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Full-Text Articles in Education

On The Benefits Of Seeking (And Avoiding) Help In Online Problem-Solving Environments, Ryan Baker, Ido Roll, Vincent Aleven, Kenneth Koedinger Dec 2013

On The Benefits Of Seeking (And Avoiding) Help In Online Problem-Solving Environments, Ryan Baker, Ido Roll, Vincent Aleven, Kenneth Koedinger

Ryan S.J.d. Baker

Seeking the!right!level!of!help!at!the!right!time!can!support!learning.! However,!in!the!context!of!online!problem=solving!environments,!it!is!still!not! entirely!clear!which!help=seeking!strategies!are!desired.!We!use!fine=grained data! from!38!high=school!students!who!worked!with!the!Geometry!Cognitive!Tutor!for! two!months to!better!understand!the!associations!between!specific!help=seeking! patterns!and!learning.!We evaluate how!students’!help=seeking!behaviours!on!each! step!in!a!tutored!problem!are associated!with their!success!on!subsequent!steps that! require!the!same!skills.!Analysing!learning!at!the!skill level!allows!us to!compare! different!help=seeking!patterns!within!a!single!student,!controlling!for!between= student!variations.!Overall,!asking!for!help!on!challenging!steps is!associated!with! productive!learning, and!overusing!help!is!associated!with!poorer!learning. However,!contrary!to!many help=seeking!theories,!avoiding!help (and!failing repeatedly)!is!associated!with!better learning!than!seeking!help on!steps!for!which! students!have!low!prior!knowledge.!These!results!suggest!that!novice!learners!may! benefit!from!engaging!in!solution!attempts before!they!can!make!sense!of!given! assistance. Methodological!benefits!for!using!local!measures!of!learning!are! discussed!and!comparisons!are!drawn!to!other!forms!of!Productive!Failure!in! problem=solving.!


Population Validity For Educational Data Mining Models: A Case Study In Affect Detection, Ryan Baker, Jaclyn Ocumpaugh, Sujith Gowda, Neil Heffermnan, Cristina Heffernan Dec 2013

Population Validity For Educational Data Mining Models: A Case Study In Affect Detection, Ryan Baker, Jaclyn Ocumpaugh, Sujith Gowda, Neil Heffermnan, Cristina Heffernan

Ryan S.J.d. Baker

ICT-enhanced research methods such as educational data mining (EDM) have allowed researchers to effectively model a broad range of constructs pertaining to the student, moving from traditional assessments of knowledge to assessment of engagement, meta-cognition, strategy, and affect. The automated detection of these constructs allows EDM researchers to develop intervention strategies that can be implemented either by the software or the teacher. It also allows for secondary analyses of the construct, where the detectors are applied to a data set that is much larger than one that could be analyzed by more traditional methods. However, in many cases, the data …


Carelessness And Affect In An Intelligent Tutoring System For Mathematics, Ryan Baker, Ma.Mercedes Rodrigo, Maria Ofelia San Pedro Dec 2013

Carelessness And Affect In An Intelligent Tutoring System For Mathematics, Ryan Baker, Ma.Mercedes Rodrigo, Maria Ofelia San Pedro

Ryan S.J.d. Baker

We investigate the relationship between students’ affect and their frequency of careless errors while using an Intelligent Tutoring System for middle school mathematics. A student is said to have committed a careless error when the student’s answer is wrong despite knowing the skill required to provide the correct answer. We operationalize the probability that an error is careless through the use of an automated detector, developed using educational data mining, which infers the probability that an error involves carelessness rather than not knowing the relevant skill. This detector is then applied to log data produced by high-school students in the …


Towards General Models Of Effective Science Inquiry In Virtual Performance Assessments, Ryan Baker, Jody Clarke-Midura, J. Ocumpaugh Dec 2013

Towards General Models Of Effective Science Inquiry In Virtual Performance Assessments, Ryan Baker, Jody Clarke-Midura, J. Ocumpaugh

Ryan S.J.d. Baker

Recent interest in online assessment of scientific inquiry has led to several new online systems that attempt to assess these skills, but producing models that detect when students are successfully practicing these skills can be challenging. In this paper, we study the models that assess student inquiry in an immersive virtual environment, where a student navigates an avatar around a world, speaking to in-game characters, collecting samples, and conducting scientific tests with those samples in the virtual laboratory. To this goal, we leverage log file data from nearly two thousand middle-school students using Virtual Performance Assessment (VPA), a software system …