Posts tagged students
Mining big data for performance clues as a study guide
Jan 21st
forgetting with personalized content review
Computer software similar to that used by online retailers to recommend products to a shopper can help students remember the content they’ve studied, according to a new study by the University of Colorado Boulder.
The software, created by computer scientists at CU-Boulder’s Institute for Cognitive Science, works by tapping a database of past student performance to suggest what material an individual student most needs to review.
For example, the software might know that a student who forgot one particular concept but remembered another three weeks after initially learning them is likely to need to review a third concept six weeks after it was taught. When a student who fits that profile uses the software, the computer can pull up the most useful review questions.
“If you have two students with similar study histories for specific material, and one student couldn’t recall the answer, it’s a reasonable predictor that the other student won’t be able to either, especially when you take into consideration the different abilities of the two students,” said CU-Boulder Professor Michael Mozer, senior author of the study published in the journal Psychological Science.
The process of combing “big data” for performance clues is similar to strategies used by e-commerce sites, Mozer said.
“They know what you browsed and didn’t buy and what you browsed and bought,” Mozer said. “They measure your similarity to other people and use purchases of similar people to predict what you might want to buy. If you substitute ‘buying’ with ‘recalling,’ it’s the same thing.”
The program is rooted in theories that psychologists have developed about the nature of forgetting. Researchers know that knowledge—whether of facts, concepts or skills—slips away without review, and that spacing the review out over time is crucial to obtaining robust and durable memories.
Still, it’s uncommon for students to do the kind of extended review that favors long-term retention. Students typically review material that was presented only in the most recent unit or chapter—often in preparation for a quiz—without reviewing previous units or chapters at the same time.
This leads to rapid forgetting, even for the most motivated learners, Mozer said. For example, a recent study found that medical students forget roughly 25 to 35 percent of basic science knowledge after one year and more than 50 percent by the next year.
Over the last decade, Mozer has worked with University of California, San Diego, psychologist Harold Pashler, also a co-author of the new study, to create a computer model that could predict how spaced review affects memory. The new computer program described in the study is an effort to make practical use of that model.
Robert Lindsey, a CU-Boulder doctoral student collaborating with Mozer, built the personalized review program and then tested it in a middle school Spanish class.
For the study, Lindsey and Mozer divided the material students were learning into three groups. For material in a “massed” group, the students were drilled only on the current chapter. For material in a “generic-spaced” group, the students were drilled on the most recent two chapters. For material in a “personalized-spaced” group, the algorithm determined what material from the entire semester each student would benefit most from reviewing.
In a cumulative test taken a month after the semester’s end, personalized-spaced review boosted remembering by 16.5 percent over massed study and by 10 percent over generic-spaced review.
In a follow-up experiment, Mozer and his colleagues compared their personalized review program to a program that randomly quizzes students on all units that have been covered so far. Preliminary results show that the personalized program also outperforms random reviews of all past material.
So far, the program has been tested only in foreign language classes, but Mozer believes the program could be helpful for improving retention in a wide range of disciplines, including math skills.
It’s not necessary to have a prior database of student behavior to implement the personalized review program. Students can begin by using the program as a traditional review tool that asks random questions, and as students answer, the computer begins to search for patterns in the answers. “It doesn’t take long to get lots and lots of data,” Mozer said.
The research was funded by the National Science Foundation and the McDonnell Foundation.
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CU: State-of-the-art rec center is online
Jan 10th
The University of Colorado Boulder’s expansion of the Student Recreation Center, a project initiated by students, opens on Friday, Jan. 10, at 9 a.m. The southwest addition, the second and largest phase of the project, is located just north of the Ramaley Biology Building and east of Sewall Hall and will provide an additional 83,000 square feet of indoor recreational space.
The portions opening this month include a three-level weight and cardio area; three new wood floor all-purpose indoor courts for basketball, volleyball and badminton; a climbing wall and bouldering area; three fitness studios; wellness suites; new locker rooms and a spacious entrance and lobby.
“Recreation facilities have always been extremely popular among CU-Boulder students and over the years we found that our current facilities were not keeping up with the demand,” said Chris Schaefbauer , CU Student Government tri-executive. “In surveys of our peers we found CU students participate in recreational activities at a rate higher than the national average, but that our indoor recreation and fitness space per student was lower than the national average.”
The new ice rink opened in November and the Rental and Resource Center, which will rent camping and outdoor equipment, opens in mid-February. The final phase of the project, which consists of an indoor turf field, tennis courts, outdoor pool and the renovation of the existing basketball courts, is on track for completion in April.
The $63.5 million project was funded through the sale of bonds to be repaid through student fees collected over a 25-year period. In April 2011, the CU-Boulder student body voted to support the expansion and renovation of the Recreation Center. Nearly 37 percent of eligible student voters participated in the election, the largest ever student turnout, and over 70 percent voted “yes” to increase student fees in support of the expansion and renovation.
“With this state-of-the-art addition and the significant improvements to the Recreation Center, the students and the campus community will indeed have a remarkable facility at their disposal,” said Gary Chadwick, interim director of recreation facilities. “This is certainly an exciting time for the Recreation Services staff, who are anxious to begin offering the students the numerous opportunities that this center provides.”
Students will have 30,000 square feet of state-of-the-art cardiovascular and strength training equipment, a lower-level strength area, several additional cardiovascular and stretching spaces, and a “cardio equipment green zone” that captures user energy produced during exercises to feed back into the power grid and offset some power consumption within the facility.
