Toward a Learning Technologies knowledge network

The National Science Foundation-funded Center for Innovative Learning Technologies (CILT) is designed to be a national resource for stimulating research and development of technology-enabled solutions to critical problems in K-14 science, math, engineering and technology learning. The Center, launched at the end of 1997, is organized around four themes identified as areas where research is likely to result in major gains in teaching and learning, and sponsors research across disciplines and institutions in its four theme areas. CILT brings together experts in the fields of cognitive science, educational technologies, computer science, subject matter learning, and engineering. It engages business through an Industry Alliance Program and is also training postdoctoral students. CILT's founding organizations are SRI International's Center for Technology in Learning, University of California at Berkeley (School of Education and Department of Computer Science), Vanderbilt University's Learning Technology Center, and the Concord Consortium. Through its programs, CILT seeks to reach beyond these organizations to create a web of organizations, individuals, industries, schools, foundations, government agencies, and labs, that is devoted to the production, sharing and use of new knowledge about how learning technologies can dramatically improve the processes and outcomes of learning and teaching. This paper describes the rationale and operations of the Center, and first-year progress in defining a set of CILT partnership projects with many other institutions that came out of our national theme-team workshops. Roy Pea, of SRI International, is Director of CILT. Marcia Linn (U. California, Berkeley), John Bransford (Vanderbilt University), Barbara Means (SRI International), and Robert Tinker (Concord Consortium), serve as CILT's coprincipal investigators. Sherry Hsi (Ubiquitous Computing) and Sean Brophy (Technology and Assessment Models) are among the first group of CILT Postdoctoral Fellows. Jeremy Roschelle (SRI International) and Nancy Songer (University of Michigan) are CILT theme-team leaders. Roy Pea and Marcia Linn would like to thank the Spencer Foundation for support during their year at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University, in which they developed the CILT concept with the other authors. CILT is funded by National Science Foundation grant #CDA-9720384. Pea and Linn would also like to acknowledge contributions to this article by the many authors of CILT partnership project proposals, and by theme-team leaders. The authors thankfully acknowledge Donna Baranski-Walker for her many contributions to developing the CILT Industrial Alliance Program while serving as its Director in 1998.     

Investigative interviewing with children: evaluation of the effectiveness of a training program for child protective service workers.

OBJECTIVE: Previous research suggests that training workshops on investigative interviewing conducted with front-line workers, such as police officers or child protective service (CPS) workers, may result in improved knowledge about appropriate strategies to use. Limited research has addressed whether such training programs result in improvements in actual interviewing skills. The present investigation assessed the impact of a training workshop on CPS workers' knowledge about conducting and behavior during investigative interviews. METHOD: Twelve CPS workers participated. To evaluate the impact of the training, a quasi-experimental design was used. Participants completed outcome measures prior to, immediately following, and 3 months following the training. Outcome measures included (a) a questionnaire to assess knowledge about interviewing practices, (b) simulated interviews with a confederate to assess participant behavior during an investigative interview, and (c) questionnaires to gather information related to the simulated interviews (e.g., materials requested for use during interview, abuse status of confederate). All participants completed 6 hours of training during 3 weekly 2-hour sessions. RESULTS: Participants' knowledge on the topic, as well as several interviewing skills during simulated interviews, improved following the training. However, the training failed to impact several key interviewing skills such as the types of questions asked or the length of the interview. CONCLUSIONS: Knowledge-based workshop training programs may not adequately prepare CPS workers to conduct appropriate investigative interviews with children who were allegedly abused. Further, knowledge about how to conduct such interviews may not be the best indicator of whether someone is prepared for this aspect of the job.     

Establishing a successful physical activity program to recruit and retain women

Increasingly, health organisations and governing bodies in developed countries are paying serious attention to the problem of adult inactivity. Many of the programs designed to increase levels of activity, particularly amongst target populations, such as women, have not been systematically assessed for their effectiveness in recruiting women and helping them maintain activity levels. The purpose of this study was to determine what attracted and sustained women to participate in physical activity programs. Responses from a survey to sport and recreation program providers identified 64 successful programs in the state of Victoria, Australia. Eight of these programs were purposively selected for case study analysis. Data was collected from a focus group with women participants from each of these eight programs. Six core themes emerged from inductive content analysis of the focus groups. The most frequent participant responses related to the social aspects of the exercise environment. Women in the focus groups valued instructor professionalism and instructors’ technical knowledge, however, it was their awareness and sensitivity that participants appreciated most. This exploratory study is important because it reflects the voices of women talking about what made physical activity programs successful for them. The study raises critical questions that should be examined systematically through large-scale survey research and field-based intervention studies, which in turn should stimulate program development to encourage women in physical activity.     

Search on surfaces: Exploring the potential of interactive tabletops for collaborative search tasks

Collaborative information seeking often takes place in co-located settings; such opportunities may be planned (business colleagues meeting in a conference room or students working together in a library) or spontaneous (family members gathered in their living room or friends meeting at a café). Surface computing technologies (i.e., interactive tabletops) hold great potential for enhancing collaborative information seeking activities. Such devices provide engaging direct manipulation interactions, facilitate awareness of collaborators’ activities, and afford spatial organization of content. However, current tabletop technologies also present several challenges that creators of collaborative information seeking system must account for in their designs. In this article, we explore the design space for collaborative search systems on interactive tabletops, discussing the benefits and challenges of creating search applications for these devices. We discuss how features of our tabletop search prototypes TeamSearch, FourBySix Search, Cambiera, and WeSearch, illustrate different aspects of this design space.     

13个讨老师喜欢的方法

在学校里,那些讨老师喜欢的学生总是能得到更多的帮助。无论是在学习上还是找工作的过程中。老师愿意花时间亲培养他们喜爱的学生。也乐意为其写一份好的就业推荐书。那么,怎样才能成为讨老师喜欢的学生呢？请看本期直面留学。