Kurt VanLehn

Professor in the Computer Science Department, University of Pittsburgh
Co-Director of Pittsburgh Center of the Science of Learning
Senior Scientist at the Learning Research and Development Center
Secondary appointments in the Intelligent Systems Program and the Department of Psychology

Brief biography and picture

Vita and links to publications

Research Areas

  • Learning science
  • Cognitive science
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Intelligent tutoring systems
  • Cognitive modeling
  • Embedded assessment

Current group projects

Current post-doc projects

  • Scotty Craig:
    • Does studying a video of a tutoring session cause more learning than studying a video of a lecture/demonstration, especially when studying in pairs?
    • Does inserting deep, rhetorical questions into videos of a lecture/demonstration increase learning?
  • Robert Hausmann
    • Is self-explaining more effective when done by pairs of students than when done alone?
    • Is self-explanation more effective because of the “self” (the generation process) or the “explanation” (the content)?

Current graduate student projects

  • Min Chi: Does teaching an explicit problem solving strategy in one domain (probability) accelerate learning in a second domain (physics)?
  • Roxana Gheorghiu: Can Excel support effective physics tutoring?
  • Sung-Young Jung:  Is the Pyrenees tutoring system applicable and effective in multiple task domains, besides physics and probability?
  • Michael Ringenberg:
    • Can ill-structured problem solving be tutored?
    • During tutoring, does replacing just-in-time hints with just-in-time examples increase learning?

Completed projects with web pages

Teaching

Contact information

  • Email: my last name followed by @ cs<dot>pitt<dot>edu
  • Office: Room 740, LRDC, 3939 O’Hara St., University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA
  • Office phone: (412) 624-7458
  • FAX: (412)  624-7904

 

Last update: June, 2007