Advancing Theory and Application in Perceptual and Adaptive Learning to Improve Community College Mathematics

发展数学仍然是大学准备的关键障碍，涉及大多数社区大学生，并不成比例地影响在STEM中代表性不足的学生群体-少数民族，低收入和第一代大学生。这个项目旨在提高我们对来自认知科学的重要教学原则的理解，这些原则与社区大学数学的成功有关。本项目的研究旨在提高我们对学习的理解，并将学习创新应用于真实学习环境中的已知挑战，从而测试和扩展实验室研究结果的普遍性，使其适用于不同学习者的后续数学学习。该团队将专注于学习认知科学的两个研究领域，这两个领域对学习数学和科学等复杂领域具有重要意义。第一种是感知学习，它加速学习者快速准确地识别关键结构、模式和关系的能力。第二个领域是自适应学习算法的发展，该算法利用实时性能数据与学习原理相结合，通过为每个学生量身定制学习过程来提高学习的有效性和效率。该项目旨在促进对感性学习和适应性学习的科学理解，并评估它们改善社区大学数学学习的潜力。几组实验将探讨一些基本的科学问题：1)是否以及如何对不同学习形式的学习事件间隔的好处有一个统一的解释；2)被动事件和互动事件的混合如何促进适应性学习；3)如何使用适应性方法来增强比较在感知学习中的作用和益处。基本原理将通过受控实验室研究确立。然后，该项目将通过对这些原则进行应用测试来扩展这些发现，以优化学习的效果、效率和持久性，并保持动力，让社区大学的学生参加补习数学课程。本项目由美国国家科学基金会EHR核心研究（ECR）项目支持。ECR项目强调在该领域产生基础知识的基础STEM教育研究。投资在至关重要、广泛和持久的关键领域：STEM学习和STEM学习环境，扩大STEM参与，以及STEM劳动力发展。该项目支持积累有力的证据，为理解、构建理论进行解释提供信息，并提出干预和创新建议，以应对STEM兴趣、教育、学习和参与方面的持续挑战。

Developmental mathematics remains a critical obstacle to college readiness, involving large majorities of community college students and disproportionately impacting groups of students who are underrepresented in STEM - minority, low-income, and first generation college students. This project aims to improve our understanding of important instructional principles emanating from cognitive science that are related to success in community college mathematics. The studies in this project aim both to advance our understanding of learning and to apply learning innovations to known challenges in authentic learning settings, thus testing and extending the generalizability of laboratory findings to consequential mathematics learning with diverse learners. The team will focus on two areas of research in the cognitive science of learning that have that have important implications for learning complex domains like mathematics and science. The first is perceptual learning, which accelerates learners' abilities to quickly and accurately recognize key structures, patterns, and relationships. The second area is the development of adaptive learning algorithms that utilize real-time performance data in conjunction with principles of learning to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of learning by tailoring the learning process to each individual student. This project is designed both to advance the scientific understanding of perceptual and adaptive learning and to assess their potential to improve learning in community college mathematics.Several sets of experiments will investigate basic scientific questions regarding 1) whether and how there may be a unified account of the benefits of spacing of learning events that applies across different forms of learning; 2) how intermixing passive and interactive events may improve adaptive learning; and 3) how adaptive methods may be used to enhance the role and benefits of comparisons in perceptual learning. Basic principles will be established through research in controlled laboratory studies. The project will then extend these findings by conducting applied tests of these principles to optimize the effectiveness, efficiency, and durability of learning, and to maintain motivation, with community college students enrolled in remedial mathematics courses. This project is supported by NSF's EHR Core Research (ECR) program. The ECR program emphasizes fundamental STEM education research that generates foundational knowledge in the field. Investments are made in critical areas that are essential, broad and enduring: STEM learning and STEM learning environments, broadening participation in STEM, and STEM workforce development. The program supports the accumulation of robust evidence to inform efforts to understand, build theory to explain, and suggest intervention and innovations to address persistent challenges in STEM interest, education, learning and participation.