Science of Learning

CMU, Pitt Get $25M Grant to Study

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and Pitt will continue to study how people learn, thanks to the renewal of a five-year, $25 million grant from The National Science Foundation. The researchresults will help develop teaching tools aimed to foster consistently high achievement in the nation's classrooms.

"We're exploding an old Catch-22 in education research," said Kenneth Koedinger, professor of human-computer interaction. "That is, results of experiments done in laboratories don't translate well into school environments and the results of experiments done in schools generally aren't rigorous or trustworthy enough to pass on to others."

The classroom-based research is conducted by the Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center (PSLC) http://www.learnlab.org, which is co-directed by Koedinger and Pitt's Charles Perfetti.

While most scientific research on learning occurs in the laboratory, the PSLC conducts its research in the classrooms of more than 50 schools and colleges across the country, including schools in New York City, Pittsburgh, Miami, Omaha, Cincinnati and Seattle.

These schools comprise what the PSLC calls LearnLab. Much as teaching hospitals help medical schools explore the frontiers of medicine to the benefit of patients, LearnLab enables education researchers to see how students respond to lessons and innovations in a place better than any laboratory — in their own classrooms with their own teachers.

Using computer tutors, this research can occur without disrupting the classroom. Working in partnership with Carnegie Learning Inc., whose Cognitive Tutor(r) math software is used at thousands of schools nationwide, PSLC researchers are able to gather mountains of detailed information about how students respond to lessons and homework. Subsequent analysis of this data helps researchers understand the different learning styles and habits of students and identify those lessons that are most effective in helping students learn.

"We are trying to uncover deep principles that produce learning that is robust — learning that is long-lasting and applicable to new situations," said Perfetti, Distinguished University Professor of Psychology and director of Pitt's Learning Research and Development Center (LRDC).

While the computer tutors cover a range of subjects — like algebra, physics, chemistry and second-languages — the PSLC researchers are also exploring lifelong-learning skills.

They've developed a help-seeking tutor that interacts with the Carnegie Learning Geometry Cognitive Tutor®. The help-seeking tutor determines whether students fail to ask for help appropriately — or are too quick to ask for help — by machine analysis of their normal learning interactions.

"We have demonstrated in a randomized, controlled 'in vivo' experiment that the help-seeking tutor leads to lasting effects," Koedinger said.

Eventually, PSLC research might lead to the demise of what students have long dreaded — the test. Computer tutors, they have found, can constantly assess what a student has and hasn't learned and even suggest exercises to improve areas of weakness, Koedinger said.

"In other words," he said, "we do not need to interrupt students to give a test in order to find out what their learning strengths and weaknesses are."

Homepage Story Archives