AI as a Methodology for Supporting Educational Praxis and Teacher Metacognition

Evidence-based practice (EBP) is of critical importance in education where emphasis is placed on the need to equip educators with an ability to independently generate and reflect on evidence of their practices in situ – a process also known as praxis. This paper examines existing research related to teachers’ metacognitive skills and, using two exemplar projects, it discusses the utility and relevance of AI methods of knowledge representation and knowledge elicitation as methodologies for supporting EBP. Research related to technology-enhanced communities of practice as a means for teachers to share and compare their knowledge with others is also examined. Suggestions for the key considerations in supporting teachers’ metacognition in praxis are made based on the review of literature and discussion of the specific projects, with the aim to highlight potential future research directions for AIEd. A proposal is made that a crucial part of AIEd’s future resides in its curating the role of AI as a methodology for supporting teacher training and continuous professional development, especially as relates to their developing metacognitive skills in relation to their practices

Embodiment as a means for scaffolding young childrenʼs social skill acquisition

In this paper, we discuss the notion of embodiment in the context of the ECHOES project, which aims at developing a multi-modal interactive environment for scaffolding young typically developing (TD) children and children with Asperger Syndrome (AS) in acquiring social interaction skills. Whilst, our approach to embodiment is in line with the current HCI trends, the pedagogical nature of ECHOES and the specific target users pose unusual challenges to the design and implementation of embodied interaction

Dyadic joint visual attention interaction in face-to-face collaborative problem-solving at K-12 Maths Education: A Multimodal Approach

Collaborative problem-solving (CPS) is an essential skill in the workplace in the 21st century, but the assessment and support of the CPS process with scientifically objective evidence are challenging. This research aims to understand in-class CPS interaction by investigating the change of a dyad's cognitive engagement during a mathematics lesson. Here, we propose a multimodal evaluation of joint visual attention (JVA) based on eye gazes and eye blinks data as non-verbal indicators of dyadic cognitive engagement. Our results indicate that this multimodal approach can bring more insights into students' CPS process than unimodal evaluations of JVA in temporal analysis. This study contributes to the field by demonstrating the value of nonverbal multimodal JVA temporal analysis in CPS assessment and the utility of eye physiological data in improving the interpretation of dyadic cognitive engagement. Moreover, a method is proposed for capturing gaze convergence by considering eye fixations and the overlapping time between two eye gazes. We conclude the paper with our preliminary findings from a pilot study investigating the proposed approach in a real-world teaching context

PPI Questionnaire on Adaptive Wearable Appropriateness as an Autistic Intervention

Autism Spectrum Condition (ASC) is a life-long diagnosis, which has a subset of features including hyper-, seeking- and/or hypo-reactivity to sensory inputs or unusual interests (APA, 2013). These qualities are evident across environmental (e.g. response to specific sounds, visual fascination with lights or movements) and physiological domains (e.g. anxiety, respiration or euthermia). Scholars report that ninety (90%) of autistic adults experience sensory issues causing significant barriers at school/work (Leekam et al., 2007). As part of a larger PhD Research Project, this pilot study establishes designs, processes and measures that may establish if autistic individuals find value utilising adaptive/wearable interventions that possibly alter, redirect and/or attenuate disruptive stimuli. This study incorporates benign information not yet containing practical data, other than to provision and trial space where real data is nominally present. This pilot loads systems functionality for future use (e.g. consent, demographic collection, measures, post-mortem/survey feedback, storage, sorting, query, statistical analyses and reporting). Finally, this pilot provisions a follow-on and full-fledge Participant Public Involvement (PPI) designed to exploit data from focus group and co-produced surveys/designs. In turn, these may be used to inform an as-yet-to-be developed interventional prototype. Hence, the forthcoming PPI—by leveraging this pilot—aims to describe what degree sensory distractions occur among adolescent and adult ASC participants. Both pilot and PPI aspire to whether focus, anxiety and attentional concerns are perceived as negative issues and if individuals prefer assistance (vis à vis assistive wearables) to reduce anxiety, distractions and increase focus at school and at work (Bagley et al., 2016). This study results yield promise; in that, a subsequent PPI can be leveraged to obtain co-designed autistic data leading to a randomised clinical trial

