Scientific and technological innovations have become increasingly important as we face the benefits and challenges of both globalization and a knowledge-based economy. Still, enrolment rates in STEM degrees are low in many European countries and consequently there is a lack of adequately educated workforce in industries. We believe that this can…

In this study, we developed an on-call-tutor system to facilitate peer-help activities. The system was implemented in a face-to-face heterogeneous classroom with 119 students from different departments who were not familiar with each other. Students learned Geographic Information System (GIS) in a computer classroom in two groups: students, who…

Research into self-regulated learning has traditionally relied upon self-reported data. While there is a rich body of literature that has extracted invaluable information from such sources, it suffers from a number of shortcomings. For instance, it has been shown that surveys often provide insight into students' perceptions about learning rather…

One of the reported methods of cheating in online environments in the literature is CAMEO (Copying Answers using Multiple Existences Online), where harvesting accounts are used to obtain correct answers that are later submitted in the master account which gives the student credit to obtain a certificate. In previous research, we developed an…

We study learning outcome prediction for online courses. Whereas prior work has focused on semester-long courses with frequent student assessments, we focus on short-courses that have single outcomes assigned by instructors at the end. The lack of performance data and generally small enrollments makes the behavior of learners, captured as they…

In spite of their effectiveness, learning environments often fail to engage users and end up under-used. Many studies show that gamification of learning environments can enhance learners' motivation to use learning environments. However, learners react differently to specific game mechanics and little is known about how to adapt gaming features to…

The effectiveness of remedial mathematics courses in post-secondary education has been a controversial topic for years. Higher Education institutions need their students to have basic understandings of the subjects to be imparted in the first semesters, but since they come with different backgrounds and prior knowledge, this is not always possible…

Collaboration is an increasingly important and difficult skill for graduate engineers to develop. While universities provide some measures of collaboration ability of students on graduation, there is still some dissatisfaction with the level of preparedness of students for collaborative activity in the workplace. This paper presents a case study…

Science learning is inherently multimodal, with students utilizing both drawings and writings to explain observations of physical phenomena. As such assessments in science should accommodate the many ways students express their understanding, especially given evidence that understanding is distributed across both drawing and writing. In recent…

The importance of affective states in learning has led many Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) to include students' affective states in their learner models. The adaptation and hence the benefits of an ITS can be improved by detecting and responding to students' affective states. In prior work, we have created and validated a theory-driven model…

In recent years, computerized adaptive testing (CAT) has gained popularity as an important means to evaluate students' ability. Assigning tags to test questions is crucial in CAT. Manual tagging is widely used for constructing question banks; however, this approach is time-consuming and might lead to consistency issues. Automatic question tagging,…

Comprehension is an important cognitive state for learning. Human tutors recognize comprehension and non-comprehension states by interpreting learner non-verbal behavior (NVB). Experienced tutors adapt pedagogy, materials, and instruction to provide additional learning scaffold in the context of perceived learner comprehension. Near real-time…

The goal for this research is to articulate and test a new hybrid Augmented Reality (AR) environment for conceptual understanding. From the theoretical lens of embodied interaction, we have designed a multi-user participatory simulation called ARfract where visitors in a science museum can learn about complex scientific concepts on the refraction…

Vocabulary knowledge is essential to educational progress. High quality vocabulary instruction requires supportive contextual examples to teach word meaning and proper usage. Identifying such contexts by hand for a large number of words can be difficult. In this work, we take a statistical learning approach to engineer a system that predicts…

As computational thinking becomes increasingly important for children to learn, we must develop interfaces that leverage the ways that young children learn to provide opportunities for them to develop these skills. Active Learning Environments with Robotic Tangibles (ALERT) and Robopad, an analogous on-screen virtual spatial programming…