H. Chad Lane

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign | UIUC · Department of Educational Psychology

Minecraft continues to be a popular digital game throughout the world, and the ways in which adolescents play can provide insight into their existing interests. Through informal summer camps using Minecraft to expose middle school students to concepts in astronomy and earth science, we collected self-reports of STEM and Minecraft interest, as well...

The COVID-19 Pandemic has required everyone to understand and respond to the ever-evolving threats during daily life. The overall goal of our work is to develop a system based on an interactive conversational agent that functions as a ‘risk counselor’ by providing personalized information to people who have concerns about the risk of COVID infectio...

Application of Bayesian Knowledge Tracing (BKT) has primarily occurred in formal learning settings. This paper presents an integration of BKT in an informal learning context to assess the structure and skill level of learner scientific observations. We compare different approaches to text classification in a Minecraft science simulation. Our models...

We consider how pre-existing STEM interest influences the way in which adolescents engage an astronomy-themed Minecraft environment. Participants in an after-school program met for five sessions over the course of five weeks and explored a variety of hypothetical versions of Earth, such as Earth with no moon, in Minecraft. An association rule minin...

This paper introduces a novel approach for learning natural language descriptions of scenery in Minecraft. We apply techniques from Computer Vision and Natural Language Processing to create an AI framework called MineObserver for assessing the accuracy of learner-generated descriptions of science-related images. The ultimate purpose of the system i...

Our work investigates interest triggering, a necessary component of sustaining and developing long-term interest in STEM. We gathered interview data from middle school aged learners (N = 7) at a science-focused Minecraft summer camp over a period of one week. We first identified STEM interest triggering episodes, then categorized each episode based...

This project is part of a multidisciplinary effort funded by NSF across a multitude of stakeholders (academic institutions, a planetarium, makerspaces, and PBS Nova Labs) and investigates the triggering and sustaining of interest in STEM within a digital, game-based learning environment. Interest has been defined as a psychological state and a tend...

Our research question is: How does a digital sandbox game (Minecraft) provide opportunities to build on prior STEM interest in adolescent learners? To explore whether and how digital learning experiences enable learners to build on their prior interest in STEM, we present two case studies of adolescent learners participating in an astronomy-themed...

This book constitutes selected, revised and extended papers from the 12th International Conference on Computer Supported Education, CSEDU 2020, held as a virtual event in May 2020. The 25 revised full papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 190 submissions. The presented papers contribute to the understanding of relevant trends of current...

Objective We examined the potential of conversational agents (CAs) to support older adults’ self-care related to chronic illness in light of lessons learned from decades of pedagogical agent research, which investigates the impact and efficacy of CAs for a wide range of learners. Background The role of CAs in education (i.e., pedagogical agents) h...

The importance of promoting interest in STEM is crucial to the recruitment and retainment of underrepresented populations in the STEM field. We created a one-week summer camp program centered around astronomy using Minecraft to help promote interest in science. We capitalize on data logs collected from two 1-week camps in summer 2019 and code scien...

This is a visual presentation of our work using Minecraft as a tool to promote interest in STEM. The importance of promoting interest in STEM is crucial to the recruitment and retainment of underrepresented populations in the STEM field. We created a one-week summer camp program centered around astronomy using Minecraft to help promote interest in...

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Computer Supported Education, CSEDU 2019, held in Heraklion, Crete, Greece, in May 2019. The 30 revised full papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 202 submissions. The papers cover wide research fields including authoring tools and content...

The goal of What-if Hypothetical Implementations in Minecraft (WHIMC) is to develop computer simulations that engage, excite, and generate interest in science. WHIMC leverages Minecraft as a learning environment for learners to interactively explore the scientific consequences of alternative versions of Earth via “what if?” questions, such as “What...

Diversity has been a prevalent issue in the American STEM workforce for a number of years. Efforts to increase diversification have resulted in alternate learning spaces such as makerspaces, after school programs, and technology integrated curriculums. Our study, hosted at a non-profit organization serving underrepresented youth, leveraged the vide...

The purpose of this study is to investigate the co-occurring influences be-tween one’s interest in video games and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) through interviewing college freshmen majoring in STEM disciplines who also played video games extensively in high school. Factors such as family background and other affective c...

Medical error is the third-leading cause of death in the United States, just behind heart disease and cancer. We describe a software platform used to train healthcare workers to prevent their errors. The platform (Amplifire) harnesses artificial intelligence and principles of cognitive psychology. Amplifire’s AI continuously decides whether and whe...

Two of the most important benefits of using computer-based learning environments are that (1) they allow for interactive learning experiences and (2) it becomes possible to assess learning at a fine level of granularity based on learner actions, choices, and performance. Using these assessments, modern systems can deliver tailored pedagogical inter...

