INFORMATICS and COR TALK

WILLIAM J. CLANCEY, Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition

Date:Friday, October 25, 2013

Talk:3:00 PM

Location: *1500 Donald Bren Hall*

Title: “Working on Mars: The Mars Exploration Rover as a Collaboration
Tool for Interdisciplinary Field Science”
ABSTRACT: The Mars Exploration Rover missions have shown over nine years
how people can scientifically explore another planet using a
programmable, mobile scientific laboratory. Through the combination of
constraint-based planning and virtual reality tools, the scientists
project themselves into the robot’s body—and so rather than replacing
them, the rover’s automation makes them agents in a remote landscape.
Following the synergistic design principle of “one instrument, one
team,” the robotic laboratory becomes a tool that promotes
collaboration, enhancing the integrative study of the planet’s geology,
climatology and possibly biological history.

BIO: Dr. William J. Clancey is Senior Research Scientist at the Florida
Institute for Human and Machine Cognition. He was previously on
assignment to NASA Ames Research Center as Chief Scientist for
Human-Centered Computing, Intelligent Systems Division (1998-2013). He
received his Computer Science Ph.D. from Stanford University and his
Mathematical Sciences B.A. from Rice University. A founding member of
Institute for Research on Learning (1987-1997), he also created Brahms,
a multi-agent system for modeling and simulating work practices. He is a
Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, AAAI, and the
American College of Medical Informatics. His seven books include
Situated Cognition and Working on Mars, and he has presented invited
tutorials and keynote addresses in over 20 countries.

Friday, October 18th, 12:00-1:30pm

Venue: SBSG (Social and Behavioral Sciences Gateway) 1517

Our 2013-14 COR Kick-Off Event is an academic version of speed dating. We
have done this for a few years in the past and it has been both fun and
generative. This is an opportunity to learn more about the interests of
other COR members, to explore possible synergies and to receive some very
quick feedback on your research. We especially encourage graduate students
working on research on organizational topics to attend.

Here’s how it works:

• You come prepared to describe your research in 3 minutes or less.
• We pair you up with another researcher.
• Each person has 5 minutes to talk (3 minutes to describe and 2 minutes for q&a).
• After 10 minutes, we form new pairs and start again.
• We continue for 5-6 rotations.
• The remaining time can be used to continue the conversations that you wish to be longer.

Don’t forget to RSVP to alex.toll@uci.edu as a light lunch will be provided.

Mitchell Stevens
(Stanford), co-sponsored by the School of Education and COR.

Monday, October 7, 12:00-1:00pm
Education 2010

Mitchell Stevens
Stanford, School of Education
Director, Scandinavian Consortium for Organizational Research (SCANCOR)
https://ed.stanford.edu/faculty/stevens4

Talk Title: Education without States

Abstract:  Virtually all of what social scientists know about education is
built on the presumption that education is a right guaranteed, if not
necessarily provided, by governments.  Throughout the twentieth century
most educational data were produced and analyzed with government
patronage, with the resulting knowledge deployed to nurture modern
citizens and build modern states.  Very recently, proprietary firms are
producing huge new stores of education data through digitally mediated
instruction.  They also are underwriting scientific inquiry with these
data in the interest of improving privately owned educational products and
services. This represents a major change in the ecology of educational
knowledge production that has been largely overlooked by observers of the
digital revolution in education.  I provide a synthetic description of
this change and specify its implications for education science,
governments, education businesses, and citizenship in the twenty-first
century.

Donald Bren COR Seminar
Dr. Andrew Penner
Assistant professor – Sociology
UC Irvine

Date: Friday, June 7, 2013
Talk: 3:00 PM – 4.00 PM
Location: 6011 Donald Bren Hall

Abstract: Research on gender differences in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields typically focuses on the underrepresentation of women, attributing gender differences to factors like the chilly climate in these fields and women’s choices to avoid STEM. The present study extends this literature in two ways. First, we examine where women who leave STEM fields go, and whether their choices to opt out of STEM should be conceptualized as under-persistence. Second, we examine whether men persist excessively in the face of negative feedback in these same fields. Using a novel experimental paradigm, we find evidence that men tended to choose mathematics over verbal questions in a testing environment where the mathematics problems were extremely difficult and they were paid for performance. Corroborating evidence of this male “over-persistence effect” is also found in college STEM coursetaking behavior, where men are more likely to re-take STEM courses after failing them.