Learning in Ones Own Imaginary World

1
Learning in Ones Own Imaginary World

• Teachers College, Columbia University
• Xin Bai, John B. Black, Lance Vikaros, Jonathan
  Vitale,
• Daoquan Li, Qing Xia, Sungbong Kim, Seokmin Kang

2
What is the REAL Project? (REflective Agent
Learning environments)

• Cognitive Learning Theory
• Reusable Open Source Architecture
• Proof-Of-Concept Software Research

3
REAL - a meaningful connection to the real world
4
REAL Cognitive Framework
Student Model
Symbolic Level
Pedagogical Model instructional strategies
5
The Goal of the REAL Project

• Design cognitively oriented applications in an
  effort to
• explore ways to actively acquire and
  transparently represent human knowledge in the
  formats proposed by Anderson, Mayer, Black, etc.
• develop educational applications using the agent
  paradigm and agent-based technologies.
• bridge the gap between theoretical claims and
  educational practices by allowing researchers to
  easily apply educational principles to local
  settings.

6
Putting Theories into Practice

• REAL integrates an attention to types of
  knowledge a union of expert systems with
  simulation game mechanics
• Deepens Understanding of Complex Systems
• Promotes Flexible, Transferable Knowledge
• Challenges
• Initially expensive to produce
• Programming expertise still required to reuse
• Accessibility of technology

7
REALs Reusable Architecture, Mapping the
theory to design
8
REAL Planet
9
REAL Planet
10
(No Transcript)
11
(No Transcript)
12
(No Transcript)
13
REAL Business
14
REAL Business (Design Mode)
15
REAL Business (Game/Reflection Mode)
16
Questions Addressed

• Internal Evaluation (role of Intelligent
  Agents)What do reflective agent, expert agent
  and pedagogical agent know? How do these agents
  do what they do?
• External Evaluation (educational impact) Does
  playing REAL increase users interests in the
  related domain? Do users want to learn more about
  the related domain?

17
Survey Results on REAL Business
was too short (1 hour), only some students were
able to finish the survey.
Figure 6. Survey results on REAL Business in Post
Test.
18
Discussion - Benefits of REAL Business

• As a simulation gaming environment
• is motivational
• encourages reflection
• As a cognitive framework
• is re-usable and extensible
• encourages collaboration

19
Discussion Limitations in REAL Business

• We need to
• enhance modeling of user misconceptions for more
  adaptive just-in-time feedback.
• give the reflective agent a more active role.
• improve visual representation of the gaming
  environment.
• develop authoring environment for teachers that
  allows for easy re-purposes.

20
Future Contributions

• REAL can contribute to research on
• Learning by teaching
• ICAI system design
• Human knowledge representation
• HCI
• Intelligent Agents
• Educational simulation games design

21
Q A