Kurt and team, I enjoyed learning about your formative assessment program. I have a sense of how it works in the classroom. Would you say a bit more about some of the advantages or disadvantages of using it for remote teaching and learning contexts?

Hi Kurt and team, thanks for sharing. I'm curious to hear more about what it means to collaborate effectively and what that looks like in a classroom while also using technology. The video highlights that children talk as they work. What are metrics are used measure collaboration?

Also would be interested in learning more about what teachers and students think about this.

Thanks for your question, Jaime.  Teachers varied in the priority they assign to collaboration.  Some valued collaboration and spent several weeks at the beginning of the school year teaching students how and why to do it.  Others don't care much about collaboration and rarely used group work.  But FACT's lessons require group work (FACT doesn't but the lessons do).  FACT currently classifies the group's dynamics using their user interface actions.  For instance, if both students move the same card within a few seconds, then they are probably collaborating.  If they are simultaneously moving different cards, then they are probably working independently.  However, if only one student is moving a card, it is ambigous.  We can tell from their speech whether they are discussing the move before one student executes it (collaboration) or there is no discussion (no collaboration).  We have developed a speech-based addition to FACT that converts students' speech to binary (silence vs. speaking) audio, and will be testing it as soon as schools reopen in order to see if it improves the detection of collaboration.

Thanks for your question, Catherine.  We used FACT in classes where the students had been using Zoom for months.  In classes where the students were used to collaborative work in breakout rooms, one room per group, things went smoothly when FACT was introduced.  In other classes, the whole collaboration-in-breakout-room routine was unfamiliar and proceeded rockily.  In both classes, students preferred to stay muted despite reminders from the teaching staff.  That as the biggest disadvantage.  The biggest advantage was when the students did talk, then their audio was high quality, which we believe will allow us to detect collaboration and perhaps even mathematical thinking more accurately.  

Hi Kurt! It's great to learn about the exciting work you are doing. This is especially valuable during COVID remote learning where teachers are struggling to set tasks that engage students in collaboration during breakouts. I wonder if you have some guidance on how to design activities that lead to effective collaboration?  See our work exploring the ways teachers use data while teaching for social justice in science--including helping students interpret scientific data. Enjoy, Marcia

Hello Kurt,

Thank you for your presentation. What an innovative idea! Do you foresee this technology being adapted for other subjects? What is the time commitment for teachers to learn the technology, prepare and upload the activities for FACT? How do you measure successful collaboration and any subsequent impact on student learning?

Hi Kurt and team, impressive system and demonstration! Have teachers using the system taken advantage of the misconception identification feature as shown in the video? If so, how useful have they found it and what methods do they use with their students to respond? 

Hi Marcia, Thanks for stopping bye.  No, I don't have advice on designing activities to enhance collaboration.  Our forte is providing software the helps designers effectively implement their designs.  However, we work with some great designers (the MAP folks), and their lessons have lots of clever collaboration-enhancing idea.s

Hi Channa.  Thanks for the 3 questions.  (1) The FACT software only works with a small set of math lessons.  That was intentional, since once we find a set of pedagogically effective interactions, it should be possible for others to generalize the software so that teachers can author their own lessons and enjoy the benefits of such interactions.  (2)  All our teachers chose lessons that they were familiar with in their paper form, so all they had to learn was how to use FACT.  This took about an hour.  (3)  FACT currently measures collaboration by the chronological patterns of group's editing actions.  At our next trial, FACT will include the group members' speech as well. 

Hi Brian.  We originally thought that teachers would really appreciate knowing the misconceptions, so FACT displays them for both individuals and displays the misconceptions that are most prevalent in the class.  However, teachers were not able to use such detailed information during class as they addressed either individual students or the whole class.  They merely noted where the error occurred and what the corresponding correct concept was.  They said that they wanted to be able to study the misconceptions after class was over, but during class, they could only give prompts and hints that encouraged learning the correct concept rather unlearning the misconception.   

This would be useful for my college classes too!

This is a fascinating application of AI to the education field - and the only one I know of that was funded by the Future of Work program!  I am part of a group that was recently awarded a Future of Work planning grant, so I would love to know more about who you integrated the Future Work, Future Workers and Future Technology dimensions required by Future of Work grants. 

I enjoyed catching up on our work with this, Kurt! Those math problems are SimCalc-type questions and I used to have a long discussion back and forth with Ken K about how AI (or tutoring) and SimCalc could fit together. We never got anywhere. This seems like a really smart fit to me. Thanks for sharing.

Hi Raffaella,

Our Future Work is middle school teaching; the Future Workers are teachers; and the Future Technology are automated teaching assistants.  Hopes this helps with your planning.

--Kurt

Hi Jeremy,

Yeah, all us Pittsburghers once thought that machines should teach and teachers should do everything else.  Tutoring SimCalc-type questions would be "half challenging" in that AI could do the analysis of student performance, but AI would find it very challenging to interact with the student so as to encourage learning. 

I now live way outside Pittsburgh, and I believe that teachers should teach the hard, confusing and/or interesting stuff, and machines should do everything else (except handle non-social behavior).   If teachers need an analysis of a student's performance to do their job, then the AI can supply it, but not all teachers want those analyses all the time.

-- Kurt

I have taught courses comprised of adult learners where collaborative problem solving assignments were implemented.  It was challenging for me to jump from one group to another to keep them focused. This tool would have been most helpful. Adult learners are tempted to socialize rather than dig into the assignment.