Pen-based interfaces can stimulate "super-fluency" among high-performing students when expressing information during mathematics problem-solving exercises (e.g., symbols, diagrams, digits), compared with graphical computer interfaces or pencil and paper materials. Pen-based activity facilitates spatial information processing and helps to clarify thought. Students' greater communication and ideational fluency when using these interfaces is one prerequisite for creative problem solving. (Read More)
When new computer interfaces are introduced into classrooms, lower-performing students often experience a performance disadvantage while high-performers do not, which can expand the achievement gap rather than reducing it. For example, lower-performing students can make more errors and drop a whole grade point (i.e., from "B" to "C") when using a graphical computer interface, compared with paper and pencil or a digital paper and pen interface. (Read More)
Computer interfaces that mimic students' existing work practice can support better attention, accuracy of problem solutions, memory, and meta-cognitive self-regulation during mathematics exercises. For example, compared with using paper and pencil, students performed better when using a digital paper and pen interface than a pen tablet interface, which supported better performance than a graphical computer interface. As interfaces depart more from familiar work practice, students experience greater cognitive load due to the interface and they have fewer mental reserves available for math problem solving. (Read More)
As students become more distracted by extraneous interface features (e.g., in some graphical and pen tablet interfaces), their ability to engage in high-level planning and self-regulation during math problem-solving activities deteriorates substantially, leading to fewer problems solved correctly, especially in lower-performing students.
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Low-performing students in our research preferred a graphical computer interface, even though their problem solving accuracy dropped substantially when using them, compared with a digital paper and pen interface. In contrast, high performers preferred the educational interface that best supported their performance.
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Students can become powerfully engaged in learning activities when conversing directly with animated characters. In one of our projects, early elementary students spontaneously asked 100-300 questions in a 1-hour session while working alone as they talked to digital fish that taught them about marine biology. (Read More)
Students were stimulated to ask substantially more questions about marine biology when interacting with animated characters whose text-to-speech output mimicked the voice of an extroverted master teacher (louder, higher pitch, wider pitch excursions), compared with other types of text-to-speech output. Students' own speech also adapts to become more similar with that of an animated character partner. (Read More)
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