Seminar on Intelligent User Interfaces for Educational Technology

Course Objective: Develop new ideas and technology for making a quantum leap in improving how people learn.

This is an interdisciplinary graduate research seminar whose goal is to design technology and learning practices that will make major, significant improvements over how learning and teaching are done today. The course will have a technology-centered focus, but the most important metrics will be those related to learning gains.

As this is a graduate seminar, students will be responsible for selecting and designing the materials and the presentations in the course, with only light supervision by the instructor.

Students earning 1 unit will do the following:

• Summarize current research papers and book chapters
• Complete paper and artifact evaluations before each class
• Complete in-class assignments, including peer-assessments
• Present information clearly and concisely
• Lead class sessions

Students earning 3 units will do the following:

• The work listed above for 1 unit, and:
• Innovate in one particular area of research
• Design, implement, and release a research artifact; one of
• Working with a team to engineer something great
• Writing a research paper proposing a future approach based on a detailed analysis of existing approaches

Course Prerequisites

Ph.D. students who have an interest in pushing the state of the art in education and educational technology are the intended participants of this course. It is preferred if students already have some background in learning sciences, but not required. It is also preferred that students have programming background, but also not required, if instead they come from learning sciences or some other relevant non-CS field such as psychology. The same applies to master’s students.

Undergraduates will be accepted to the course if they can demonstrate a proven interest in the topic, relevant background, and can present a recommendation from a UC Berkeley professor or equivalent. (Having taken a course with the instructor is equivalent.) Interested undergraduates should email the instructor with the name of the professor to contact for their reference, and should also include a copy of the UC Berkeley transcript and their resume.