Thank you for the great question Jenna. We currently have three active projects and some emerging ones I can share with you. We have two NSF funded grants looking at using technology to support the learning of students with LD, ADHD, and ASD. DRL-1420198 is looking at the role of social presence in online learning specifically by looking at the role of synchronous interactions in helping students with disabilities learning statistics concepts online. A follow-up we are considering for this work is exploring the extent to which VR can increase the social presence of the instructor and students in online learning environments.

DRL-1417456 is a collaborative project with colleagues at TERC and MIT looking at the game impulse out of TERC’s EdGE team. We are collecting very high temporal resolution eye tracking and game stream data to look at the implicit learning of students with and without disabilities. Our goal for this phase of the project is to create an adaptive version of the game based on the high resolution data streams that can improve the learning of students playing the game.

Our third project is exploring the use of a game currently in development that is based on Adam Gazzaley’s Neuroracer game to improve the visual attention and inhibition control of students with ADHD. We are in particular interested in seeing whether a 4 week training protocol with the game will leading to improvements in eye fixation allocation during reading (specifically fewer regressions with improved comprehension).

Thanks again and please let me know if you’d like me to go into more detail on any of these projects.

Ibrahim

Dear Jenna:
Thank you for your query. We have two active grants currently looking at Video games and eye tracking. The video game for the NSF grant is from the company TERC in MA.The video game is called “Impulse”. It has embedded principles of Newtonian physics and we are interested in learning when/how/if students intuitively discover these principles of physics, without formulas and other abstractions.
The other is in partnership with a company called Akili and we are looking to see if the level of focus and attention that students devote when playing video games translates to reading.

Dear Pati:

Thank you for your comment. Really appreciate it.With respect to finding students, as you may know, Landmark College is a private non-profit 2 year and 4 year college that exclusively serves students with LD, ADHD and ASD. So many of our students are from our own institution. We have received multiple NSF funding over the years that has really helped us hone our pedagogical practices for STEM learning for students who learn differently. Here is a link to our research projects: http://www.landmark.edu/institute/grants-research

In a nut shell, our STEM focus is on a hybrid of the constructivist approach and directed instruction. We are actively exploring preferences for synchronous vs. asynchronous engagement by students who learn differently.
UDL is in fact the under-girding for all our pedagogical practices. We are an UDL immersion college, if you will.
Do let me know if you have more questions.
Thanks again.

Hi Pati,

Thanks for the great questions. We actually have an advantage in finding participants for our research because all students who attend Landmark College have a diagnosed LD, ADHD. or ASD. Our work informs teachers my on our campus but we also deliver workshops and trainings to secondary and postsecondary educators both nationally and internationally.

Our team is looking at a number of approaches to using technology to improve the learning of students with disabilities. Traditional online ne learning can be challenging for most people who struggle with executive function challenges therefore a little t of our work focuses on addressing those challenges. The Universal Designbmindset informs a lot of our work both in terms on teaching and research with a particular focus on addressing the cognitive loads that are construct irrelevant.

Our team includes cognitive psychologists, disability educators and we collaborate externally with math and science ducatirs, data miners and computer scientists.

Best,
Ibrahim

Thank you for this information, I didn’t realize that all of your students have a diagnosed learning difference.

Wendy, thank you for the complement. The video was created by Ajani Thomas, one of our extremely talented undergraduate students so all kudos go to him for his hard work and creativity.

Our preliminary findings for the SP Online project indicate that synchronous interactions better support the learning of students with executive function challenges, particularly for more challenging concepts. We don’t have results yet from our RtI project but prior research indicates that students with LD learn better by doing or by using manipulates because language and other forms of abstraction often impose a high cognitive load on students with language processing of attention based challenges.

Best,
Ibrahim

Thanks for the question.I’ve added some specifics to the responses above but if there is a specific area you’d like me to give you more detail on please let me know.

what do you mean by the role of social presence in online learning?

Thank you. What do you mean by the role of social presence in online learning?

Thanks for the question Wendi. Social presence is a term coined in the 70s that basically refers to the extent to which other individuals are perceived and interacted with as real people in a technology mediated interaction. Two key variables are thought to be critical for this: a) immediacy, e.g. an instructor who responds more quickly to their students will generally better engage those students, and b) intimacy, e.g. an instructor who shares more personal anecdotes will generally form a stronger connection with their students. Our work has focused specifically on manipulating the immediacy variable by comparing synchronous and asynchronous discussions.

thank you. I understand. So you are talking about online courses, etc—not video games here. Those suppositions make sense to me. Do you have your findings yet?

Thank you Avron. The human element is undoubtedly a large part of the success of our campus, and has been over the college’s three decades. Technology has given us new tools to help support our students but it cannot replace the human element.

Ibrahim, I also didn’t realize that Landmark had a specific focus on students with learning differences. I know from my own daughter’s education how beneficial a specially-focused school environment can be. Across all the STEM subjects you’ve explored, do you find that certain technologies seem particularly appropriate for addressing students’ difficulties in specific subject areas?

Great question Avron. While there are some technologies that tend to benefit a broad swath of our student population, I cannot think of a single technology that does so for every single student. In practice we strive to expose our students to a wide range of potentially beneficial technologies and help them to explore their way towards finding the tools and strategies that work best for them.