Kenneth Koedinger
Faculty Web Page | Curriculum Vitae
Kenneth Koedinger has an MS in Computer Science, a PhD in Cognitive Psychology, and experience teaching in an urban high school. This multidisciplinary background supports his research goals of understanding human learning and creating educational technologies that increase student achievement. He has developed computer models of student thinking and learning that are used to guide the design of educational materials, practices and technologies. These cognitive models provide the basis for an approach to educational technology called “Cognitive Tutors”. Dr. Koedinger and his colleagues have developed Cognitive Tutors for mathematics, science, and language and have tested them in the laboratory and as part of real courses. In a whole-year classroom study with our Algebra Cognitive Tutor, they found that students in their experimental classes outperformed students in control classes by 50-100% on targeted real world problem solving skills and by 10-25% on standardized tests. His research has contributed new principles and techniques for the design of educational software and has produced basic cognitive science research results on the nature of mathematical thinking and learning. He has authored 154 peer-reviewed publications and 102 other papers and have been a Project Investigator on over 30 grants. Dr. Koedinger is a co-founder and board member of Carnegie Learning, Inc. and the CMU Director of the Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center. The center leverages computational approaches to identify the instructional conditions that cause robust student learning. The center started in 2004 and is funded by the National Science Foundation for about $5 million per year until 2014.
