Bruce Martin McLaren

Professional Bio 

 

Dr. McLaren has an extensive background in both research and practical applications, specifically in educational technology, collaborative learning, intelligent tutoring, eCommerce, case-based reasoning, and artificial intelligence. 

Currently, Dr., McLaren has a split appointment as a senior researcher at the Deutsches Forschungszentrum für Künstliche Intelligenz (DFKI) and as a senior systems scientist at  Carnegie Mellon University.   At both institutions, Dr. McLaren is engaged in research in human learning and educational technology.  He does his research within the Competence Center for e-Learning at DFKI and within the Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center at CMU.  At CMU, he co-manages a team of 8 programmers and research associates in the development and enhancement of the Cognitive Tutor Authoring Tools (CTAT).   At DFKI, he leads a small research team consisting of two PhD students (Oliver Scheuer and Dimitra Tsovaltzi).  Dr. McLaren has over 70 publications in journals, conferences, workshops, and symposiums.

In addition, Dr. McLaren has over 20 years experience in the commercial sector, applying research ideas to practical problems. As Director of eCommerce Technologies at OpenWebs Corporation from 2000 to 2002, he led a group of four engineers in the development of intelligent inter-company (B2B) trading products.  He was also the leader of many expert system projects during over 10 years working for Carnegie Group, Inc. (now Logica) and Carnegie (U.K.) Limited.

Dr. McLaren holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in Intelligent Systems from the University of Pittsburgh, an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Pittsburgh, and a B.S. in Computer Science (cum laude) from Millersville University.  He has been a participant on many academic conference and workshop committees.  Dr. McLaren is the co-holder of two patents and one patent pending.
 
Google Scholar - Top citations to Bruce McLaren's Publications & Patents

Select publications include:

McLaren, B.M., Lim, S., & Koedinger, K.R. (2008). When and How Often Should Worked Examples be Given to Students? New Results and a Summary of the Current State of Research. In B. C. Love, K. McRae, & V. M. Sloutsky (Eds.),  Proceedings of the 30th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 2176-2181). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.   [  pdf  ]

Mikšátko, J. & McLaren, B.M. (2008). What’s in a Cluster? Automatically Detecting Interesting Interactions in Student E-Discussions. In B. Woolf, E. Aimeur, R. Nkambou, S. Lajoie (Eds), Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS-08), Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 5091 (pp. 333-342). Berlin: Springer.    [  pdf  ]

Scheuer, O. & McLaren, B.M. (2008). Helping Teachers Handle the Flood of Data in Online Student Discussions. In B. Woolf, E. Aimeur, R. Nkambou, S. Lajoie (Eds), Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS-08), Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 5091 (pp. 323-332). Berlin: Springer.   [  pdf  ]

McLaren, B.M., Rummel, N., Pinkwart, N., Tsovaltzi, D., Harrer, A., & Scheuer, O.  (2008). Learning Chemistry through Collaboration: A Wizard-of-Oz Study of Adaptive Collaboration Support.  In the Proceedings of the Workshop on Intelligent Support for Exploratory Environments (ISSE 08) at the European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning (EC-TEL 2008), Maastricht, the Netherlands, September 17, 2008. http://sunsite.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/Publications/CEUR-WS/Vol-381/   [  pdf  ]

McLaren, B.M., Scheuer, O., De Laat, M., Hever, R., De Groot, R., & Rosé, C.P. (2007). Using Machine Learning Techniques to Analyze and Support Mediation of Student E-Discussions. In R. Luckin, K.R. Koedinger, & J. Greer (Eds), Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED-07), Artificial Intelligence in Education: Building Technology Rich Learning Contexts That Work. (pp. 331-338).  IOS Press. [  pdf  ]

McLaren, B.M., Lim, S., Yaron, D., & Koedinger, K.R. (2007). Can a Polite Intelligent Tutoring System Lead to Improved Learning Outside of the Lab? In R. Luckin, K.R. Koedinger, & J. Greer (Eds), Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED-07), Artificial Intelligence in Education: Building Technology Rich Learning Contexts That Work.  (pp. 433-440). IOS Press.   [  pdf  ]

McLaren, B.M., Lim, S., Gagnon, F., Yaron, D., & Koedinger, K.R. (2006). Studying the Effects of Personalized Language and Worked Examples in the Context of a Web-Based Intelligent Tutor. In M. Ikeda, K.D. Ashley, & T-W. Chan (Eds), Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS-2006), Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 4053 (pp. 318-328). Berlin: Springer.   (Finalist for the Best Paper Award)  [  pdf  ]

McLaren, B.M. (2006). Computational Models of Ethical Reasoning: Challenges, Initial Steps, and Future Directions. IEEE Intelligent Systems, Published by the IEEE Computer Society. July/August 2006. 29-37.  [  pdf  ]

McLaren, B.M. (2003). Extensionally Defining Principles and Cases in Ethics: an AI Model, Artificial Intelligence Journal, 150, 145-181.  [  pdf  ]

Ashley, K.D. & McLaren, B.M. (1995).  Reasoning with Reasons in Case-Based Comparisons. In the Proceedings of the First International Conference on Case-Based Reasoning (ICCBR-95). Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, 1010. October, 1995, Sesimbra, Portugal.  (pp. 133-144). Springer: Berlin.  (Won the Distinguished Paper Award)  [  pdf  ]

Select research presentations include:

Kaleidoscope Symposium on Technology-Enhanced Learning, Oberhausen, Germany July 2005.   Talk titled: "The Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center: Learning Studies and Technology in Actual Classroom Settings"  (Contact: Dr. Andreas Harrer)

GE Research, Albany, New York, February 2003.   (Contact: Dr. Bill Cheetham)

Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, Scotland, February 2003.  

The Fraunhofer Institute, Berlin, Germany, February 2003.   (Contact: Dr. Thomas Gordon)

University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland, February 2003.   (Contact: Dr. John Zeleznikow)

 

[ Back to Bruce's Home Page ]
[ DFKI - Deutsches Forschungszentrum für Künstliche Intelligenz GmbH ]
[ Carnegie Mellon University / Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center ]
[ Carnegie Group, Inc. (now Logica) ]
[ University of Pittsburgh / The Intelligent Systems Program  ]
[ Millersville University / Computer Science Department ]

[ The Appalachian Trail Conference ]

Send email to bmclaren+@pitt.edu