Collaborative Research: Situated Practice Systems: Supporting Coaches and Students to Develop Regulation Skills for Design, Research and STEM Innovation

About This Grant

Learning to innovate is crucial for preparing students to design and implement innovative solutions to social and technical problems upon graduation. However, students rarely receive opportunities to learn or practice the skills that drive innovation. Students need authentic project-based learning experiences, but also coaches who can help them develop regulation skills – namely, cognitive, metacognitive, motivational, emotional, and strategic behaviors for reaching desired goals and outcomes. Effective coaching can not only troubleshoot project issues, but help students understand and address underlying gaps in regulation skills that limit their effectiveness as innovators. However, even experienced coaches find it challenging to help students develop their regulation skills. This project aims to improve regulation skills in college students by advancing computational tools and techniques to create tailored practice opportunities for coaches and students. Students can struggle to understand and articulate the underlying causes beneath their project struggles, and coaches challenged by the need to elicit, model, and facilitate effective practices and provide tailored feedback to large numbers of students. This project aims to overcome these challenges by developing Situated Practice Systems, a new intelligent coaching tool that (1) computationally encodes learners’ regulation behaviors across coaching sessions; (2) uses Artificial Intelligence practice agents to provide learners with tailored reminders and feedback on regulation skills between coaching sessions; and (3) leverages Large Language Models, machine learning and case libraries to provide tailored practice support to students. This research uses a design-based research approach to generate empirically validated principles that advance our understanding of learning to innovate. This project is funded by the Research on Innovative Technologies for Enhanced Learning (RITEL) program that supports early-stage exploratory research in emerging technologies for teaching and learning. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.