Resnick, Director of Learning, Research and Development Center, Professor of the Department of Psychology and the School of Education.  However, this is an unconventional festschrift in that the speakers are not comprised of Professor Resnick's former students and colleagues. Because Professor Resnick has an extended career with many interests, it seems best to pick a topic that intersects her interests and is timely for the literature.  Accordingly, the topic of this conference is on the role of talk and dialogue in learning.

There is an abundance of research showing that active construction, in the forms of talk and dialogue, enhance learning.  For example, we know that self-guided monologues, such self-explanations, support learning.  In this conference, we bring together researchers to address the question of whether there are identifiable dialogue patterns that are related to learning.  We focus on dialogues from a number of perspectives, such as peer-to-peer dialogues, on-line dialogues, and dialogues with a human or a computer tutor.  In addition, dialogues in informal settings and classrooms are also examined.

There are many practical reasons for considering the relationship between patterns of discourse and learning.  For example, in order to optimize the design of an intelligent tutoring system, we need to know what kind of dialogue moves to implement to maximize learning.

In addition to the traditional speaker/discussant format, we have two special events during this conference.  On Friday evening, there will be a poster session at Frick Fine Arts, with many graduate students and colleagues presenting their related work.  On Saturday evening, there will be a festschrift dinner for Lauren Resnick at the History Center.