2005: Dedre Gentner

2004: E. Clark

2003 P. Johnson-Laird

2002: R. Jackendoff

2001: T. Deacon

2000: S. Palmer

1999: M. Posner

1998: M. Bowerman

1997: R. Schank

1996: J. Bruner

1995: D. Dennett

1994: N. Chomski

"Learning and Interactive Multimedia"

Educational systems are in need of radical change. One way to achieve this change is to create new teaching devices. By attempting to build intelligent computers, we have learned a great deal about how people learn. By putting this knowledge about human learning to use in designing computer-based educational programs we can create effective teaching devices for the future. The key aspect of computer-based learning environments is their ability to allow students to learn by doing. Computers can place students in new, different and interesting environments where they can direct their own learning, following their own interests and achieving goals they set for themselves. Most importantly, these environments can include large libraries of stories, on video, told by experts in particular fields. The student can hear these stories, and learn from them, at just the moment in their own work when they most need help. The programs should be designed around particular learning goals of students, creating scenarios where students are motivated to accomplish tasks that lead to successfully attaining the goals in question. Such goal based scenarios can be used for any subject matter, for any age student, in schools or in business. These programs change what students are learning as well as how they are learning. Students learn how to actually do things rather than simply memorizing isolated factual material.

with the Co-sponsorship of the

Graduate School of Education
Department of Communicative Disorders and Sciences
Department of Computer Science
Department of Linguistics
Department of Philosophy
Department of Psychology

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