Neil Heffernan's guest appearances

Neil Heffernan

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For TeachLab’s third Failure to Disrupt Book Club episode, Justin Reich reflects on a live conversation with special guests Cristina and Neil Heffernan. They discuss Failure To Disrupt’s Chapter 2: Algorithm-Guided Learning at Scale: Adaptive Tutors, and discuss the success of their tool ASSISTments.“According to SRI, they thought the reason why it was successful...They were like, "This fit in with what teachers were used to doing." They're used to actually assigning homework, and classwork. They could see before the kids walked in the door, which problems were hard. And so they could do something a little differently. In fact, what they did find is actually teachers didn't go over every item the way they used to. And of course they didn't because all the kids got feedback, but they still went over the stuff that was hard. And particularly in the places where there was common wrong answers because all those kids should be told, "Hey, you weren't all alone." Meaning, actually, you and half of the rest of you all screwed up this problem in the same way. And I think there's a social-emotional component of actually doing that as opposed to just sitting in class and realizing, ‘I got everything wrong’ and not knowing everyone else, or a large number of other kids are in the same boat.” - Neil Heffernan, Professor/Researcher/Program Director In this episode we’ll talk about:The Heffernan’s edtech love storyPersonalized learning vs. forming communitiesThe rhetoric behind algorithm-guided edtechThe core of ASSISTmentsNon-disruptive edtechProviding teachers with student feedback dataVirtual Professional Learning CommunityThe surge of online learning with COVIDResources and LinksCheck out ASSISTments!Watch the full Book Club webinar here!Check out Justin Reich’s new book, Failure To Disrupt! Transcripthttps://teachlabpodcast.simplecast.com/episodes/bookclub3/transcript Produced by Aimee Corrigan and Garrett BeazleyRecorded and mixed by Garrett Beazley Follow TeachLab:FacebookTwitterYouTube

For TeachLab’s third Failure to Disrupt Book Club episode, Justin Reich reflects on a live conversation with special guests Cristina and Neil Heffernan. They discuss Failure To Disrupt’s Chapter 2: Algorithm-Guided Learning at Scale: Adaptive Tutors, and discuss the success of their tool ASSISTments.“According to SRI, they thought the reason why it was successful...They were like, "This fit in with what teachers were used to doing." They're used to actually assigning homework, and classwork. They could see before the kids walked in the door, which problems were hard. And so they could do something a little differently. In fact, what they did find is actually teachers didn't go over every item the way they used to. And of course they didn't because all the kids got feedback, but they still went over the stuff that was hard. And particularly in the places where there was common wrong answers because all those kids should be told, "Hey, you weren't all alone." Meaning, actually, you and half of the rest of you all screwed up this problem in the same way. And I think there's a social-emotional component of actually doing that as opposed to just sitting in class and realizing, ‘I got everything wrong’ and not knowing everyone else, or a large number of other kids are in the same boat.” - Neil Heffernan, Professor/Researcher/Program Director In this episode we’ll talk about:<ul><li>The Heffernan’s edtech love story</li><li>Personalized learning vs. forming communities</li><li>The rhetoric behind algorithm-guided edtech</li><li>The core of ASSISTments</li><li>Non-disruptive edtech</li><li>Providing teachers with student feedback data</li><li>Virtual Professional Learning Community</li><li>The surge of online learning with COVID</li></ul>Resources and Links<a href="https://new.assistments.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Check out ASSISTments!</a><a href="https://youtu.be/UXDyOhF4JTE" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Watch the full Book Club webinar here!</a><a href="https://failuretodisrupt.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Check out Justin Reich’s new book, Failure To Disrupt!</a> Transcript<a href="https://teachlabpodcast.simplecast.com/episodes/bookclub3/transcript" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://teachlabpodcast.simplecast.com/episodes/bookclub3/transcript</a> Produced by Aimee Corrigan and Garrett BeazleyRecorded and mixed by Garrett Beazley Follow TeachLab:<a href="http://facebook.com/TeachLabPodcast" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Facebook</a><a href="https://twitter.com/TeachLabPodcast" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Twitter</a><a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfzVImQvNXI3Km8Hthzc7yg?view_as=subscriber" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">YouTube</a>

Failure to Disrupt Book Club with Cristina and Neil Heffernan

Dr. Neil Heffernan, the William Smith Dean Chair Professor at Worcestor Polytechnic Institute (WPI), joins Mike to talk about how his career interweaves great teaching, computer science, and "ASSISTments" - a set of digital tools designed to make homework assignment and evaluation more efficient. Neil tells us his origin story which includes meeting his wife Cristina while teaching and doing research in K12 Education right through their creation of the ASSISTments Foundation for which Neil serves as the Chair.We talk about the effective blending of artificial intelligence and human teaching to deliver next-level learning opportunities. We dive into the critical importance of the human elements of motivation, coaching, and inspiration in great teaching. We also discuss how Neil and team have been able to leverage a platform built on crowdsourced content to begin to truly scale ASSISTments to reach hundreds of thousands of students and how the pandemic has increased demand and usage.Neil and team are doing fascinating work. We hope you enjoy learning more about it!

Dr. Neil Heffernan, the <a href="https://www.wpi.edu/people/faculty/nth" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">William Smith Dean Chair Professor</a> at Worcestor Polytechnic Institute (WPI), joins Mike to talk about how his career interweaves great teaching, computer science, and "ASSISTments" - a set of digital tools designed to make homework assignment and evaluation more efficient. Neil tells us his origin story which includes meeting his wife Cristina while teaching and doing research in K12 Education right through their creation of the <a href="https://new.assistments.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">ASSISTments Foundation</a> for which Neil serves as the Chair.We talk about the effective blending of artificial intelligence and human teaching to deliver next-level learning opportunities. We dive into the critical importance of the human elements of motivation, coaching, and inspiration in great teaching. We also discuss how Neil and team have been able to leverage a platform built on crowdsourced content to begin to truly scale ASSISTments to reach hundreds of thousands of students and how the pandemic has increased demand and usage.Neil and team are doing fascinating work. We hope you enjoy learning more about it!

The Power of ASSISTments to Augment Teaching with Dr. Neil Heffernan