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Research

Research

Research

Summary

The purpose of this proposal is to explore the extent to which timely emotional, cognitive, and metacognitive interventions in tutoring software will have positive effects on students' emotions, attitudes, and achievements in mathematics. The intelligent tutor, Wayang Outpost, a high school mathematics tutoring system, is being enhanced to leverage automatic detection of emotions to guide cognitive, metacognitive, and affective forms of learning support.

A set of experiments are being conducted to understand the interplay of observed emotional states, emotion assessments, student behavior within tutors, and student achievement. In particular, the experiments are testing the effects of the tutoring system when it assesses the emotions of a student and then responds with instructional support appropriate to that student's affect and content knowledge.

In this project, an interdisciplinary team of researchers in learning technologies and mathematics education are working together to investigate issues related to motivation in learning mathematics. They are taking the results of lab-based studies into classrooms. The novel technology and approaches developed in the lab were tested with a small population of learners; in their classroom-based investigations, they are testing feasibility of the approach with a more diverse population and refining the technology for use in a broad range of classroom learning environments. This translational research project will not only make significant contributions to the field of learning technologies, but will also contribute to our understanding of issues related to motivation in mathematics learning.

Funding

National Science Foundation, Division of Research on Learning in Formal and Informal Settings

Timeline

September 2011 — August 2013