http://dl.dropbox.com/u/94277/posters/sicsaposterlayout.pdf

AIED poster (A0 size) is here:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/94277/posters/aiedposterlayout.pdf

The content is the same, the SICSA one is merely reduced.

Looking at the Mini Markers document used last time to validate traits, they use the following adjectives to measure this:

High:

• Moody
• Jealous
• Temperamental
• Envious
• Touchy
• Fretful

Low:

• Unenvious
• Relaxed

The following first draft of stories based on this are as follows:

High

James is a real worrier; he tends to worry about everything. He gets upset easily and tends to be jealous of others

Low

James is a really laid-back person; he tends to be relaxedd about everything. He hardly ever gets upset or angry and is not usually jealous of others.

Following on from this, the first draft of hypotheses are as follows

H1: There will be evidence of a positive slant in feedback for a neurotic student in the cases of both failing and passing grades

H2: There will be evidence of a negative slant in feedback for a non-neurotic student in the case of failing grades

Because of these hypotheses I propose 4 versions of the questionnaire, using 2 stories as above, plus 2 sets of marks (one of passing, one of failing marks.

My Current Story Validation Draft is here

The validated scales that I have used in developing this questionnaire are here:

• Self Efficacy
• Big 5
• Locus of Control

We originally wanted to mix the questions between scales, however this is not possible due to the differing scoring methods used by each.

Locus of Control is difficult as it doesn’t provide a “I don’t know” option, and the scoring doesn’t allow for it. We were considering adding .5 in that case, as it would tend towards the middle.

http://towhee.csd.abdn.ac.uk/q2 (note we have proxy problems today (Friday) and this page may not work)

If you want them literally side-by-side there is a PDF here

James is a student

When James is faced with a difficult task, which requires him to solve a problem which he has not seen before, he tends to panic and give up, believing that he will never solve the problem.

James finds it difficult to defend his ideas when someone disagrees with him.

James believes that he cannot solve problems by himself.

James finds it difficult to stick to his aims when he is learning

James tends to be quite nervous, and doesn’t believe he can pass.

Peter is a student

When Peter is faced with a difficult task, which requires him to solve a problem that he has not seen before, he remains calm and believes he can always find a solution to the problem, if he tries hard enough.

Peter believes he can defend his ideas if someone disagrees with him.

Peter believes that he can solve any problem, whatever it is.

Peter finds it easy to stick to his aims when he is learning

Peter is laid back about his work and believes that he will pass somehow.

A transcript can be found here:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/94277/focus%20group%20text.docx

Remove anything which could imply their academic performance, other than the grades.

Agreed that Literature Review is due in February

Next Meeting is on Friday 10th December at 2pm on Skype

Questionnaire to validate stories needs to be done by Friday 10th December

James is a student. When James is faced with a difficult task, which requires him to solve a problem which he has not seen before, he tends to panic and give up, believing that he will never solve the problem. When he is learning, he finds it difficult to stick to his aims and may not achieve his goals. He also finds it difficult to defend his ideas when someone disagrees with him. James believes that he cannot face problems by himself.

James tends to be quite nervous, and doesn’t believe he can pass courses easily.

Student 2: High Self-Efficacy

Peter is a student. When peter is faced with a difficult task, which requires him to solve a problem that he has not seen before, he remains calm and believes he can always find a solution to the problem, if he tries hard enough. Peter believes he can defend his ideas if someone disagrees with him, and get what he wants. Peter finds it easy to stick to his aims when he is learning. Peter believes that he can handle any problem, whatever it is.

Peter is laid back about his work and believes that he will pass somehow.

Feedback

Helen said that “ahead” and “behind” didn’t make much sense in the context that was originally presented. The options are to

• Change the questionnaire page to say that “The teacher expects students to pass all of the topics” or similar, to make the feedback fit better or
• To change the wording of the reponses from Ahead/Behind. This means that the modifiers would also need to change, or be omitted entirely. We could just provide “exceeding/meeting/not meeting teacher expectations”.

However in this new form I predict that we will only ever get the truth, rather than varying feedback on self-efficacy.

Following the meeting we agreed to change the wording to:

above/meeting/below expectations leaving substantially and slightly in place. The topics will also be renamed to fictional topics, such as monography or shellistics.

The followed by a further debriefing question if topics were omitted. This would be in the form of a MCQ.

You omitted Monography – why was this?

• I didn’t think it was relevant
• I forgot to mention it
• I wanted to make my response more negative
• I wanted to make my response more positive
• Other ____

As it was unclear why this happened on the previous experiment.

Paper argues that students have a given expectation of a system and how “intelligent” it is, and a higher perceived intelligence of a system increases the expectation of the student.

It found that expectations of the system did affect the perception of the system by the students. Student motivation was also affected – the experiment measured this (and other variables) before, during and after the test – expectations affected motivation after they used the system rather than before. Liking is not related to learning.

Paper goes on to conclude that motivation can be improved if student expectations are taken into account.

Cohesion Relationships in Tutorial Dialogues as Predictors of Affective States (D’Mello et al)

Paper looks at how written responses to questions can be analysed to give an indication of how a student is feeling. Looked at the subtle grammatical construct of “cohesion” – which matches pronouns to nouns in sentences. It was validated by videotaping the student.

Looked at: boredom, flow, confusion, frustration, delight, surprise and neutral.

The paper found that there were ways of inferring certain affective states from written responses. Bored students used lots of negations, if a student was confused they would use less cohesive pronouns, if flow was high then there was very good overall cohesion and frustration could be inferred from low noun cohesion (all complex, explained in paper)