The Design of Future Educational Interfaces ― A Multidisciplinary Approach

The Design of Future Educational Interfaces provides a new multidisciplinary synthesis of educational interface research. It explains how 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, highlighting communication interfaces that stimulate thought. The research results will surprise readers and challenge their assumptions about existing technology and its ability to support our performance.

In spite of a rapid explosion of interest in educational technologies, 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.

Sharon Oviatt is well known for her extensive work in educational interfaces, human-centered interface design, multimodal and mobile interfaces, and communications interfaces. She has been recipient of a National Science Foundation Special Creativity Award for pioneering work on mobile multimodal interfaces, and first place recipient of the Ina Coolbrith Award. She has published over 130 scientific articles in a wide range of venues in the computational, learning, and cognitive sciences. She is an Associate Editor of the main journals and edited book collections in the field of human interfaces, including The Human-Computer Interaction Handbook. She was a founder of the International Conference on Multimodal Interfaces (ICMI), which became an annual ACM-sponsored international conference series under her guidance. In 2007, she founded Incaa Designs (http://www.incaadesigns.org/), a Seattle-area nonprofit that researches, designs, and evaluates the impact of innovative new educational interfaces.