The Design of Future Educational Interfaces

Book excerpt: The Design of Future Educational Interfaces provides a new multidisciplinary synthesis of educational interface research. It explains how computer interfaces can be redesigned to better support our ability to produce ideas, think, and solve problems successfully in national priority areas such as science and mathematics. Based on first-hand research experience, the author offers a candid analysis of emerging technologies and their impact, highlighting communication interfaces that stimulate thought. The research results will surprise readers and challenge their assumptions about existing technology and its ability to support our performance. In spite of a rapid explosion of interest in educational technologies, there remains a poor understanding of what constitutes an effective educational interface for student cognition and learning. This book provides valuable insights into why recent large-scale evaluations of existing educational technologies have frequently not shown demonstrable improvements in student performance. The research presented here is grounded in cognitive science and experimental psychology, linguistic science and communications, cross-cultural cognition and language, computer science and human interface design, and the learning sciences and educational technology.