We would like to inform your PhD students about the ICO International Fall School 2012 (November 5-10), in Girona, Spain.

ICO (the Interuniversity Center of Educational Sciences) is a Dutch/Belgian research school for PhD students in the Educational Sciences. Besides our regular courses, we also organize an International School for PhD students from all over the world. During this school the students will attend various workshops, keynotes, and presentation sessions. More information about this International Fall School, and the programme can be found on our website: https://sites.google.com/site/icofallschool2012/

Attached to this email you can find the flyer, and a short text you can use in your newsletter to inform your PhD students.

Registration for the Fall School is possible until August 1, 2012.

The University of Sydney will be hosting 10th International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS2012) from July 2 to 6, 2012. ICLS is a biennial conference bringing together researchers in the sciences of learning, instruction, and design. Since being founded in 1991, the conference has developed a reputation as a leading international scientific meeting for researchers in the learning sciences, other academics, and professionals to gather to share experiences and examine key trends in the learning sciences. On this, its tenth anniversary and the first time the conference has been hosted in the Asia-Pacific region, ICLS looks forward with its theme “The Future of Learning“.

Sponsored by the International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS) and hosted in 2012 by the Centre for Research on Computer Supported Learning and Cognition (CoCo) at the University of Sydney, ICLS 2012 will take place in Sydney, Australia. Conference highlights include keynote presentations by leaders in their fields, including Janet Kolodner, Pierre Dillenbourg, Judy Kay, and Manu Kapur, and a Presidential Panel Session on the Future of Learning. The program also includes 15 symposia, 120 papers, and 56 posters spread out over 8 parallel sessions. The conference will be preceded by 13 pre-conference workshops, including the Doctoral Consortium and Early Career Workshop. The conference is also well known for its social side, and will provide ample opportunities to network and mingle, including a lavish Gala Opening Night and a dinner cruise on the Sydney Harbour.

ICLS will take place in the state-of-the-art New Law Building and Eastern Avenue Complex at the University just outside Sydney central business district. ICLS 2012 will bring together researchers, academics, professionals, and educators from all over the world to share their experiences, discuss trends, and examine how the learning sciences can and should impact the future of learning. We hope you will be able to join us!

For more information see http://www.isls.org/icls2012/

To register see http://www.isls.org/icls2012/submit/

It was good to meet you at AERA. Safe travels.

DR. MICHAEL J. JACOBSON | Professor and Chair of Education
Co-director, Centre for Computer Supported Learning and Cognition (CoCo)
Deputy Director, Institute for Innovation in Science and Mathematics Education

Program Chair, International Conference of the Learning  Sciences 2012, Sydney

Advisors: Joyce M. Alexander, Sasha A. Barab

Department: Counseling and Educational Psychology

University: Indiana University-Bloomington

Currently an Assistant Research Professor in School of Social and Family Dynamics at Arizona State University. My research focuses on designing and studying games to support family literacy and learning.

Abstract of your dissertation:

The limited number of studies on intergenerational play suggests that not many mothers play video games with their children. However, when intentionally designed to support intergenerational play, video game could provide an opportunity for mothers and children to connect in new and powerful ways, especially around adolescence—a time when family relations undergo major transformation.

Using the lens of socio-cultural theoretical framework and activity theory, this dissertation investigates how to design educational video games to support intergenerational play where parents and children spend quality time together while engaging in collaborative work. Sixteen mother-child dyads (children ages 10 to 13) were observed while playing different game scenarios designed around dilemma situations and personally relevant issues in the context of Family Quest—a family game space create within Quest Atlantis, a three-dimensional educational gaming environment (www.QuestAtlantis.Org).

The findings suggest that games designed around both dilemma situations and personally meaningful issues created conversations between mothers and children, and provided an opportunity for mothers to spend one-on-one time with their children. Mothers gave more directives to their children when playing through game scenarios that lacked dilemma than those that were designed around a dilemma situation. In addition, gender differences were found in mother assistance behaviors, e.g. mother gave more directives to their daughters than their sons. Collaborative discussions were observed only in the game scenario that involved a dilemma around an issue that lacked personal relevance. During follow-up interviews, mothers who had no previous experiences playing video games with their children reported a strong preference for playing Family Quest with their children over commercial games due to its educational content. The analysis of different cases of mother-child dyads suggest that mothers and children who worked as equal partners were also the ones who engaged in collaborative discussions and family conversations around real world experiences during their gameplay.

