Predictors and outcomes of gaming in an intelligent tutoring system

In the present paper we present analysis of gaming actions with MathSpring, an established ITS for mathematics for high school students. Our findings indicate that both student and problem features were similarly predictive of gaming behaviors, as well as that gaming was associated with lower excitement and lower learning gains

Manipulating cognitive engagement in preparation-to-collaborate tasks and the effects on learning

While collaborating with a peer can be highly beneficial for learning, more work is needed to understand how instructional activities in collaborative contexts should be designed so as to maximize learning outcomes. To address this, we investigated the impact of different types of preparatory and cognitively engaging tasks on learning from collaborating, using a 2 × 2 experimental study conducted in situ in four introductory psychology classes. We compared individual preparation versus no-preparation and "active" versus "constructive" tasks. A dyadic multilevel analysis showed that preparation prior to collaborating led to better deep learning outcomes, but that the type of preparation did not have a significant effect. We include an exploratory analysis of student dialogues during collaboration to further interpret our findings. We propose that a cognitively engaging preparation phase may lead to better learning because it encourages students to collaborate constructively even when the type of task does not elicit such engagement

Investigating the Relationship between Neural Sensory Gateways and Creative Performance Using Convergent and Divergent Tasks

The question of what type of attention is associated with creative potential has predominantly been examined using divergent thinking tasks and without the benefits of cognitive neuroscience methods. To address this gap, we rely on a neural approach by indexing attention using the P50 ERP component. The P50 measures sensory gating, which is the brain’s ability to filter out or inhibit responses to repeated stimuli. We analyze the relationships between neural responses to P50 and performance on two tasks designed to measure creative potential: a convergent task and a divergent task. While we did not find evidence of a relationship between attention and the originality component of divergent thinking, our results show that leaky attention was positively associated with the fluency component of divergent thinking but negatively associated with performance on the convergent thinking task. This result highlights that the relationship between attention and performance on creative tasks may depend on the type of task

Idea Generation in Student Writing: Computational Assessments and Links to Successful Writing

Idea generation is an important component of most major theories of writing. However, few studies have linked idea generation in writing samples to assessments of writing quality or examined links between linguistic features in a text and idea generation. This study uses human ratings of idea generation, such as idea fluency, idea flexibility, idea originality, and idea elaboration, to analyze the extent to which idea generation relates to human judgments of essay quality in a corpus of college student essays. In conjunction with this analysis, linguistic features extracted from the essays are used to develop a predictive model of idea generation to further understand relations between the language features in an essay and the idea generation scores assigned to that essay. The results indicate that essays rated as containing a greater number of ideas that were flexible, original, and elaborated were judged to be of higher quality. Two of these features (elaboration and originality) were significant predictors of essay quality scores in a regression analysis that explained 33% of the variance in human scores. The results also indicate that idea generation is strongly linked to language features in essays. Specifically, the use of unique multiword units, more difficult words, semantic but not lexical similarities between paragraphs, and fewer word repetitions explained 80% of the variance in human scores of idea generation. These results have implications for writing theories and writing practice