TOM MITCHELL (Carnegie Mellon University, USA)
Wednesday 27th of July, 2 – 3pm at Arena room
What if People Taught Computers?
Whereas AIED focuses primarily on how computers can help teach people, this talk will consider how people might teach computers. Why? There are at least two good reasons: First, we might discover something interesting about instructional strategies by building computers that can be taught. Second, if people could teach computers in the same way that we teach one another, suddenly everybody would be able to program.
We present our ongoing research on machine learning by verbal instruction and demonstration. Our prototype Learning by Instruction Agent (LIA) allows people to teach their mobile devices by verbal instruction to perform new actions. Given a verbal command that it does not understand (e.g., “Drop a note to Bill that I’ll be late.”), the system allows the user to teach it by breaking the procedure down into a sequence of more primitive, more understandable steps (e.g., “First create a new email. Put the email address of Bill into the recipient field.”…). As a result, LIA both acquires new linguistic knowledge that enables it to better parse language into its intended meaning, and it learns how to execute the target procedure. In related work with Brad Meyers we are exploring combining verbal instruction with demonstration of procedures on the phone, to achieve “show and tell” instruction. In work with Shashank Srivastava and Igor Labutov, we are extending the approach to general concept learning (e.g., in order to teach “if I receive an important email, then be sure I see it before leaving work.” one must teach the concept “important email.”). This talk will survey progress to date, implications, and open questions. This work involves a variety of collaborations with Igor Labutov, Amos Azaria, Shashank Srivastava, Brad Meyers and Toby Li.
Tom M. Mitchell is the E. Fredkin University Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, where he founded the world’s first Machine Learning Department. Mitchell’s current research studies questions ranging from how machines might be able to learn from human instruction, to the role of self-reflection in learning. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
PAULO BLIKSTEIN (Stanford University, USA)
Thursday 28th of July, 8.30 – 9.50 am at Logan room
Time to Make Hard Choices for AI in Education
The field of AI in education has exploded in the past ten years. Many factors have contributed to this unprecedented growth, such as the ubiquity of digital devices in schools, the rise of online learning, the availability of data and fast growth in related fields such as machine learning and data mining. But with great power comes great responsibility: the flipside of the growth of AIED is that now our technologies can be deployed in large numbers to millions of children. And while there is great potential to transform education, there is also considerable risk to destroy public education as we know it, either directly or via unintended consequences. This is not an exaggeration: in recent months, we have indeed learned that the combination of social media, technological ubiquity, AI, lack of privacy, and under-regulated sectors can go the wrong way, and that AI has today a disproportionate power to shape human activity and society. In this scenario, the academic AIED community has a crucial responsibility—it could be the only voice capable to steering the debate, and the technology, towards more productive paths. This talk will be about the hard choices that AIED needs to face in the coming years, reviewing the history of AI in education, its promise, and possible futures. For example, should we focus on technologies that promote student agency and curricular flexibility, or on making sure everyone learns the same? How do we tackle new learning environments such as makerspaces and other inquiry-driven spaces? What is the role of physical science labs versus virtual, AI-driven labs? How can AIED impact—positively and negatively—equity in education?
Paulo Blikstein is an assistant professor at Stanford University Graduate School of Education and (by courtesy) Computer Science Department, where he directs the Transformative Learning Technologies Lab. His academic research focuses on how new technologies can deeply transform the learning of science, engineering, and mathematics. He creates and researches cutting-edge educational technologies, such as computer modeling, robotics, and digital fabrication, creating hands-on learning environments in which children learn science and mathematics by building sophisticated projects and devices. Paulo is one of the pioneers of in the field of Multimodal Learning Analytics, a set of methods he uses to research complex learning in project-based environments. Blikstein has published widely in venues such as the Journal of the Learning Sciences, Journal of Learning Analytics, Journal of Educational Data Mining, and Nature Biotech. His work has been featured in the New York Times, ABC News, Scientific American, Wired, The Guardian, and several other outlets. A recipient of the AERA Jan Hawkins Early Career Award and the National Science Foundation Early Career Award, Blikstein holds a PhD. from Northwestern University and a MSc. from the MIT Media Lab.
MICHAEL THOMAS (University College London / Birkbeck University of London, UK)
Friday 29th of July, 8 – 9.55 am at Logan room
Has the Potential Role of Neuroscience in Education been Overstated? Can Computational Approaches Help Build Bridges Between Them?
In the first part of this talk, I will assess the progress of the field of educational neuroscience in attempting to translate basic neuroscience findings to classroom practice. While much heralded, has educational neuroscience yielded concrete benefits for educators or policymakers? Is it likely to in the future? Or is its main contribution merely to dispel neuromyths? In the second half of the talk, I will assess the role that computational approaches can play in this inter-disciplinary interaction. Is neuroscience best viewed as a source of inspiration to build better algorithms for educational AI? Or can neurocomputational models help us build better theories that link data across behaviour, environment, brain, and genetics into an integrated account of children’s learning?
Dr. Michael Thomas is a Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at Birkbeck, University of London, UK, and Director of the University of London Centre for Educational Neuroscience. His current work in educational neuroscience includes understanding the role of inhibitory control in children’s science and math learning, investigating the influence of cell phone use on adolescent brain development, linking findings on sensitive periods in brain development to their educational implications, and building links between genetics, environment and education in children’s developmental outcomes. He also directs the Developmental Neurocognition Laboratory, whose goal is the multi-disciplinary study of cognitive variability. Michael employs computational modelling as one of his research methods, using population-level artificial neural network modelling to investigation the brain basis of intelligence and developmental disorders. In 2006, his research lab was the co-recipient of the Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher Education, for the project “Neuropsychological work with the very young: understanding brain function and cognitive development”. Michael is a Chartered Psychologist, Fellow of the British Psychological Society, and Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science.
YANYAN LI (Beijing Normal University, China)
Friday 29th of July, 8 – 9.55 am at Logan room
Public Knowledge Graph Initiative for Science Education
Knowledge graphs have been widely and effectively applied to natural language processing and recommendation systems. They also play an important role in industries such as finance, agriculture and biomedical science. In the field of education, Discipline Knowledge Graph has attracted considerable attention since it can offer fundamental support to various knowledge services that facilitate teaching and learning. This talk will discuss an initiative public KG framework for supporting science education as well as research that leverages this framework in a continuous improvement cycle. We aim at constructing a cross-disciplinary knowledge graph of science education based on text mining and manual annotation. It is built on an open platform that allows to link entities from open-domain knowledge graphs, e.g. DBpedia, Freebase and Wikidata. This platform is expected to accommodate various interests and requirements of teachers, students and developers in real scenarios. A demo will be presented to introduce some typical knowledge services in this platform such as knowledge mining, language inference and data visualization.
Dr. Yanyan Li is a professor in the Smart Learning Institute at Beijing Normal University. She was the visiting scholar in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. Her areas of expertise include learning analytics, computer supported collaborative learning, and STEM education. She is the principal investigator of several projects funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, National Social Science foundation of China, and Key Project of Beijing Education Science Plan. She has published two scholarly books and more than 90 papers in journals and international conferences covering interdisciplinary areas that include computer science, learning science and education studies. Four of her papers have been awarded as the best paper in international conferences. Dr. Yanyan Li also served as the Program Chair of IEEE ICALT2013, and the sub-conference general co-Chair of Global Chinese Conference on Computers in Education. She is the member of several international conference program committees such as ICCE, ICHL, TEL, SLE, and T4E. She is currently the executive editor of Journal of Computers in Education, and served as editorial board member of the International Journal of Distance Education Technologies and the Journal of Smart Learning Environments.