www.sinemsiyahhan.com

Abstract: This dissertation elaborates the process by which a program of research around studying the co-development of strategic and conceptual knowledge in mathematical problem solving emerged from a microgenetic learning analysis done in dialogue with a heuristic epistemological framework, Knowledge in Pieces (diSessa, 1993).   The core analytic work in developing a theoretical model of the co-development of strategic and conceptual knowledge was based on an in-depth microgenetic analysis of a single pre-algebra student who largely independently constructed a deterministic and essentially algebraic algorithm for solving algebra word problems of an underlying linear structure.  This strategy emerged over the course of the students’ work on several problems in the context of semi-structured sessions.  The student’s later strategy is seen to emerge as a series of gradual refinements to an earlier strategy used in solving problems of a similar underlying form. To an observer with no knowledge of the intervening episodes, this shift in strategies would look quite dramatic and discontinuous. However, by conducting a close analysis of intermediate episodes, one can see significant continuity. The data for the analysis involved a complete record of videotaped interactions between the researcher and the student, as well as all student work.

While this is only a particular case of strategy emergence, the pursuit of a principled explanation of such a learning event implicates a number of foundational issues.  In addition to characterizing the evolution of the student’s approaches to solving problems, we might ask what conceptual knowledge the student drew upon.  We might wonder if the student only learned a new way to accomplish the local goal of solving problems that he recognized as having a similar structure to problems he had solved previously, or whether there was some deeper conceptual residue of the experience. We might wonder if strategies themselves should be considered as a “type” of knowledge and if so, how might we characterize strategic knowledge.

The existing strategy change literature (see Siegler, 2006 for a review) uses microgenetic methods to track observable changes in strategy usage. In my analysis, I share a similar analytic grain size and top-level approach.  However, through the process of negotiating with a heuristic framework, Knowledge in Pieces (diSessa, 1993), I came to characterize both strategic knowledge and the particular conceptual knowledge that undergirded the implementation of strategies as complex knowledge systems.  The development of a new knowledge ontology — a strategy system — is a central innovation of the analysis and was instrumental in modeling the interplay between strategic and conceptual knowledge in problem solving.

Advisors: Alan H. Schoenfeld and Andrea A. diSessa

Currently, Mari is a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Program in Mathematics Education (PriME) at Michigan State University.

Website: http://msu.edu/~mlevin

The CASBS was founded in 1954, and has hosted generations of scholars and scientists who come for a year as Fellows. Former Fellows include 22 Nobel Laureates, 14 Pulitzer Prize winners, 44 winners of MacArthur “Genius Awards,” and hundreds of members of the National Academies. Fellows have played key roles in starting new fields, ranging from cognitive science to behavioral economics to the sociology of urban poverty, and have developed new policies and practices in fields as diverse as medicine, education, electoral politics, Third World development, and crime prevention. Fellows often have worked most effectively as part of a group that is dedicated to addressing a specific problem. We build on that tradition, and now not only invite groups who have their own agenda but also identify specific problems and recruit appropriate scientists and scholars to be members of groups that address these problems.

Marina Bers (Marina.Bers@tufts.edu)

 Leet-Noobs-Warcraft Literacies Epistemologies

Leet Noobs documents, for over 10 months, a group of players in the online game World of Warcraft engaged in a 40-person joint activity known as raiding. Initially, the group was informal, a family that wanted to hang out and have fun. Before joining, each player had been recognized as expert in the game; within the group they had to adapt their expertise for the new joint task and align themselves to new group goals. Through their shared activity, members successfully established communication and material practices that changed as they had to renegotiate roles and responsibilities with new situations and as the larger gaming community evolved. Players learned to reconfigure their play spaces, enrolling third-party game mods and other resources into their activity. Once-expert players became novices or noobs to relearn expert or leet gameplay. They became leet noobs who needed to reconfigure their expertise for new norms of material practice. Ultimately, these norms also changed what it meant to play World of Warcraft; some group members no longer wanted to just hang out and have fun, and eventually the group died in an online fiery meltdown.

In addition, congratulations to Janice Gobert’s student who won best student paper award – AERA SIG Advanced Technologies for Learning/Learning Sciences.

Sao Pedro, M., Gobert, J., & Baker, R. (2012, April 15). Assessing the Learning and Transfer of Data Collection Inquiry Skills Using Educational Data Mining on Students’ Log Files. Paper presented at The Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association. Vancouver, BC, CA: Retrieved April 15, 2012, from the AERA Online Paper Repository.