If a robot responds to a child’s smile too
quickly, that child may not realize the robot is
really smiling back. If a teacher piles on too many
new ideas during the last ten minutes of a 60-minute
lecture, students may have an extra tough time following
along. The physics problem you couldn’t figure
out last night at 2 a.m. may not be so daunting
the next day.
A common theme in each of these scenarios is time.
Time plays an important factor in learning. But
how? At what level? Is it psychology? Is it cell
biology? Is it neuroscience? Is it related to our
perception of the world? These kinds of questions,
and many others, will be addressed by the scientists
who are part of a new "Science of Learning" center based at UC San Diego that has
just been funded by the National Science Foundation
(NSF).
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CLICK HERE
TO VIEW A VIDEO
OF RUBI, THE SOCIAL ROBOT (Quicktime 7)
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RUBI, a social robot
that currently teaches numbers, colors
and other basic concepts to kids at the
UCSD Early Childhood Education Center
– and the scientists who created
her – are part of The Temporal Dynamics
of Learning Center. |
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The initial NSF grant for the new UCSD-based center
is for $3.5 million, with the possibility of an
additional $32 million over the next decade.
The center is called The Temporal Dynamics of Learning
Center, and it will benefit from major participation
from scientists at Vanderbilt University, Rutgers
University at Newark, and other U.S. and international
institutions.
The NSF’s Science of Learning Centers program
offers awards for large-scale, long-term centers
that will extend the frontiers of knowledge on learning
of all types.
Gary Cottrell, a computer science and engineering
professor from UCSD’s Jacobs School of Engineering,
is the driving force behind the founding of the
center as well as a participating researcher. Cottrell
recruited more than 40 researchers from across the
United States, Canada and Australia to participate
in the center, which has a "network
of networks" collaborative research structure.
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Gary Cottrell |
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“We will work across disciplines to synchronize
our research on various aspects of time and timing
in learning to develop a more comprehensive, multidisciplinary
science focused on the temporal dynamics of learning,
from the laboratory to the classroom,” Cottrell
said.
Cottrell will direct The Temporal Dynamics of Learning
Center with Andrea Chiba, a professor in the cognitive
science department and an affiliate of the graduate
program in neurosciences at UCSD, and with Terry
Sejnowski, who is the head of the Computational
Neurobiology Laboratory at the Salk Institute for
Biological Studies and a professor of biology at
UCSD.
“Timing is everything. It’s been a
neglected area that we think can really be exploited
to help us understand some of the basic ways in
which information is integrated in our brains across
a variety of timescales,” Sejnowski said.
I think we could transform the way that research
is actually done by understanding in a real classroom
setting how children interact with teachers and
use that to help inform our science,”.
The Preuss School — a middle school and high school
on the UCSD campus that provides intensive college
prep education for motivated low-income students
— will serve as a “living lab” for
appropriate research projects, such as testing new
ideas concerning how and when new material should
be presented to students. UCSD’s Student Educational
Advancement office, whose primary mission is to
motivate and prepare educationally disadvantaged
and first-generation college students for college
success and graduate school, is another outreach
partner.
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Andrea Chiba |
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One of the research groups will study how time
affects interactions between children and adults
in educational settings. Insights on learning may
be passed on to RUBI, a social robot that currently
teaches numbers, colors and other basic concepts
to kids at the UCSD Early Childhood Education Center,
according to Chiba.
Cottrell said the approach used to organize research
at the center is unique.
“We have created four research networks,
made up of interdisciplinary teams to study the
same questions using differing methods, skills,
and expertise, “ he said. “We have explicitly
not created groups that will just meet and tell
each other about their research. “Rather,
we will work across disciplines to synchronize our
research on various aspects of time and timing in
learning to develop a more comprehensive, multidisciplinary
science focused on the temporal dynamics of learning,
from the laboratory to the classroom.”
The scientists who are part of this new multidisciplinary
center hail from a variety of fields, including
machine learning, psychology, cognitive science,
neuroscience, molecular genetics, biophysics, mathematics,
and education.
“Creating a Science of Learning Center with
our colleagues from Rutgers and from Vanderbilt
is really an exciting development that is consistent
with the mission and vision for this campus,”
said Chancellor Marye Anne Fox. “We have the
No. 1 neuroscience program in the country. We have
the San Diego Supercomputer Center which is unique
in being able to handle the large data sets that
will be generated by basic research. It will be
a wonderful multidisciplinary center."
The researchers are asking questions that cross
the boundaries of traditional fields of learning
research. In an attempt to achieve results that
will extend beyond academia, questions are being
developed through ongoing dialogue with educators.
The researchers hope to improve teacher understanding
of the scientific research pertaining to the dynamics
of learning. In addition, the researchers aim to
collaborate with teachers to understand the dynamics
of how students are taught in the classroom. Through
this process of outreach and “inreach”
— bringing teachers into the laboratory — the
center’s researchers hope to ensure that their
work will be relevant to the real world of the classroom.
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Terry Sejhowski |
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The Temporal Dynamics of Learning Center will integrate
its research and educational mission through the
Education Outreach Center that will be co-directed
by Paula Tallal of Rutgers and Sejnowski of Salk.
The four networks that will make up The Temporal
Dynamics Learning Center are the:
— Sensory Motor Learning Network : Researchers
will study the fine temporal dynamics of synaptic
learning and motor learning. The network leader
is Dan Feldman, professor of biology and neuroscience
at UCSD.
— Interacting Memory Systems Network: Scientists
will focus on the timing of interactions among memory
systems. The network leader is Andrea Chiba, professor
of cognitive science and neuroscience at UCSD.
— Perceptual Expertise Network: Investigators
will study the time course of how representations
come online in perceptual expertise, such as face
processing. The network leaders are Isabel Gauthier
and Tom Palmeri from the psychology department at
Vanderbilt University .
— Social Interaction Network: Researchers will
study how time affects interactions between children
and adults in educational settings. Insights on
learning may be passed on to RUBI, a social robot
that currently teaches numbers, colors and other
basic concepts to kids at the UCSD Early Childhood
Education Center . The network leader is Javier
Movellan, director of the Machine Perception Lab
at UCSD’s Institute for Neural Computation,
located in the California Institute for Telecommunications
and Information Technology (Calit2) on the La Jolla
campus.
Only four other Science of Learning Centers have
been funded in recent years. The NSF is, however,
in the process of funding two new centers: one will
be dedicated to understanding spatial aspects of
learning and the other will focus on vision and
learning.