Iconic dishes, culture and identity: the Christmas pudding and its hundred years’ journey in the USA, Australia, New Zealand and India

Asserting that recipes are textual evidences reflecting the society that produced them, this article explores the evolution of the recipes of the iconic Christmas pudding in the United States, Australia, New Zealand and India between the mid-nineteenth and the mid-twentieth centuries. Combining a micro-analysis of the recipes and the cookbook that provided them with contemporary testimonies, the article observes the dynamics revealed by the preparation and consumption of the pudding in these different societies. The findings demonstrate the relevance of national iconic dishes to the study of notions of home, migration and colonization, as well as the development of a new society and identity. They reveal how the preservation, transformation and even rejection of a traditional dish can be representative of the complex and sometimes conflicting relationships between colonists, migrants or new citizens and the places they live in

Multiple instructional agents in an intelligent tutoring system

Abstract: We describe the Smalltalk Gurus 2, components of the MoleHill intelligent tutoring system for Smalltalk programming. The Gurus are tutorial agents personified in the user interface of MoleHill. They offer help on plans for achieving goals in the Smalltalk environment as well as remediation for students ’ incorrect and less-than-optimal plans. The Gurus ’ assistance is provided via the multimodal media of animation and voice-over audio. MoleHill employs multiple Gurus to deliver advice and instruction concerning disparate information domains

The Classroom Sentinel: Supporting Data-Driven Decision-Making in the Classroom

Whereas schools typically record mounds of data regarding student performance, attendance, and other behaviors over the course of a school year, rarely is that data consulted and used to inform day-today instructional practice in the classroom. As teachers come under increasing pressure to ensure success for all of their students, we are attempting to provide tools to help teachers make sense of what is happening in their classrooms and take appropriate proactive and/or remedial action. One such tool is a Web service we've dubbed the Classroom Sentinel. The Classroom Sentinel mines electronic gradebook and other student information system data sources to detect critical teaching and learning patterns and bring those patterns to the attention of the teacher in the form of timely alerts. In this paper, we introduce the notion of classroom patterns, present some examples, and describe a framework for alert generation and delivery

Scaffolding Group Learning in a Collaborative Networked Environment

Scaffolding students in a collaborative networked learning environment requires different instructional methods than in a traditional home or classroom setting. The goal of this research is to understand computer-mediated collaboration in an instructional setting in order to create an effective computer-mediated collaboration tool. We identify ways to support collaboration by examining the interaction and strategies employed by a peer tutor and teacher and between peers working in our collaborative learning environment. We found that supporting collaboration in an electronic setting requires diagnosing impasses, facilitating problem-solving interaction, and suggesting ways to divide the problem into sub-tasks

Integrating Theory Development with Design Evaluation

Abstract: In this paper, we recruit the construct of psychological design rationale as a framework for integrating theory development with design evaluation in HCI. We propose that, in some cases, part of an artifact’s psychological design rationale can be regarded as inherited from second-order artifacts (prescriptive design models, architectures and genres, tools and environments, interface styles). We show how evaluation data pertaining to an artifact can be used to test and develop the second-order artifacts from which it inherits. 1

Pastel: Pattern-driven adaptive simulations

Abstract. We propose a new kind of learning environment called an adaptive simulation that more deeply explores and exploits the potential of simulations as pedagogical and explanatory tools. In an adaptive simulation, the simulation configuration is not fixed but rather can be modified by an instructional agent for optimal pedagogical effect. Types of adaptations include manipulations of simulation time and state, changes in representation to facilitate explanations and/or task performance, and adjustments in simulation complexity by the addition and/or removal of components. We briefly describe a system we are developing called PASTEL that is designed to enable these kinds of adaptations. Open research issues include precisely how to perform these adaptations and when to employ them for optimal effect

Multiple instructional agents in an intelligent tutoring system

Abstract: We describe the Smalltalk Gurus 2, components of the MoleHill intelligent tutoring system for Smalltalk programming. The Gurus are tutorial agents personified in the user interface of MoleHill. They offer help on plans for achieving goals in the Smalltalk environment as well as remediation for students ’ incorrect and less-than-optimal plans. The Gurus ’ assistance is provided via the multimodal media of animation and voice-over audio. MoleHill employs multiple Gurus to deliver advice and instruction concerning disparate information domains. THE GURU MODEL Most computer users have had the experience of learning from a “guru. ” 2 We’ve wandered into the office of a local software expert seeking help and learned from this expert as she turned to her screen and simultaneously explained and demonstrated how to accomplish a computer-based task. On other occasions, we have had an expert watching over our shoulder as we performed a task on our computer and had the expert offer to “Let me show you a better way to do that. ” Such experiences demonstrate that observing an expert performing a task or having such an expert watch our own methods and comment on them are natural ways of learning (in this case, learning how to use computational systems; other researchers, e.g., Bannon, 1986, have reported the existence of this “local expert

Toward a theory-driven taxonomy of groupware

Groupware supports groups. Therefore, it seems natural to derive a taxonomy of groupware from social psychology and theories of group processes. Our work toward a psychologically-driven taxonomy can reveal new CSCW requirements, identify evaluative criteria for groupware, and empower designers to consider more user-centered design tradeoffs

Promoting Abstract Strategies in Algebra Word Problem Solving

Department of Psycholog