 | Kurt VanLehn
Arizona State University
Homepage URL
Talk: The FACT classroom orchestration system: Helping teachers effectively enact individual, small-group and whole-class activities |
| Kurt VanLehn is the Diane and Gary Tooker Chair for Effective Education in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University. He founded and co-directed two large NSF research centers (Circle; the Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center). He has published over 125 peer-reviewed publications, is a fellow in the Cognitive Science Society, and is on the editorial boards of Cognition and Instruction and the International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education. Dr. VanLehn's research focuses on intelligent tutoring systems, classroom orchestration systems, and other intelligent interactive instructional technology. |
| Talk Abstract |
| Technology has helped teachers with some of their daily tasks but not all. For example, intelligent tutoring systems can help with homework and tests, and classroom response systems (clickers) can help with lectures. Perhaps the next big application is helping teachers with classroom orchestration. Classroom orchestration refers to managing the flow of ideas and work products across individual, small-group and whole-class activities. As teachers walk around the classroom, they continually look for opportunities to improve students’ work. They act on the top priority opportunities. They may visit a group, ask a group to explain its work to the whole class, transition the whole class to a new activity, etc. The FACT (Formative Assessment with Computational Technology) project has developed a classroom orchestration system. It addresses two questions. (1) How can an orchestration system sense the state of the classroom? It should see even more opportunities for improvement than the teacher sees. It should not restrict the students’ freedom to work and collaborate by, for example, replacing face-to-face spoken collaboration with typed chatting. (2) How can the system help the teacher handle more opportunities more effectively? The system should not increase the teachers’ cognitive load. The FACT system was iteratively developed over 52 trials in middle school math classrooms. Preliminary evaluations suggest that it succeeds in sensing the students’ work processes without disrupting them, and that it does not overload the teachers. However, the evaluation also found areas where teachers need even more help with classroom orchestration. |
| PPT: |
 FACT Oct 2018 Wuhan v3.pptx |
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