Within STEM domains, physics is considered to be one of the most difficult topics to master, in part because many of the underlying principles are counter-intuitive. Effective teaching methods rely on engaging the student in active experimentation and encouraging deep reasoning, often through the use of self-explanation. Supporting such…

Learning is facilitated by conversational interactions both with human tutors and with computer agents that simulate human tutoring and ideal pedagogical strategies. In this article, we describe some intelligent tutoring systems (e.g., AutoTutor) in which agents interact with students in natural language while being sensitive to their cognitive…

Research in era of data representation to contribute and improve key data policy involving the assessment of learning, training and English language competency. Students are required to communicate in English with high level impact using language and influence. The electronic technology works to assess students' questions positively enabling…

A number of studies have demonstrated links between linguistic knowledge and performance in math. Studies examining these links in first language speakers of English have traditionally relied on correlational analyses between linguistic knowledge tests and standardized math tests. For second language (L2) speakers, the majority of studies have…

Technologies used for the study of speech are classified here into non-intrusive and intrusive. The paper informs on current non-intrusive technologies that are used for linguistic investigations of the speech signal, both phonological and phonetic. Providing a point of reference, the review covers existing technological advances in language…

Thanks to natural language processing technologies, computer programs are actively being used not only for holistic scoring, but also for formative evaluation of writing. CyWrite is one such program that is under development. The program is built upon Second Language Acquisition theories and aims to assist ESL learners in higher education by…

Writing training systems have been developed to provide students with instruction and deliberate practice on their writing. Although generally successful in providing accurate scores, a common criticism of these systems is their lack of personalization and adaptive instruction. In particular, these systems tend to place the strongest emphasis on…

The paper tackles a central question in the field of Intelligent Computer-Assisted Language Learning (ICALL): How can language learning tasks be conceptualized and made explicit in a way that supports the pedagogical goals of current Foreign Language Teaching and Learning and at the same time provides an explicit characterization of the Natural…

This study investigates a new approach to automatically assessing essay quality that combines traditional approaches based on assessing textual features with new approaches that measure student attributes such as demographic information, standardized test scores, and survey results. The results demonstrate that combining both text features and…

We investigated linguistic factors that relate to misalignment between students' and teachers' ratings of essay quality. Students (n = 126) wrote essays and rated the quality of their work. Teachers then provided their own ratings of the essays. Results revealed that students who were less accurate in their self-assessments produced essays that…

Research has identified a number of linguistic features that influence the reading comprehension of young readers; yet, less is known about whether and how these findings extend to adult readers. This study examines text comprehension, processing, and familiarity judgment provided by adult readers using a number of different approaches (i.e.,…

This study explores the construct validity of speaking tasks included in the TOEFL iBT (e.g., integrated and independent speaking tasks). Specifically, advanced natural language processing (NLP) tools, MANOVA difference statistics, and discriminant function analyses (DFA) are used to assess the degree to which and in what ways responses to these…

Archived transcripts from tens of millions of online human tutoring sessions potentially contain important knowledge about how online tutors help, or fail to help, students learn. However, without ways of automatically analyzing these large corpora, any knowledge in this data will remain buried. One way to approach this issue is to train an…

The field of Natural Language Processing (NLP) focuses on the study of how utterances composed of human-level languages can be understood and generated. Typically, there are considered to be three intertwined levels of structure that interact to create meaning in language: syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. Not only is a large amount of…

This dissertation, which comprises three independent essays, explores the dynamics of online user behavior and provides IS policy implications across three different applications. The first essay employs an econometric empirical analysis to examine the role of IT interventions on online users' gambling behavior, based on field data collected over…