The Design of Future Educational Interfaces

The Design of Future Educational Interfacesprovides a new multidisciplinary synthesis of educational interface research. It explains how and why 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, challenging popular ideas about technology and performance. The research results will surprise readers and challenge their assumptions about existing technology. There has been a rapid explosion of interest in educational technologies, but 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.