Structuring Peer Interactions for Learning Expertise at Scale

Learning with peers helps students reflect, generalize knowledge and apply it more successfully to new problems. How can we scale successful peer learning from the controlled environment of the small classroom to the wild, massive scale of online classes? In his talk, Chinmay Kulkarni will introduce computational systems that structure peer learning at massive scale. These systems demonstrate how insights from educational theory can be distilled into interfaces that scale teaching to thousands of learners. For instance, he will describe how students using his PeerStudio obtain improvement-oriented feedback on open-ended work in just twenty minutes at any time of day, enabling them to revise and gain mastery. Similarly, students use the Talkabout system to engage in globe-spanning discussions that improve learning through diversity. This talk will be a reflection of the growing maturity of research in this area, from articulating design patterns, to randomized controlled experiments at scale, to studies of long-term effects on learners and learning. 

Finally, Kulkarni hopes to reflect on how the large scale and diversity of online classes can enrich learning at universities, and his ongoing efforts to prepare engineering students for tomorrow's grand challenges. 

Chinmay Kulkarni is an Assistant Professor in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. His research group investigates how new software and pedagogical systems can leverage peer processes at massive scale. Over the past three years, his work has been used by more than 100,000 learners online, in classes taught by more than twenty universities, including Harvard. In his idle time, Chinmay is either making coffee, drinking coffee, or clicking "View Source" on web pages he visits.