Objective: To examine the effect of the Virtual Sprouts intervention, an interactive multiplatform mobile gardening game, on dietary intake and psychosocial determinants of dietary behavior in minority youth. Materials and methods: In this quasi-experimental pilot intervention, 180 third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade students in Los Angeles Unified...

Statement: Despite evidence that learners vary greatly in their learning needs, practical constraints tend to favor ''one-size-fits-all'' educational approaches, in simulation-based education as elsewhere. Adaptive educational technologies - devices and/or software applications that capture and analyze relevant data about learners to select and pr...

This chapter elaborates on the potential impacts and roles of one the most important and widely used video games of this generation: Minecraft. We argue that Minecraft, an open-world, exploratory and generative game, is highly relevant for educators and learning science researchers alike. Gameplay involves acquisition of a wide range of skills and...

After a brief review of the science of interest and the game of Minecraft, we present a taxonomy of common Minecraft actions and activities and propose that they represent links to specific STEM disciplines. We then discuss the development of a Minecraft survey intended to identify STEM-related interests, and present the results of a pilot study us...

1. Minecraft: Popular and relevant for education With over 110M players, 241M logins per month, and 2B+ hours played on Xbox alone 1 , in 2016 the video game Minecraft ascended to be the second most popular game in history, passing Grand Theft Auto V but still well behind Tetris (Peckham, 2016). One way to think about its reach and appeal is that m...

The cyberlearning community in the United States brings computer scientists and learning scientists together to design and study innovative learning technologies. The Cyberlearning Community Report: The State of Cyberlearning and the Future of Learning With Technology highlights examples of the exciting work our community is engaged in as we integr...

This chapter explores the relationship between animated pedagogical agents and emotions that are associated with learning. The empirical status of pedagogical agents is reviewed, with the conclusion that, although the literature is murky, properly designed and deployed pedagogical agents have a small, but significant impact on learning. These findi...

This installment of Computer's series highlighting the work published in IEEE Computer Society journals comes from IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies and IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence.

We describe the Situated Pedagogical Authoring (SitPed) system that seeks to allow non-technical authors to create ITS content for soft-skills training, such as counseling skills. SitPed is built on the assertion that authoring tools should use the learner’s perspective to the greatest extent possible. SitPed provides tools for creating tasks lists...

As articles in this journal have demonstrated over the past 3 years, serious game development continues to flourish as a vehicle for formal and informal health education. How best to characterize a “serious” game remains somewhat elusive in the literature. Many researchers and practitioners view serious games as capitalizing on computer technology...

This article focuses on contributions that AI can make to address longterm educational goals. Challenges are described that support: (1) mentors for every learner; (2) learning 21st century skills; (3) interaction data for learning; (4) universal access to global classrooms; and (5) lifelong and lifewide learning. A vision and brief research agenda...

The fall and winter issues of AI Magazine present articles on some of the most interesting projects at the intersection of AI and education. Included are articles on integrated systems such as virtual humans, an intelligent textbook, and a game-based learning environment as well as technology-focused components such as student models and data minin...

In the context of practicing intercultural communication skills, we investigated the role of fidelity in a game-based, virtual learning environment as well as the role of feedback delivered by an intelligent tutoring system. In 2 experiments, we compared variations on the game interface, use of the tutoring system, and the form of the feedback. Our...

This special issue of AI Magazine presents articles on some of the most interesting projects at the intersection of AI and Education. Included are articles on integrated systems such as virtual humans, an intellgent textbook a game-based learning environment as well as technology focused components such as student models and data mining. The issue...

We describe Coach Mike, an animated pedagogical agent for informal computer science education, and report findings from two experiments that provide initial evidence for the efficacy of the system. In the first study, we found that Coach Mike’s presence led to 20% longer holding times, increased acceptance of programming challenges, and reduced mis...

Virtual humans are computer-generated characters designed to look and behave like real people. Studies have shown that virtual humans can mimic many of the social effects that one finds in human-human interactions such as creating rapport, and people respond to virtual humans in ways that are similar to how they respond to real people. We believe t...

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education, AIED 2013, held in Memphis, TN, USA in July 2013. The 55 revised full papers presented together with 73 poster presentations were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 168 submissions. The papers are arranged in ses...

The authors review six virtual learning environments built to support the acquisition of cultural knowledge and communication skills: ATL, BiLAT, Croquelandia, Second China, TLCTS, and VECTOR. Each leverages modern 3D video game engine technology which allows high-fidelity simulation of new cultural settings, including representations of buildings,...

