2008 — 2011 |
Tomlinson, William Richland, Lindsey |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Pilot: Computational Metaphor Identification For Supporting Creativity in Science Education @ University of California-Irvine
An important aspect of creative thinking in science education is the set of metaphors that students use to understand and conceptualize material. Previous research has shown that metaphorical and analogical thinking are key components in creative processes and play an integral role in academic creativity. An important part of encouraging creativity through metaphor is raising a student's awareness of the conceptual metaphors they already use. However, identifying the metaphors that students use in their learning has previously been labor intensive, requiring a great deal of time and attention from a human instructor. Previous work in computational linguistics has enabled the automatic extraction of metaphor from bodies of written text. This project improves the state of the art in computational metaphor identification (CMI) through the use of large corpora, through the employment of typed dependency parsing, and through a comparison of several selectional preference learning techniques. The result will be a technological tool kit that supports human creativity by automatically identifying metaphors in bodies of text. This research makes a significant contribution to the fields of computer science and computational linguistics by improving existing metaphor extraction techniques through the integration of current research in selectional preference learning and dependency parsing. In the area of education research, the project will evaluate the impact of CMI on both students' thinking and teachers' teaching, as well as examining the perceived utility of CMI by both groups. This research will allow these metaphors to be used to anchor instruction. This project has the potential to improve creative thinking in science instruction by helping students and their teachers perceive more effectively the ways in which students are thinking about science concepts. In addition, the research may provide insight into how this type of system could enhance creativity and learning across a wide range of other disciplines. Finally, the ability to perform computational metaphor identification may have a variety of other potential applications, from automated search and information retrieval to knowledge representation and artificial intelligence.
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0.915 |
2010 — 2016 |
Richland, Lindsey |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Career: Learning to Make Mathematical Connections @ University of California-Irvine
The main goal of this mathematics education research project is to determine through experimentation specific teaching strategies that can be used to support middle school students drawing connections between mathematical representations (fractions and ratios). The potential instructional strategies were identified from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) video analyses study as the ones that best distinguished high performing countries from low performing countries. Prior studies were used to pilot the research approach and potential results. The problem, expected solution responses, and instructional sequences are drawn from a model of a Japanese lesson. This CAREER award will be operated through the University of California-Irvine by Assistant Professor Lindsey Richland.
Six experiments will be conducted, each on one strategy and designed to help develop optimal instructional routines. The six conditions are: 1) making student responses or key ideas visible, 2) making compared student responses or key ideas visible simultaneously, 3) visually organizing the student responses or key ideas to highlight key connections, 4) using at least one well-known student response or key idea to compare with something new, 5) using gestures between connected student responses, and 6) using visual imagery. Fifth and sixth grade students from three classrooms will be randomly selected to participate in one of two conditions (high support and low support) for the six experiments. For each experiment, each condition will be studied with 30 students. Data for all six experiments will be collected from a total of 360 students. All students will be given the same word problem requiring proportional reasoning. Then students will be shown an instructional video of a teacher presenting a lesson related to the problem. Students will be given pre- and post-tests and a new problem to solve as measures of effects. An ANOVA (pretest/posttest) with conditions as a between-subjects variable (high support/low support) will be used in the analysis. Two additional case studies will investigate the training of two teachers to use the most effective of the strategies in the first six experiments. Videotapes of these two teachers using the optimal strategies in their classrooms will be analyzed using the same protocol used in TIMSS. A highly qualified advisory board will serve as the external evaluation. An education plan includes mentoring graduate students and undergraduate researchers; educating pre-service teachers; collaborating through in-service teacher professional development with teachers from regional schools; and disseminating results in academic venues.
Positive results of this application of cognitive science to the teaching and learning of mathematics will inform the field of mathematics education on routine of practices that distinguish high performing countries in mathematics achievement. The work may be of greatest benefit to English language learners and other under-represented groups. If the instructional strategies are viable, then teachers will have specific ways they can reduce the cognitive load on students who may be processing two languages while trying to learn mathematics.