A 4,000-square-foot-climbing wall built by Eldorado Designs contains areas for bouldering, lead climbing and top-rope climbing. The lead and top-rope areas reach up to 38 feet. The beginner to advanced bouldering terrain reaches a maximum height of 14 feet. The northeast corner consists of shot rock and is designed as an educational area for anchor building, lead climbing and multi-pitch climbing along with gear anchor building.
Three additional multipurpose fitness studios and a mind-body studio will provide members many opportunities to participate in fitness, mind-body, martial arts, Pilates reformer and dance classes.
The Wellness Suite will provide fitness assessments, nutrition clinics, personal training consultations, and the muscular skeletal clinic. The Wellness Suite also will serve to support student success in living a healthy, balanced lifestyle.
The campus community is invited to attend “Reconnect with the Rec” Jan. 21-24. CU-Boulder faculty and staff members are invited to use the facility for free during this time. The event will provide the opportunity to experience and learn more about the southwest addition. Festivities at this free event will include personal trainers and equipment vendors on site, group exercise demonstrations, facility tours, climbing wall competitions, giveaways, snacks and more. For a full schedule of events go to www.colorado.edu/recreation.
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Space flight to test antibiotic’s effectiveness
Jan 3rd
education project on ants to space station
NASA Television will provide live coverage of the launch of Orbital Sciences Corp.’s commercial Cygnus spacecraft on Tuesday, Jan. 7 from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, which will be carrying two University of Colorado Boulder payloads to the International Space Station.
The two CU-Boulder payloads — a biomedical antibiotic experiment and an educational K-12 experiment involving ant behavior in microgravity — are slated to be launched aboard Orbital Sciences Corp.’s Antares rocket at 11:55 a.m. MST. Both experiments were designed by BioServe Space Technologies, a NASA-funded center in CU-Boulder’s aerospace engineering sciences department.
The CU-Boulder biomedical experiment was designed to test the effectiveness of antibiotics in space. Past experiments by CU-Boulder and other institutions have shown bacterial susceptibility to antibiotics is significantly reduced during spaceflight, although the reason is not yet known, said CU-Boulder Associate Professor David Klaus, principal investigator on the project.
Klaus said the investigation will examine changes in the gene expression of the bacteria E. coli during exposure to different concentrations of antibiotics while in the microgravity environment of space. The hope is to locate particular genes that are key to resisting antibiotics, which could lead to improved testing on Earth as well as new drug targets or new approaches to understanding antibiotic resistance in certain diseases or infections, said Klaus.
“Previous studies carried out in microgravity have shown that bacteria are able to grow in what normally would be an inhibitory concentration of the antibiotic,” said Klaus. “This investigation is aimed at characterizing the genetic basis for this response in the weightless environment of space with the intent of applying any insight gained toward combating the increasing emergence of drug-resistant pathogens here on Earth.”
Co-investigators on the project include BioServe Director Louis Stodieck, a research professor in aerospace engineering, and Shawn Levy, a researcher at the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology in Huntsville, Ala. The research effort also involves CU-Boulder doctoral candidate Luis Zea.
Bacterial resistance to antibiotics kills 100,000 Americans every year and represents a roughly $20 billion expense to the U.S. government in excess health care costs, said Klaus. The experiments will be undertaken using spaceflight test tubes contained in the Commercial Generic Bioprocessing Apparatus, or CGBA, an automated, suitcase-sized incubator, all designed and built by BioServe.
The second experiment launching to ISS is known as Ants in Space, which examines foraging patterns based on the density of the common Pavement Ant, said BioServe Business Development Manager and Education Program Director Stefanie Countryman. “Past experiments by Professor Deborah Gordon, principal investigator on this project, have shown that some ant species have the ability to search areas collectively without individual communication. When ant densities are high, each ant thoroughly searches one small area in a circular, “random” walk, she said. When ant densities are low, each ant searches by walking in a relatively straight line, allowing it to cover more ground.
“Ants assess their own density at the rate at which they meet,” said Countryman, who said the eight individual ant habitats on ISS will be loaded with roughly 100 ants each. “The experiment examines whether in microgravity ants will use the rate at which they meet to assess density, and so use straighter paths in the larger habitat areas. The results will be compared to ground controls, which in this case will include ant habitats in hundreds of K-12 classrooms around the world.”
Countryman has previously directed BioServe K-12 education experiments involving the behavior of butterflies, ladybugs and spiders in space, reaching hundreds of thousands of students around the world in the past two decades. For the ant experiments, BioServe is partnering with the Baylor College of Medicine’s Center for Education Outreach, a longstanding BioServe partner that has developed the education curriculum guide for the experiment.
BioServe research partners on the ant project include Gordon of Stanford University and Associate Professor Michael Greene of the University of Colorado Denver. The experiment is sponsored by NASA’s National Lab Education Office as well as the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space, a nonprofit group headquartered in Cape Canaveral, Fla.
Teachers interested in participating in the ant experiments may contact Countryman at countrym@colorado.edu. More information on the project for teachers and students will be online beginning in mid-January at http://www.bioedonline.org.
The flight will be the first Cygnus resupply cargo mission launched to ISS by Orbital Sciences Corp. and follows the earlier, successful launch of a Cygnus demo flight to ISS that arrived at the orbiting station Oct. 22.
In the past 25 years, BioServe has designed, built and flown microgravity life science research experiments on more than 40 space missions. BioServe has a full suite of space flight hardware, both on ISS and on the ground, which supports its own research as well as research conducted by its customers and partners. Past BioServe partners include large and small pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, universities and NASA-funded researchers.
For more information on BioServe visit http://www.colorado.edu/engineering/BioServe/index.html.
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