems. Our paper addresses this gap in three ways. First, we mine log data from spaced repetition software to establish the functional dependence of retention on reinforcement and delay. Second, we use this memory model to develop a stochastic model for spaced repetition systems. We propose a queueing network model of the Leitner system for reviewing flashcards, along with a heuristic approximation that admits a tractable optimization problem for review scheduling. Finally, we empirically evaluate our queueing model through a Mechanical Turk experiment, verifying a key qualitative prediction of our model: the existence of a sharp phase transition in learning outcomes upon increasing the rate of new item introductions.Comment: Accepted to the ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining 201

Innovating Pedagogy 2017: Exploring new forms of teaching, learning and assessment, to guide educators and policy makers. Open University Innovation Report 6

This series of reports explores new forms of teaching, learning and assessment for an interactive world, to guide teachers and policy makers in productive innovation. This sixth report proposes ten innovations that are already in currency but have not yet had a profound influence on education. To produce it, a group of academics at the Institute of Educational Technology in The Open University collaborated with researchers from the Learning In a NetworKed Society (LINKS) Israeli Center of Research Excellence (I-CORE). Themes: • Big-data inquiry: thinking with data • Learners making science • Navigating post-truth societies • Immersive learning • Learning with internal values • Student-led analytics • Intergroup empathy • Humanistic knowledge-building communities • Open Textbooks • Spaced Learnin

Leveraging the Science of Learning to Enhance Student Success: An Application of Syfr Learning’s Principles of Practice

The purpose of the current article is to describe a set of empirically validated principles of practice with the potential to enhance student learning and academic performance. Specifically, we provide an overview of Syfr Learning’s principles of practice – a collection of scalable instructional techniques derived from decades of research in the domain of learning science. Further, we provide an illustrative example of the benefits of Syfr Learning’s principles of practice when incorporated into existing curricula in a K-12 setting

EFL学習者を対象としたソフトウエア開発のための教育学的枠組み

本論文は，日本の高等教育に属する学生の英語語彙習得を支援することを目的としたWeb ベース・プラットフォーム形成の初期段階について報告し，本Web ベース・ソフトウェアの開発に影響した教育学的および実践的な議論について概説するものである。先行研究レビューを通して日本人EFL 学習者が語彙学習において直面しうる課題を明らかにすることにより，本研究は，既存ソフトウェアと高等教育における日本人EFL 学習者のニーズとの間に存在するギャップを埋めるだけでなく，EFL 学習者というより幅広い学習者集団にとっても適用可能なプログラムを開発することを目指し，枠組みを設定している。本ソフトウェアは，学習者の自律的なデータ駆動型学習を支援するように作られており，学習者はソフトウェア上でコーパスや標準化された単語リストの利用を通して自身のニーズに合った単語リストを作成することができる。近年，クラウドコンピューティングが，より安く簡単に利用できるようになってきており，利用者は今後の学習のために単語リストのデータを保存も可能だろう。さらに，クラウドコンピューティングの分析によって，研究者や指導者は学生のソフトウェアの利用状況についてデータを収集することが可能となり，自分たちの実践についてより多くの情報を得ることができるようになる。This article reports on the initial conceptualization of a web-based platform aimed at supporting Japanese tertiary-level students in English vocabulary acquisition. It outlines some of the pedagogical and practical considerations that have influenced the development of this web-based software. By reviewing previous literature and highlighting some of the challenges that Japanese EFL learners may face in learning vocabulary, it sets a framework for the development of a program that can contribute to filling some of the gaps between existing software and the needs of Japanese EFL students in tertiary education, as well as being applicable to a wider population of EFL learners. The software is intended to support autonomous, data-driven learning by allowing learners to develop personalized word lists through the use of corpus tools and standardized word lists. As cloud computing has become cheaper and more easily accessible in recent years, users will be able to save word list data for future study. Furthermore, researchers and instructors will be able to collect data-usage information to better inform their practices.This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP20K13155

Step into My Mind Palace:Exploration of a Collaborative Paragogy Tool in VR

Virtual Reality (VR) can mediate remote collaborative learning and can support pedagogical processes like paragogy. Within education, methods such as spaced repetition and memory palaces exist to support the cognitive process of remembering. We identify an opportunity to enhance learner-led collaborative paragogy involving these methods through immersive VR experiences. We present CleVR, a VR-mediated collaboration-based system that supports the memory palace and spaced repetition techniques. As an exploratory study, we aim to identify the applicability, viability and user perception for such a system combining these two techniques in VR. CleVR is a novel implementation which provides a location-driven metaphor to populate and present multiple resources related to a topic for peer-led exploration. We discuss the design and provide a prototype implementation of CleVR. We conducted two studies, a targeted expert user review and a broader proof of concept survey. The results of the studies show interesting outcomes, with the system described as ‘engaging’, ‘useful’ and ‘fun’. Our findings provide insights to the potential of using Virtual Reality Learning Environments (VRLE) geared towards collaborative learner-led activities

Enhancing English Vocabulary Acquisition of Colombian High School Students Through Vocabulary Learning Techniques, Mobile Apps, and Web 2.0 Technologies

