Title: Knowledge Co-Construction and Initiative in Peer Learning for introductory Computer Science

Presenter: Barbara Di Eugenio, PhD, Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois, Chicago

Abstract: Peer learning has often been shown to be an effective mode of learning for all participants; and knowledge co-construction (KCC), when participants work together to build knowledge, has been shown to correlate with learning in peer interactions. However, KCC is hard to identify and/or support  computationally. We conducted an extensive analysis of  a corpus of peer-learning interactions in introductory Computer Science: we found a strong relationship between KCC and the linguistic notion of initiative shift,  and moderate correlations between initiative shifts and learning. The results of this analysis were incorporated into KSC-PaL, an artificial agent that can collaborate with a human student via natural-language dialog and actions within a graphical workspace. Evaluations of KSC-PaL showed that the agent was able to encourage shifts in initiative in order to promote learning and that students learned using the agent. This work (joint with Cindy Howard, now at Lewis University), was part of  two larger projects that studied tutoring dialogues and peer learning interactions for introductory Computer Science, and that resulted in two Intelligent Tutoring Systems, iList and Chiqat-Tutor.

Bio: Barbara Di Eugenio is a Professor  and Director of Graduate Studies in the  Computer Science department at the University of Illinois Chicago. There she leads the NLP  laboratory (http://nlp.cs.uic.edu/). She  obtained  her PhD in Computer Science  from the University of Pennsylvania (1993). Dr. Di Eugenio is an NSF CAREER awardee (2002); the 2013 Innovator of the Year award from AWIS Chicago (Association for Women in Science); a UIC University Scholar (2018-2020); and a Zenith Award recipient from AWIS (2022). She was also the recipient of the UIC Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2019.  Her research has been supported by NSF, ONR, NIH, Motorola, Yahoo!, Politecnico di Torino,  and the Qatar Research Foundation. She is very proud to have graduated 14 PhD and 31 Master's students.