Social Science and Policy Studies

Ryan S.J.d. Baker

Assistant Professor

Department: Social Science & Policy Studies
Professional Page
Office: Atwater Kent Laboratories, 104
Phone: +1-508-831-5355
Fax: +1-508-831-5896
rsbaker@wpi.edu

Educational Background

 

Research & Teaching Interests

Educational Data Mining; Learner-Computer Interaction; Gaming the System; Student Modeling; Strategic Behavior; Meta-Cognition; Affect; Intelligent Tutoring Systems; Serious Games; Off-Task Behavior; Cultural Factors; Quantitative Field Observation

IQP Advising Interests

computers and education; introducing new teaching materials; assessing educational experience; education & technological literacy; education of health-care professionals; effect of technology on social systems; international comparisons

Research

My research is at the intersection of Educational Data Mining and Human-Computer Interaction. I develop and use methods for mining the data that comes out of the interactions between students and educational software, in order to better understand how students respond to educational software, and how these responses impact their learning. I study these issues within intelligent tutors and educational games.

In recent years, my colleagues and I have developed automated detectors that make inferences in real-time about students' motivational and meta-cognitive behavior, using data from students' actions within educational software (no sensor, video, or audio data). We have in particular studied "gaming the system", off-task behavior, guessing, and slipping. We use these models to make basic discoveries about human learning and learners, and their cognition, meta-cognition, motivation, and affect.

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