Apendices A, B, C Y D. 1 Tabla, y 2 FigurasEl aprendizaje del inglés es una prioridad para muchos sistemas de educación en el mundo debido al estatus del inglés como lengua internacional de comunicación. Hablar inglés hoy en día le permite a la gente de diversas culturas interactuar, abre oportunidades a las personas y contribuye al desarrollo económico de una nación. Es por eso que el Ministerio de Educación Nacional (MEN) busca promover el aprendizaje del inglés a través de currículos y planes, sin embargo, debido al bajo nivel de inglés de los estudiantes de secundaria, estimado en A2 (Semana 2020) el objetivo no se ha cumplido, por lo tanto, los maestros deben encontrar maneras de mejorar el inglés de los estudiantes. Además, autores como Nation y Waring (1997) y Arévalo y Diaz (2016) han demostrado un vínculo entre el vocabulario y las competencias en inglés, y Nation (2001) ha establecido un umbral de 2000 palabras para hablar inglés y de 9000 palabras para la comprensión de lectura. En consecuencia, el principal objetivo de esta monografía es investigar estrategias, métodos, aplicaciones móviles y herramientas web para aprender vocabulario y presentar sus principales características y retos para que los maestros las implementen en las aulas y las compartan con sus estudiantes y así impulsar el aprendizaje del inglés. Luego de una profunda investigación se estableció que métodos The Keyword Method, The Direct Translation and L1-L1 pairing, The Pictorial Method, Graphic Organizers, The Vocabulary Self-Collection Strategy, The 4 Strands, y Contextual Learning, y aplicaciones móviles como Memrise, Duolingo, WordUp, y Busuu promueven el aprendizaje del inglés y pueden servir a los maestros para alcanzar el objetivo de mejorar el inglés de sus estudiantes si ellos las usan en las actividades diarias en la escuela.English proficiency is a top priority in many education systems around the world due to the status of English as the international language for communication. Speaking English today allows people from different cultures to interact, opens opportunities for individuals, and contributes to a nation’s economic development, because of this, in Colombia the Ministry of Education (MEN) promotes English learning through national plans and curricula, however, due to the low English proficiency of public high school students in Colombia near graduation, estimated as an A2 level (Semana, 2020), the objective has not been reached yet, therefore, teachers need to figure out ways to help students improve their English level. What is more, there is a direct relationship between vocabulary knowledge and general English proficiency noted by authors like Nation and Waring (1997) and Arévalo and Diaz (2016), with Nation (2001) estimating a 2,000 words threshold necessary to speak English as a second language and another of 9,000 words for reading comprehension. Consequently, the main aim of this monograph is to investigate web tools, mobile apps, strategies and methods for English vocabulary learning and present their main characteristics and challenges for teachers so that they implement them in the classrooms and share them with their students to boost their English skills, Following thorough scrutiny of the reviewed literature, it was established that methods like The Keyword Method, The Direct Translation and L1-L1 pairing, The Pictorial Method, Graphic Organizers, The Vocabulary Self-Collection Strategy, The 4 Strands, and Contextual Learning, and apps like Memrise, Duolingo, WordUp, and Busuu promote vocabulary learning and can help teachers achieve the aim of improving their students' English proficiency through vocabulary learning if they are used in the everyday English learning activities at schools

Applying science of learning in education: Infusing psychological science into the curriculum

The field of specialization known as the science of learning is not, in fact, one field. Science of learning is a term that serves as an umbrella for many lines of research, theory, and application. A term with an even wider reach is Learning Sciences (Sawyer, 2006). The present book represents a sliver, albeit a substantial one, of the scholarship on the science of learning and its application in educational settings (Science of Instruction, Mayer 2011). Although much, but not all, of what is presented in this book is focused on learning in college and university settings, teachers of all academic levels may find the recommendations made by chapter authors of service. The overarching theme of this book is on the interplay between the science of learning, the science of instruction, and the science of assessment (Mayer, 2011). The science of learning is a systematic and empirical approach to understanding how people learn. More formally, Mayer (2011) defined the science of learning as the “scientific study of how people learn” (p. 3). The science of instruction (Mayer 2011), informed in part by the science of learning, is also on display throughout the book. Mayer defined the science of instruction as the “scientific study of how to help people learn” (p. 3). Finally, the assessment of student learning (e.g., learning, remembering, transferring knowledge) during and after instruction helps us determine the effectiveness of our instructional methods. Mayer defined the science of assessment as the “scientific study of how to determine what people know” (p.3). Most of the research and applications presented in this book are completed within a science of learning framework. Researchers first conducted research to understand how people learn in certain controlled contexts (i.e., in the laboratory) and then they, or others, began to consider how these understandings could be applied in educational settings. Work on the cognitive load theory of learning, which is discussed in depth in several chapters of this book (e.g., Chew; Lee and Kalyuga; Mayer; Renkl), provides an excellent example that documents how science of learning has led to valuable work on the science of instruction. Most of the work described in this book is based on theory and research in cognitive psychology. We might have selected other topics (and, thus, other authors) that have their research base in behavior analysis, computational modeling and computer science, neuroscience, etc. We made the selections we did because the work of our authors ties together nicely and seemed to us to have direct applicability in academic settings