Sound Impairment Effect on Cognitive Skill Performance

Autism Spectrum Condition (ASC) is a life-long diagnosis, which has a subset of individualized characteristics consisting of hyper-, seeking- and/or hypo-reactivity to sensory inputs or unusual interests (APA, 2013). These sensitivities are evident in both environmental (e.g. apparent response to specific sounds, visual fascination with lights or movements) and physiological domains (e.g. anxiety, respiration or euthermia). As part of a larger PhD Research Project (SensorAble), this pilot study proposes that autistic individuals who exhibit greater distractibility and reduced focus/attention resulting stimuli may benefit from interventions that alter, redirect and/or attenuate stimuli. In particular, Irrelevant-Sound Effect (ISE) consisting of un-targeted and/or modulated sonics cause greater disruption of performance of simultaneous and visual simple tasks compared to baseline ISE that are merely directed. Using gold-standard Stroop experiments, data collected among neurotypical (NT) and ASC individuals at baseline and at various ISE modes result in greater reaction time (RT) improvements among ASC than NT participants. In this study, which focuses on aural distractibility only, data supports that signal processing may provide a gateway to enhancing focus and attention while reduce distractibility and anxiety in other domains

Adapting feedback types according to students’ affective states

Affective states play a significant role in students’ learning behaviour. Positive affective states can enhance learning, while negative ones can inhibit it. This paper describes the development of an affective state reasoner that is able to adapt the feedback type according to students’ affective states in order to evoke positive affective states and as such improve their learning experience. The reasoner relies on a dynamic Bayesian network trained with data gathered in a series of ecologically valid Wizard-of-Oz studies, where the effect of feedback on students’ affective states was investigated

Effects and utility in applying the flipped learning concept to teaching and learning using technology-enhanced learning for inclusive special education

The UK case study report focused on using the flipped learning approach for special education needs students within inclusive classrooms. The report focuses on the effects and utility of technology-enhanced learning as an intervention to support typical and atypical developing children’s learning is becoming well researched. However, whilst the effects of technology-enhanced learning utilized by classroom teachers’ as part of their repertoire for pedagogic design for typically developing children is increasing, the utility and effects within inclusive classrooms to support atypical developing children is underexplored

Manipulating interface design features affects children’s stop-and-think behaviours in a counterintuitive-problem game

The human-computer interaction (HCI) design of educational technologies influences cognitive behaviour, so it is imperative to assess how different HCI strategies support intended behaviour. We developed a neuroscience-inspired game that trains children’s use of “stopping-and-thinking” (S&T)—an inhibitory control-related behaviour—in the context of counterintuitive science problems and tested the efficacy of four HCI features in supporting S&T: (1) a readiness mechanic, (2) motion cues, (3) colour cues, and (4) rewards/penalties. In a randomised eye-tracking trial with 45 7-to-8-year-olds, we found that the readiness mechanic increased S&T duration, that motion and colour cues proved equally effective at promoting S&T, that combining symbolic colour with the readiness mechanic may have a cumulative effect, and that rewards/penalties may have distracted children from S&T. Additionally, S&T duration was related to in-game performance. Our results underscore the importance of interdisciplinary approaches to educational technology research that actively investigates how HCI impacts intended learning behaviours

Interaction analysis in online maths human tutoring: The case of third space learning

This 'industry' paper reports on the combined effort of researchers and industrial designers and developers to ground the automatic quality assurance of online maths human-to-human tutoring on best practices. We focus on the first step towards this goal. Our aim is to understand the largely under-researched field of online tutoring, to identify success factors in this context and to model best practice in online teaching. We report our research into best practice in online maths teaching and describe and discuss our design and evaluation iterations towards annotation software that can mark up human-to-human online teaching interactions with successful teaching interaction signifiers