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0.915 |
2014 — 2018 |
Richland, Lindsey Engle |
P01Activity Code Description: For the support of a broadly based, multidisciplinary, often long-term research program which has a specific major objective or a basic theme. A program project generally involves the organized efforts of relatively large groups, members of which are conducting research projects designed to elucidate the various aspects or components of this objective. Each research project is usually under the leadership of an established investigator. The grant can provide support for certain basic resources used by these groups in the program, including clinical components, the sharing of which facilitates the total research effort. A program project is directed toward a range of problems having a central research focus, in contrast to the usually narrower thrust of the traditional research project. Each project supported through this mechanism should contribute or be directly related to the common theme of the total research effort. These scientifically meritorious projects should demonstrate an essential element of unity and interdependence, i.e., a system of research activities and projects directed toward a well-defined research program goal. |
Data Collection, Transcription, and Coding Core B
Core B has three goals: to recruit participants for each of the three projects; to collect data for each of the three projects; and to transcribe and code the speech and gesture data gathered in Projects I, II, and III. In the previous two grant periods. Core B has provided all research projects with recruitment, data collection and transcription of speech and gesture and will continue to provide these services to all projects during the proposed period. Centralizing recruitment and data collection for the three projects in a single core increases efficiency across the entire project and creates the uniformity necessary for data sharing and constructing compatible databases. Projects I and II share the same methodology, with Project I testing its pool of 55 typically-developing children and Project II using the same protocol on its pool of 35 children with unilateral brain injury. In addition. Project III will recruit 53 children, 43 from Projects I and II, to conduct assessments of brain organization. Centralizing transcription and coding of speech and gesture for Projects I and II will increase efficiency and will ensure that the data can be analyzed across projects. Lindsey Richland, Core B leader, will work with the three research project leaders to ensure that Core services support the needs of the research projects. RELEVANCE (See instructions): Core B provides centralized data collection, transcription and coding for the research projects I, II and III. The program project is designed to explore the impact of environmental and biological variation on how children learn to use their language for higher order thinking, a key cognitive underpinning of academic and 21st century career success
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0.973 |
2020 — 2021 |
Richland, Justin Richland, Lindsey |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Rapid: Impacts of Covid-19 Out-of-School Stressors On Executive Function and E- Learning @ University of California-Irvine
In the midst of COVID-19 pandemic, students are not only facing health concerns, but also other stressors tied to mandated changes in their environments. These include a near-complete reliance on technology for college participation and learning, changes in access to peers and social support networks, changes in works-spaces and possible financial uncertainties. At this juncture of many upheavals, this project will collect data to understand how U.S. undergraduates? experiences of stress may be impacting their ability to learn as universities switch to on-line instruction. High quality learning through online instruction is known to be challenging in the best of times; these difficulties are likely to be exacerbated by the myriad stresses that undergraduates are experiencing now. Focusing on the experiences of undergraduates at a diverse, minority-serving public four-year college, the data collected will assess the relationships between types of stressors, and student learning using e-learning techniques. Gathering this information immediately will be crucial to supporting students as the pandemic continues. Results will have broad impact on improving instructional infrastructure and practices to better support student learning in these stressful times. Moreover, this knowledge will be useful to colleges and universities in the development of effective strategies to meet their students? needs.
Executive Functions (EFs) are crucial to successful learning; these are cognitive resources that control attention, allow students to grapple with complex ideas and hold information in mind. EFs are taxed when students are under stress, leading to increased load on verbal working memory from external concerns or environmental vigilance. The implication is that students experiencing high levels of stress will have fewer EF resources to extend to their learning, potentially made more challenging by lack of familiarity with e-learning. Two time-sensitive field studies will be conducted to gather information about the types of stressors that U.S. undergraduates in a minority-serving public four-year college are facing during the pandemic. The goal is to assess the relative impacts of different stressors (or their combinations) on learning, in order to best design interventions to mitigate damaging effects. Two theory-driven approaches will be assessed as means to counter potential adverse stress impacts: 1) management of attention as a key aspect of executive function, and 2) management and regulation of emotions during learning. In addition to advances in our understanding of how stress affects student learning, findings of this project will help inform institutional responses and instructional design for e-learning courses offered during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. More generally, the work will inform the field?s ability to improve e-learning in future applications.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
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0.915 |