First Workshop on Technology-Enhanced Learning for Mathematics and Science

In conjunction with EC-TEL’2011 (20-23 September / Palermo, Italy)

http://telmas.celtech.de/telmas2011

Submission deadline: 14 August, 2011

FREE REGISTRATION

Invited Talks

The workshop program will include a distinguished line-up of invited speakers:

• Vincent Aleven, Carnegie Mellon University
• Ivon Arroyo, University of Massachusetts Amherst
• Cristina Conati, University of British Columbia
• Susanne Narciss, Technische Universität Dresden
• Johanna Moore, University of Edinburgh

Motivation

Many successful Technology-Enhanced Learning (TEL) systems have been developed in the domains of Mathematics And Science (MAS), especially adaptive and intelligent systems. The MAS domains are unique and important to education from a number of viewpoints. They are formal and well-defined, and hence allow for greater flexibility in knowledge representation and adaptation technologies. They are core prerequisite for engineering and technological disciplines, and hence are taught to a great number of students.

At the same time, there is a great demand for math and science teaching and instructional support. In today’s high-tech society, the number of university students who must take mathematics and science courses is globally increasing, yet the number of qualified teachers in these fields is gradually decreasing. Moreover, in the last decade a steady decline in the mathematical skills of students beginning higher education has been witnessed. The number of scientists and engineers, as well as their level of education represents one of the main sources of intellectual capital in most industrial nations today. Hence, education in these engineering subjects has taken on paramount importance. This is a key reason why the European Union and European countries individually are providing increasing financial support for TEL to fill in for the lack of human teachers. Funding for Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) and other forms of educational technology in mathematics, science and engineering is critically important to the future of the EU. As evidence of this the EU commission has focused on TEL in math and science in the most recent FP7 call.

Goals

This workshop has two major goals:

1. Inform the broad audience of TEL professionals about the landmark projects in the field of TELMAS; and
2. Provide a platform for discussing novel and emerging approaches towards building new TELMAS applications that take advantage of emerging information technologies and help answer the challenges of modern MAS education.

After the workshop, selected contributions will be invited for publication in a state-of-the-art volume of Springer Lecture Notes in AI (LNAI).