The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the influence of Multiple Intelligences Theory on the process of acquiring a foreign language. MI theory developed by Howard Gardner (1983), says that every single individual possesses eight different types of intelligences: Linguistic, LogicalMathematical, Musical, Spatial, Bodily-Kinesthetic, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal, and Naturalist. It stands in o...

Everyday decision-making is filled with choices about what to act on, with outcomes playing a critical role in learning. Information gain is oft cited as a valuable approach to maximize potential learning, but its computation is costly. It entails evaluating the probability of multiple outcomes given any possible action, and then considering the degree of belief-change over all possibilities. G...

Using a theoretical cultural competency model, the effectiveness of a cultural competency learning assignment was examined to determine: 1) students' cultural competency levels as reflected through the assignment, and 2) the effectiveness of the assignment as a cultural competency learning activity. Third-year family medicine clerkship students completed a required project to research and refle...

This project explores how the ability to ask informative questions changes during development. We hypothesized an intrinsic link between the ability to update beliefs given evidence and the ability to ask informative questions. To study the developmental trajectory of this behavior, five to ten-year-old children played an iPad game asking them to identify a hidden bug. Learners could either ask...

Recent formal models of pedagogy (Shafto & Goodman, 2008) assume that teachers provide evidence likely to increase the learner’s belief in a target hypothesis. Thus in pedagogical contexts, the learner can infer that evidence is not merely true of the concept but representative of it. If for instance, a teacher demonstrates a single function of a toy, the learner should assume that only that fu...

Self-efficacy is an individual’s belief about her ability to perform well in a given situation. Because self-efficacious students are effective learners, endowing intelligent tutoring systems with the ability to diagnose selfefficacy could lead to improved pedagogy. Self-efficacy is influenced by (and influences) affective state. Thus, physiological data might be used to predict a students’ lev...

This paper describes the design of the learner modelling component of the LEACTIVEMATH system, which was conceived to integrate modelling of learners’ competencies in a subject domain, motivational and affective dispositions and meta-cognition. This goal has been achieved by organising learner models as stacks, with the subject domain as ground layer and competency, motivation, affect and meta-...

Learning analytics, as a means to visualize learning, has been repeatedly suggested to enhance learners’ and teachers’ self-reflection in online learning processes. Departing from this notion, we propose a combination of this visual approach to learning analytics with the concept of social presence, thereby acknowledging social aspects of online learning processes that are often overlooked. Mor...

This study describes and analyzes outgroup linguistic racism in parodies of Ebonics (`Mock Ebonics') that appeared on the Internet in the wake of the December 18, 1996 resolution of the Board of Education of the Oakland (California) Uni®ed School District on improving the English-language skills of African-American students. We examined 23 World Wide Web pages containing 270,188 words, from whi...