I am very pleased to announce that Dr. Brian Belland will be joining us as a new assistant professor in August. Brian recently completed his PhD at Purdue.

It is with regret that I announce that David Wiley is resigning from USU to take a position at some large university in Provo.

We are losing a valued faculty member, researcher, colleague, teacher, advisor ... and also friend.

Good luck, David!

The Department of Instructional Technolgy will be renamed the Department of Instructional Technology & Learning Sciences. An article written in the Herald Journal on May 28th highlighted the name change. The name change was approved by the Board of Trustees on May 23rd and will become offical Spring 2009. The full article will be displayed in the INST office.

Dr. Doug Holton was just awarded a USU GEM research grant, entitled "Open and Distributed Learning in High School Engineering and Technology Education".

This will help him and his colleagues prepare a submission to NSF's ITEST program.

I am very pleased to announce that Dr. Anne Diekema will be joining us as a new assistant professor in August. Dr Diekema is currently Research Assistant Professor at the Center for Natural Language Processing / School of Information Studies at Syracuse University.

I am very pleased to announce that Victor Lee will be joining us as a new Assistant Professor in January, 2009. Victor is completing his PhD at Northwestern University, and has a website at victorsworld.net

- Mimi

Yesterday, a bunch of us (brett, me, doug, nick, and sheri) went on a field trip to Hill Air Force Base. Impressive place, even more impressive was the scale of ISD.


But what really pleased me was seeing all the INST alums working there and for contractors.

Yeah INST!

I am pleased to announce that Delroy Brinkerhoff successfully passed his comprehensive exam today. He has chosen a challenging topic, and represented himself very well.

Conducting the oral exam was a bit of a challenge, as we had David Merill participating by phone from Hawaii, and Andy Gibbons from Provo. And you thought they'd left the department?

David Wiley serves as Delroy's advisor.

Anne Diekema will be visiting campus on Wednesday, 28 May, as a faculty candidate.

The abstract of her talk:

Improving the Search for Information

Research in Information Science is concerned with the relationship between people, technology, and information. A common scenario which includes all three would be a person using a search engine to find information. Before this person initiates a search a substantial amount of work has been carried out on the system side. The goal of this preceding work is to ensure that the search will be successful and users will be satisfied with their results. Techniques for ?laying the track? or creating pathways to relevant information include assigning metadata to documents, storing translations of foreign language texts, and using deep natural language processing-based indexing. A variety of research projects all aimed at facilitating the person in finding information will be discussed in the areas of automatic metadata assignment, cross-language information retrieval, and natural language processing.

Our own David Wiley makes the front page of the Herald Journal with an article about the recently approved Open High School of Utah, which will be completely online. This exciting new initiative will be run out of COSL.

See

http://hjnews.townnews.com/articles/2008/05/18/news/news04.txt

Many of you know Yan Ma, a first year PhD student. She writes that she will be going to Sichuan province (China) today to volunteer to help people affected by the horrible earthquake.

If you are interested in donating to help in this effort, please see Launa.

With sadness,
mimi

Just 'cause it is summer, doesn't mean it is quiet. The department is bringing in two outstanding candidates for faculty positions. Here is the abstract for their presentations this week in EDUC 282:

Victor Lee, Northwestern University- Presentation on May 13 at 12:15
Title
Getting the picture: Historical and cognitive perspectives on visual representations in middle school science

Abstract
Visual representations are pervasive in middle school science curricula and curriculum materials. In this talk, two perspectives are considered with regard to how representations vary and how they are understood. First, an historical perspective is used to identify what trends and patterns emerge in the design and use of representations throughout the past fifty years in published textbook materials. Specifically, through examination of a case of representational change in elementary optics, it is argued that new forms are emerging in part through mechanisms of accumulation and integration. Second, a cognitive perspective is presented. In the cognitive work, accepted claims about negative relationships between representations and conceptual understanding in science are critically examined through the use of clinical interviews with middle school students. Drawing from excerpts of interview data, it will be argued that, despite a seemingly direct and plausible relationship, particular classes of representational forms need not lead to the predicted misconceptualizations. A framework is provided that suggests the observed interpretive and explanatory behaviors of these students is due in part to a degree of pre-existing sophistication for interpreting canonical representational forms and in part to the fluid dynamics of coherence construction in dyadic interactions.

Brian Belland, Purdue University, on May 15 at 12:15
Title:
Problem-based Learning and Solution Presentation: Scaffolding Middle School Students’ Creation of Evidence-based Arguments

Abstract:

Students engaged in Problem-based learning (PBL) units solve ill-structured problems in small groups, and then present arguments in support of their solution. However, middle school students often struggle developing evidence-based arguments (Krajcik et al., 1998). Using a mixed method design, we investigated (a) the impact of computer-based argumentation scaffolds on middle school students’ construction of evidence-based arguments during a PBL unit, and (b) scaffold use among members of two small groups purposefully chosen for case studies. Data sources included a test of argument evaluation ability, debate rating scores, videotaped class sessions, and retrospective interviews. Findings included a significant impact on argument evaluation ability, and use of the scaffolds by the small groups to communicate and keep organized.

Our own David Wiley was nominated College faculty researcher of the Year!

See:
http://research.usu.edu/htm/news/articleID=3425