Learning Historian

While simulations seem to be useful, we still need to understand how these environments can be designed to effectively promote student learning. The aim of the Learning Historian is to provide a richer environment to learners while they freely explore the behavior of a simulation. The basis of the Learning Historian is to record the history of the interaction with the simulation and allow this history to be replayed for review, sent with a message, used in a tutorial, or replayed as a series of variants to facilitate comparisons and explorations.

Publications and Presentations

Plaisant, C., Rose, A., Rubloff, G., Salter, R., Shneiderman, B. (May 1999)
The Design of History Mechanisms and their Use in Collaborative Educational Simulations
Proc. of the Computer Support for Collaborative Learning, CSCL' 99, Palo Alto, CA, 348-359.
CS-TR-4027, UMIACS-TR-99-34, ISR-TR-99-74

Chipman, G., Plaisant, C., Gahagan, S., Herrmann, J. W., Hewitt, S., and Reaves, L. (April 2001)
Understanding Manufacturing Systems with a Learning Historian for User-Directed Experimentation
HCIL-2001-07 , CS-TR-4243 , UMIACS-TR-2001-29

Salter, R. (September 1999)
A Client-Server Architecture for Rich Visual History Interfaces
CS-TR-4056, UMIACS-TR-99-52

Video

Click for Video: Learning histories in simulation based learning environments (24 MB)

Participants

Gene Chipman, Computer Science Graduate Student
Catherine Plaisant, Assistant Research Scientist, Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory
Anne Rose, Faculty Research Assistant, Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory
Gary Rubloff, Director, Institute for Systems Research
Richard Salter, Visiting Scholar, Oberlin College
Ben Shneiderman, Head, Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory

Related Work

Early mockups of learning historian.

Genex scenario, includes demonstration of how learning historian might be used

See also:
Transportation project
Simulation based learning environments

Sponsors and Partners:

This project is sponsored in part by NSF via a NSF-CIRE initiative between ISR and North Carolina A&T, where Celestine Ntuen and his student Ben Okoye have been conducting an evaluation of the simulation modules that will have historians added to them.

We have also recently started to work with Jeffrey Herrmann to investigate other applications of the historian.