Learning Historian

While simulations seem to be useful, we still need to understand how these environments can be designed to effectively promote student learning. The aim of the Learning Historian is to provide a richer environment to learners while they freely explore the behavior of a simulation. The basis of the Learning Historian is to record the history of the interaction with the simulation and allow this history to be replayed for review, sent with a message, used in a tutorial, or replayed as a series of variants to facilitate comparisons and explorations.

Publications and Presentations

Plaisant, C., Rose, A., Rubloff, G., Salter, R., Shneiderman, B. (May 1999)
The Design of History Mechanisms and their Use in Collaborative Educational Simulations
Proc. of the Computer Support for Collaborative Learning, CSCL' 99, Palo Alto, CA, 348-359.
CS-TR-4027, UMIACS-TR-99-34, ISR-TR-99-74

Chipman, G., Plaisant, C., Gahagan, S., Herrmann, J. W., Hewitt, S., and Reaves, L. (April 2001)
Understanding Manufacturing Systems with a Learning Historian for User-Directed Experimentation
HCIL-2001-07 , CS-TR-4243 , UMIACS-TR-2001-29

Salter, R. (September 1999)
A Client-Server Architecture for Rich Visual History Interfaces
CS-TR-4056, UMIACS-TR-99-52

Video


Click for Video: Learning histories in simulation based learning environments (24 MB)

Participants

Gene Chipman, Computer Science Graduate Student
Catherine Plaisant, Assistant Research Scientist, Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory
Anne Rose, Faculty Research Assistant, Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory
Gary Rubloff, Director, Institute for Systems Research
Richard Salter, Visiting Scholar, Oberlin College
Ben Shneiderman, Head, Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory

Related Work

Early mockups of learning historian.

Dorothy Gale history
Genex scenario, includes demonstration of how learning historian might be used

See also:
Transportation project
Simulation based learning environments

Sponsors and Partners:

Web Accessibility