Research Experience for Undergraduates Programs

Cognitive Tutor Authoring Tools (CTAT)
http://ctat.pact.cs.cmu.edu/

Brief description: The Pittsburgh Advanced Cognitive Tutors (PACT) lab is developing authoring tools to facilitate the development of Cognitive Tutors, educational software systems that help students learn a cognitive skill by providing feedback and just-in-time instruction in a “learn by doing” context. Development of Cognitive Tutors has traditionally been labor and time intensive. We are developing a suite of Cognitive Tutor Authoring Tools (CTAT) that will make authoring tutors easier for programmers and feasible for non-programmers. In our ongoing work, we continue to develop and evaluate the tools, driven by the needs of various projects that use the tools to develop real-world tutors. CTAT has been used to build tutors for a variety of domains including Genetics, Language Learning, Analytic Logic Games, Economics, Mathematics, and Statistics.

REU logistics: We are interested in undergrads with Flash or Java programming skills, with a background in HCI, or those with a background in educational psychology who are interested in educational technology. You will work in multi-disciplinary teams of computer scientists, educators, and cognitive scientists.

Schedule: Year-round

Number of undergraduate positions: 2 or 3

Supported by: an Office of Naval Research grant and the new NSF-funded Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center

More information: See the CTAT web site: http://ctat.pact.cs.cmu.edu/

Contacts: Bruce McLaren

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