The AIED 2011 organizing committee is pleased to present eleven interactive events at the 15th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education, held in Auckland, New Zealand. Interactive Events provide conference attendees a chance to experience many of the intelligent learning environments that the AIED community is building, from...

In this paper, we describe Coach Mike, a virtual staff member at the Boston Museum of Science that seeks to help visitors at Robot Park, an interactive exhibit for computer programming. By tracking visitor interactions and through the use of animation, gestures, and synthesized speech, Coach Mike provides several forms of support that seek to impro...

The Immersive Naval Officer Training System (INOTS) is a blended learning environment that merges traditional classroom instruction with a mixed reality training setting. INOTS supports the instruction, practice and assessment of interpersonal communication skills. The goal of INOTS is to provide a consistent training experience to supplement inter...

The authors review six virtual learning environments built to support the acquisition of cultural knowledge and communication skills: ATL, BiLAT, Croquelandia, Second China, TLCTS, and VECTOR. Each leverages modern 3D video game engine technology which allows high-fidelity simulation of new cultural settings, including representations of buildings,...

To increase the interest and engagement of middle school students in science and technology, the InterFaces project has created virtual museum guides that are in use at the Museum of Science, Boston. The characters use natural language interaction and have near photoreal appearance to increase and presents reports from museum staff on visitor react...

Virtual humans are now being used as role players for a variety of domains that involve social skills. In this paper, we discuss how such systems can provide individualized practice through dynamically adjusting the behaviors of virtual humans to meet specific learner needs.

We investigate the role of presence in a serious game for intercultural communication and negotiation skills by comparing two interfaces: a 3D version with animated virtual humans and sound against a 2D version using text-only interactions with static images and no sound. Both versions provide identical communicative action choices and are driven b...

Virtual humans are animated, lifelike characters capable of free-speech and nonverbal interaction with human users. In this paper, we describe the development of two virtual human characters for teaching the skill of deception detection. An accompanying tutoring system provides solicited hints on what to ask during an interview and unsolicited feed...

In ill-defined domains, properly assessing learning is, itself, an ill-defined problem. Over the last several years, the domain of interest to us has been teaching Americans about Iraqi business culture via a serious-game-based practice environment. We describe this system and the various measures we used in a series of studies to assess its abilit...

This paper describes how virtual humans can be used as role players in for communicative tasks that require modification of one's social skills. Examples are discussed, including systems for intercultural communication and doctor-patient interviewing, and we conclude with a discussion of the challenges of providing individualized practice by dynami...

The authors review six virtual learning environments built to support the acquisition of cultural knowledge and communication skills: ATL, BiLAT, Croquelandia, Second China, TLCTS, and VECTOR. Each leverages modern 3D video game engine technology which allows high-fidelity simulation of new cultural settings, including representations of buildings,...

We describe a lifelong learner modeling project that focuses on the use of written and behavioral data to detect patterns of learning over time. Related work in essay analysis and machine learning is discussed. Although primarily focused on isolated learning experiences, we argue there is promise for scaling these techniques up to the lifelong lear...

Negotiation skills are essential in everyday life, whether in a professional or personal context. Negotiation enables two parties to address misunderstandings and avoid conflicts through an exchange that depends as much on the interpersonal skills of the negotiators as the tactics employed. Acquiring these skills requires not only sound conceptual...

The role of explicit feedback in learning has been studied from a variety of perspectives and in many contexts. In this paper, we examine the impact of the specificity of feedback delivered by an intelligent tutoring system in a game-based environment for cultural learning. We compared ,two versions: one that provided only “bottom-out” hints and fe...

The 14th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED2009) is being held July 6--10 2009 in Brighton, UK. AIED2009 is part of an ongoing series of biennial international conferences for top quality research in intelligent systems ...

The role of culture in learning is an underexplored area of research. Learners come with a variety of cultural backgrounds, belief systems, and perspectives. Research in education has shown that teaching methodologies and instructional design cannot always be universally applied as their impact can greatly vary from one culture to another. In other...

Truly generic, reusable intelligent tutoring software frameworks remain elusive. As part of our effort to develop ITSs for simulations, a software framework with minimal dependencies on domain specifics has emerged. Herein, we describe this framework, its functionality, components, configurability, and use of natural language generation.

We consider the use of virtual humans and an intelligent tutoring system (ITS) for the teaching of cultural social conventions. Learning occurs in a serious game that requires the learner to establish trust and reach agreements with virtual characters of a different culture. Our tutoring system provides culturally focused learning support during an...

The 13th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED-2007) is being held July 9--13, 2007, in Los Angeles, California. AIED Conferences are organized by the International AIED Society on a biennial basis. The goal of the International ...

ELECT BiLAT is a prototype game-based simulation for Soldiers to practice conducting bilateral engagements in a cultural context. The prototype provides students with the experience of preparing for a meeting including familiarization with the cultural context, gathering intelligence, conducting a meeting and negotiating when possible, and followin...

Although the representation of physical environments and behaviors will continue to play an important role in simulation-based training, an emerging challenge is the representation of virtual humans with rich mental models (e.g., including emotions, trust) that interact through conversational as well as physical behaviors. The motivation for such s...

Re∞ection is critically important for time-constrained train- ing simulations that do not permit extensive tutor-student interactions during an exercise. Here, we describe a re∞ective tutoring system for a virtual human simulation of negotiation. The tutor helps students review their exercise, elicits where and how they could have done better, and...

As artificial intelligence (AI) systems and behavior models in military simulations become increasingly complex, it has been difficult for users to understand the activities of computer-controlled entities. Prototype ex- planation systems have been added to simulators, but designers have not heeded the lessons learned from work in explaining expert...

For beginning programmers, inadequate problem solving and planning skills are among the most salient of their weaknesses. In this paper, we test the efficacy of natural language tutoring to teach and scaffold acquisition of these skills. We describe ProPL (Pro-PELL), a dialogue-based intelligent tutoring system that elicits goal decompositions and...

Traditional methods of evaluating student programs are not always appropriate for assessment of different instructional interventions. They tend to focus on the final product rather than on the process that led to it. This paper presents intention-based scoring (IBS), an approach to measuring programming ability that looks at intermediate programs...

This paper describes an Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) tool that allows entities to answer questions about their activities within a tactical simulation. We show how XAI can be used to provide more meaningful after-action reviews and discuss ongoing work to integrate an intelligent tutor into the XAI framework.

Traditional methods of evaluating student programs are not always appropriate for assessment of different instructional interventions. They tend to focus on the final product rather than on the that led to it. This paper presents intention-based scoring (IBS), an approach to measuring programming ability that looks at intermediate programs produced...

The new research area of explainable artificial in-telligence (XAI) allows users to question simulated entities whose motivations would otherwise be hid-den. Here, we focus on the knowledge representa-tion issues involved in building such systems.

We present a preventive model of tutoring for novice programming derived from a human corpus and describe our intelligent tutoring system PROPL embodying that model. The system conducts natural language dialogue aimed at eliciting program design ideas from the student prior to their initial solution attempt. Students are asked to identify programmi...

To address novice deficiencies in strategic programming knowledge, this thesis proposal describes Coached Program Planning (CPP), a tutorial model for structured program design, and subsequently proposes an intelligent tutoring system embodying that model. The aim is to support novices in the transition from an intuitive understanding of the target...

Coached program planning is a dialogue-based style of tutoring aimed at helping novices during the early stages of program writing. The intent is to help novices understand and solve problems in their own words through the construction of natural-language style pseudocode as the first step in solving a programming problem. We have designed an envir...

Coached program planning is a dialogue-based style of tutoring aimed at helping novices during the early stages of program writing. The intent is to help novices understand and solve problems in their own words through the construction of natural-language style pseudocode as the first step in solving a programming problem. We have designed an envir...

Metacognition, defined as active control over cognitive processes during learning, is a critical component in the development of intercultural competence. Progression through stages of intercultural development requires self-assessment, self-monitoring, predictive, planning, and reflection skills. Modern virtual learning environments now provide a...

We describe some key issues involved in building an intelligent tutoring system for the ill-defined domain of interpersonal and intercultural skill acquisition. We discuss the consideration of mixed-result actions (actions with pros and cons), categories of actions (e.g., required steps vs. rules of thumb), the role of narrative, and reflective tut...

Recently, interactive storytelling systems - systems that allow a user to make decisions that can potentially impact the direction of a narrative - have been applied to training and education. Interactive storytelling systems often rely on an automated story director to manage the user's experience. The focus of an automated director is the emergen...

We argue that metacognition is a critical component in the development of intercultural competence by highlighting the importance of supporting a learner's self-assessment, self-monitoring, predictive, planning, and reflection skills. We also survey several modern immersive cultural learning environments and discuss the role intelligent tutoring an...

To address novice deficiencies in strategic programming knowledge, this thesis pro-posal describes Coached Program Planning (CPP), a tutorial model for structured program design, and subsequently proposes an intelligent tutoring system embodying that model. The aim is to support novices in the transition from an intuitive under-standing of the targ...

Rapid technological advances and compounding complexities of the modern world have profound implications for all levels of education and training in the United States and around the world. Intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) represent an important class of educational technology poised to play particularly critical role helping learners acquire the...